There is a thrill in bringing up a massive fish and watching the flash it makes in the deep grow larger and larger as it approaches the surface. We would usually anticipate a catch long before we could see it however. The change in the humming of the hydraulic system was one clue. The tension on the line, the piano-wire stretch of the leader and the vibrations of a leader clip were all adrenalin-stimulants and sure signs of some type of large fish.

Another sign of fish was what we called “rabbit ears”--when two of the white bullet floats would be pulled together on the surface from the weight of a heavy fish below. And, of course, tangles were another sign of a hooked fish. We have hauled tangles on board that literally filled the entire cockpit.

But not every fishy sign resulted in the boating of a broadbill. I remember how surprised we were on our maiden voyage, when we landed a blue marlin that must have weighed well over 300 pounds. It came up dead--as most fish do--and we marveled at it and photographed it thinking that we had made a rare catch. Not so, it turned out.

I remember one fishing trip in particular. We had gone fishless for two nights before deciding to fish the other side of the Gulf Stream southwest of Great Isaac Light, an area known to be productive. That night there must have been a migration of white marlin. We landed seven dead whites, one blue marlin, one sailfish and six broadbill.

As I write this I’m browsing through my longlining logbook. The initials “BF” are written on every page. BF stands for billfish, while “SF” was our code for swordfish. As hard to believe as it may seem, during the year of 1984 we landed as many blue and white marlin and sailfish as we did swordfish. While I didn’t denote the particular billfish species in the logbook, I do remember that white marlin fell prey to our squid baits more often than did blue marlin and sailfish, but sailfish were a close second.

Even dolphin were victims of our longline. You can imagine what 15 miles of floating gear does to attract dolphin. We would always have several handlines ready,

and whenever we came upon a school of dolphin thick enough to bother with, we would idle the engines and drop the handlines over. The water literally boiled with these colorful creatures, and we thought nothing of boating 60 or 70 dolphin in a matter of minutes. Afterwards, we would continue pulling the longline. In the course of a single day, we might stop five or six times to catch dolphin, then return to the dock and discover that everyone else had flooded the market and our dolphin were worthless.

And that is what swordfishing, we slowly realized, was all about--a relentless slaughter of fish with very little financial gain.

We weren’t longliners for long. We had to get out of the business because we were too small an operation. Our line was 15 miles long, but our competitors’ lines averaged 25.

I can only imagine the damage that longlining inflicts on our fisheries. I have heard of 50-plus-mile longlines, which the operators drift, work and re-bait, culling only the fish they want to keep, and never removing the line completely from the water.

While the longliners may have “percentage reports” on releases of species such as blue and white marlin, sailfish and small swordfish, what they release has little bearing on what is killed. Our experiences indicate that only 10 percent of all the fish that come up on a longline will be alive. The other 90 percent will come to the surface dead and stiff. About 50 percent of all sharks came up dead and if that isn’t proof of the deadliness of the longline, I don’t know what is.

To illustrate this even further, let’s assume that a certain vessel holds a record for releasing 100 per cent of all the swordfish caught that weigh under 50 pounds, along with 100 percent of all the sailfish, blue and white marlin caught. Those reports would appear very praiseworthy to anyone who doesn’t realize that they only apply to live catches, which are only 10 percent of the total haul. The truth is that very few people really know what goes on aboard the long-liners, even though the fish are supposed to be public property. There’s a certain secrecy about the bycatch of billfish that is second only to the secrecy surrounding the market that buys them.

So now the swordfish are gone. What happened to them is being hotly debated. Some say that they were over-harvested. Some scientists say that they were here only because they were following a 20-year cycle of migrating squid.

Now most of the longline boats that were used by small independent operators sit at docks with “For Sale” signs posted on their windows. The South Florida swordfish phenomenon is over. Our boat sits behind our house, as abandoned as a ghost town after all the gold is mined.

It’s just as well. If the scientists who defend the longliners are right, the swordfish are chasing squid and the big longliners are chasing the swordfish in some other part of the ocean.

At least the local billfish can breathe a sigh of relief.

FS