The National Marine Fisheries Service recently considered a charge that landings data supported listing the white marlin as “threatened” under the National Endangered Species Act.
In North Carolina we wouldn’t see any evidence of that even if it were true, since white marlin are thicker here than anywhere else in the world.
The purported “landings” were in part the incidental catch of white marlin by longliners fishing for tuna. NMFS concluded they could not answer the question, since fishermen did not distinguish white marlin from spearfish that are almost identical. Since the data weren’t reliable, they could not be analyzed. The suggestion of listing under the ESA was not supportable.
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