Nick Haddad: Descending Devices, Barotrauma, and How to Get One Free

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 744, with guest Nick Haddad of Return 'Em Right.

What Is Return 'Em Right

Tom Rowland: Nick, how are you doing, man?

Nick Haddad: I'm doing well, how are you, Tom?

Tom Rowland: I'm doing great, I'm really happy to have you on here, I think what you're doing is really cool, I'm anxious to learn a lot more about it, Return 'Em Right, tell me about that.

Nick Haddad: Yes, so Return 'Em Right is a really cool program, it's a new program that works with anglers to reduce discard mortality from barotrauma in reef fish offshore. A lot of us go offshore fishing, we have a great day, we catch a fish that's either out of season, too small, or we've met our bag limit, we let it go and we see it float off on the surface and get eaten by a shark or a dolphin, it's an unpleasant sight, and there are ways we can reduce or prevent that from happening, it helps the anglers out and it also helps the resource out, so that's what we're here to do.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's obviously a really big problem, in the Keys I see it with all different kinds of fish, but really with red snapper, you're out there mutton snapper fishing and the red snappers have been very prolific, we have a lot more of them, at one point it was not a problem at all, they were rarely ever getting caught, and I don't know what happened, but there's a lot more of them now, and you can't keep them most of the time, and they're difficult to release for a lot of people. The ethical and moral thing to do is if that's what you're catching and it's not in season, you need to move on, but not everybody operates that way, this might be their first and only trip down to the Florida Keys, they're catching these fish and want to keep going. It's possible to release them with different devices, I guess that's what you're doing, how did this all start for you, where did it come from?

Nick Haddad: So this program actually comes from funding from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the program's been in the works for a long time, designed to restore fish impacted from that spill.

Tom Rowland: Okay, and now it's everywhere, the Deepwater Horizon was in Louisiana, but this program is all over the place, how does that work, was it designed for Louisiana-funded studies and programs, and this just happens to be applicable elsewhere?

Nick Haddad: So the program's designed to be Gulf of Mexico focused, a cool component of our project is, in addition to providing education, we actually provide free release gear to anglers to use on the water, we want to provide not just the knowledge but the tools to successfully release reef fish. But with the Atlantic having a two-day red snapper season, in a good year there's a lot of spillover, a lot of people travel to the Gulf of Mexico to fish, so it's still a Gulf-focused program, but the free gear spills over to the South Atlantic a bit, and the education is really relevant everywhere, barotrauma and discard mortality isn't just a local problem, it's a global issue, so education is available to everyone, the resources for free gear are limited to anglers who fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

Understanding Barotrauma

Tom Rowland: Let's talk about the education a bit, because on this podcast we have lots of inshore fishermen, freshwater fishermen, people not really familiar with barotrauma, can you tell them what it is, how it happens, and what the solution is?

Nick Haddad: I can, so barotrauma is a pressure-related injury that fish experience when you reel them up from deep water, what happens is the pressure change causes the gases in their body to expand, and they blow up almost like a balloon. This typically happens in depths of fifty or sixty feet or more, but it can happen shallower for some species, for example hogfish, I'm here off the Tampa Bay area, a lot of people fish for hogfish in forty feet of water, and they can experience barotrauma at shallower depths. So there are two main solutions, one is to release that gas so they can overcome the buoyancy and swim down on their own, you do that with a venting tool, using a hollow needle, so you have to be careful how and where you do it. Or there's the use of descending devices, which carry the fish back down to depth, allowing them to recompress naturally, the exact same thing happening on the way up just happens in reverse on the way down, you release them at depth and they're free to swim off. Both work very well when done properly, but venting, putting a needle in a fish, requires knowing the anatomy and making sure all the air comes out, and it introduces the potential for infection. In my opinion it's very important for anglers to know how to do both, carry both on the boat, and do what works best in a given situation.

Tom Rowland: That's interesting, I wonder why some fish are more prone to it, you mentioned hogfish, but a fish like a swordfish can go from much deeper to the surface with zero problem, do you know anything about why certain ones are more prone to it?

Nick Haddad: Part of it's the anatomy of the fish, physoclistous fish don't have a connection between their gut and swim bladder, so they can't self-regulate that air as well when they come up. But really, even within species like red snapper, red grouper, gag grouper, they have different depths where they seem to get back down fine, so it's just the nature of the beast that some can handle the pressure change differently than others.

Tom Rowland: At one point there was a rule that you had to have a venting tool or a descending device, do you know what the rule is in the Gulf of Mexico and what you have to have on the boat?

Nick Haddad: The current rule is called the Descend Act, it went into effect January of last year, and it requires anglers fishing for reef fish to either carry a venting tool or a descending device rigged and ready to use, you're not required to carry both, but at least one tool to mitigate the effects of barotrauma, and that's in federal waters.

Tom Rowland: That's tricky to know exactly what's federal water and what's not. As far as the education goes, do a lot of anglers not know about that act and that they're supposed to have these devices on the boat by law?

Nick Haddad: Yeah, in the Atlantic, descending was required back in 2020, and I found a lot of people still, almost three years later, are unaware that's a regulation. The Descend Act, I think the states really pushed out the messaging, so people are a little more aware of it being only a year in, than maybe the South Atlantic side. But just because they're aware of the Descend Act doesn't mean they're aware of descending devices, we actually did a survey at the end of last year and only about a third of anglers in the whole Gulf of Mexico who fish for reef fish were aware of descending devices. That's a great mechanism to improve survival, probably the safest mechanism for the angler and the fish to reduce discard mortality, and only about a quarter of anglers who fish for those species were even aware of it, and you can't do that option if you don't know it exists.

Tom Rowland: And with all the, I mean, you've got a really cool Instagram, the Return 'Em Right Instagram, all the different videos of fish descending and then coming off the device and swimming away like they're perfectly fine, which I think is one of the most interesting parts, that you can put a GoPro on a line now and send it down and see what's happening, before GoPro this would be a real mystery because you're going down deep enough that it'd be difficult to put a diver down there, it's a long way down in a lot of places, does this work, but your videos are showing without a shadow of a doubt that it's working. Do you have any idea what the mortality rates are, have you tagged any fish and descended, do you have any data on that other than the videos?

Nick Haddad: Yeah, there's a lot of published research already, and our project is actually funding new studies to do the same exact thing, to tag fish, we're working with charter captains to release fish with GoPro cameras so you can see if there's any depredation from dolphins or sharks. We have four studies in the works right now through our project that aren't wrapped up yet, but previous research, for example Brendan Runde, who's with The Nature Conservancy now, used to be with NC State, did a bunch of great studies on barotrauma and descending devices and found the survival was eighty-seven percent for red snapper off North Carolina using a descending device. That's a lot better than the twenty-eight and a half percent discard mortality rate the council uses, so in theory if you can cut that mortality rate in half, that's a lot more fish you get to keep.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Nick Haddad: So there's quite a bit of research supporting greatly improved success and survival through venting and descending, doing one or the other. The issue is a lot of these studies use scientists trained to know exactly how to vent, but in an environment with four million recreational anglers, not all of them are gonna have that same precision with a venting tool. There's a lot of research, and on our website we have a resources page that highlights a bunch of scientific publications, we pull a couple facts out that might be interesting to people.

From Marine Biology to Return 'Em Right

Tom Rowland: Going back to the beginning of this program, did you start it, or what's your history with it?

Nick Haddad: I was brought on in the first year to Florida Sea Grant as a communications manager, a hundred percent of the time on this project, when I came into this project there was no Return 'Em Right brand, we work with different partners, but our goal was to develop this angler-driven brand that was kind of independent of any other organization, something that could live on its own, guided by anglers but grounded in science. The actual branding came on after I was brought onto the project, but the project outline and the partners involved were set into place before I got brought on.

Tom Rowland: And what's your background, education, how do you end up running a program like this, it's either a dream come true for a research student or, I don't know how you end up there.

Nick Haddad: It's kind of a hybrid, I grew up in Pennsylvania, I'm an absolutely avid fisherman, I probably fish at least two hundred days a year still. I was gonna do engineering, and my mom said, you love fishing, you need to do something with fishing, so I came down to Tampa, studied marine biology, and around my senior year I realized marine biology wasn't really a job, I had to focus on a specific aspect of that, so I decided to go to LSU, got my master's in fisheries and aquaculture management. So I'm one of the more unique people who has the science background and biology and fisheries management background, but I'm really just a fisherman, so I take everything from the fisherman's perspective. Then I worked for IGFA doing all the fishing records and angler recognition programs, the grand slams and trophy clubs.

Tom Rowland: Really, how long were you with IGFA?

Nick Haddad: About two years.

Tom Rowland: Did you like that, I mean, I've submitted a couple records and did that grand slam thing, I just think it's a good organization, world records, that's super cool.

Nick Haddad: It was one of the coolest jobs, every day I got to speak with an angler from somewhere else in the world, I was working with the director of the Japan Game Fish Association, Australia, working with people from all over the world every day, so the coolest part was the people I got to meet and the stories I got to hear, because as fishermen we love talking about fishing. It was a great job, and I got to do more social media and comms work, which also helped me take on a comms role even though I have no traditional training in communications or marketing, I kinda started to do more of that.

Tom Rowland: And then what had you move away from IGFA, a different opportunity, what was it?

Nick Haddad: Just this opportunity that gives me the chance to use my background a little more in fisheries management, and my passion has always been connecting the everyday angler with the science, I think the more fishermen can be involved in science, the better it is for the resource, the more trust we can have between scientists and fishermen, it's just better for the whole process. So this kinda gave me a chance to use my background and passion more to support the resource in this role.

Tom Rowland: What do you think the status is of trust between fishermen and scientists, where do you think that is currently?

Nick Haddad: I think it's getting, it's tough and it varies by sector, but there's still a huge gap, we have a long way to come in my opinion. There are issues on the recreational side, and there's also issues on the science and management side of things being confusing, I have a master's in fisheries management and I go to these council meetings and it's hard for me to even follow, so how is someone without that background, just an everyday fisherman, gonna follow that process?

Tom Rowland: And what specifically is hard for somebody like you to follow?

Nick Haddad: Well, first of all, when you go to these meetings there's a document with acronyms you have to learn just to understand what they're even talking about, then you have your different catch limits, catch targets, allocations, how dead discards incorporate. Really the stock assessment process is what's most difficult to understand, and that's the most important because it determines everything, all the science goes into the stock assessment process, which goes into management decisions, it's not just someone going out to collect data on reproductive studies or discard mortality, that's a tiny piece of the whole bigger picture.

Tom Rowland: Right, and all of that, when you think about it as a recreational fisherman or a professional fishing guide, that's pretty confusing. But recently we've had the Goliath grouper open for catch, and I had a couple people on the podcast talking about that, which I thought was really interesting, because one thing I hadn't taken into account was, when you're out there as an angler or guide or diver, it's obvious there are so many Goliath groupers out there, so why hasn't this opened before, and it was explained to me, because there was no catch data. So I thought that was a real win, for there to be any sort of experimental season on the Goliath grouper, because the scientists are saying, it seems like there's enough here, let's open this little experimental season even though we don't have the catch data. When it first started people said it should be way more than two hundred, and the scientists said, maybe or maybe not, but I thought it was a pretty good move from the science and law enforcement community to open that without the catch data that might be required to change a limit or season for other fish, it just didn't exist because the Goliath grouper's been closed for so long. And the Goliath grouper is also a fish that has barotrauma, and you have to use a descending device on it often.

Goliath Grouper and Practical Solutions

Nick Haddad: That's a tough one, because if you catch a two hundred pound fish, how much weight are you using to descend a two hundred pound Goliath, and even venting them is very tough with their skin, it's so thick.

Tom Rowland: Well, a regular vent needle on any kind of snapper would push all the way through, but on a Goliath grouper it doesn't even hit the cavity, you need something much bigger I guess. What's the protocol when you do catch something big like that, how much weight do you need, what device works best?

Nick Haddad: So the best practice for those bigger species is still being studied, I'm actually part of an advisory panel for a project right now specifically for Goliath grouper, as more people may be targeting them, what are the best release practices, is it better to have a descending device and use your anchor to lower them, is it better to have a big venting tool on board, this is still ongoing research. But my advice to the group was you gotta look at this in two ways, there's people targeting Goliath grouper who might be able to bring extra weight, a cinder block or something to descend the fish, but then you have a lot of people reef fishing who may accidentally catch one, and what do they have on board to bring that fish down? So we're still looking at practical solutions for that best practice to help these fish survive release. Thankfully the slot limit is smaller, so a lot of these fish will be targeted in shallower depths for the people who get that permit, but you have a lot of people going deep, targeting them because it's cool to catch a five hundred pound fish.

Tom Rowland: It is cool to catch a five hundred pound fish, but whether you want to or not, you can catch one when you're yellowtailing, anytime, it doesn't have to be deep, you could hook one shallow and it takes you very deep, and then you're pulling it up and maybe getting barotrauma there. One thing I was thinking about when you mentioned using your anchor, a lot of people are anchored up, so now they catch these fish, then what, now you gotta pull your anchor, and how are you pulling it in with four hundred feet of anchor line out, you'd need an anchor ball, and you've got this Goliath grouper, that seems more difficult than just using your anchor, you'd gotta have a second anchor prepared.

Nick Haddad: Thankfully spot lock does exist as an option sometimes, but I totally get what you're saying, and honestly right now the best practice, if people do want to target them, is probably don't target them deeper, but again it just happens as bycatch, they're all over a lot of the wrecks and reefs in South Florida and even up through our area here in Tampa. I was on my paddleboard at the end of last year, I fish and spearfish from my paddleboard, and I dove in ten feet of water and was swimming next to a two hundred pounder right off the seagrass flats, they're everywhere, and they also like to eat everything that gets hooked, basically.

Tom Rowland: But for the purposes of this conversation, it's the ones you get in deep water and pull up that get the barotrauma, that's really tough. Let's talk about the actual devices, Return 'Em Right doesn't have a device that you're selling, there's a lot of different kinds out there, homemade ones, commercially produced ones, different styles, all for the same kind of thing, trying to take a fish back down to depth and release them properly. Tell me about the ones you've seen, the different styles, and which ones work the best, if somebody's looking for one, what do they look for?

Descending Device Styles

Nick Haddad: Yeah, there's a variety of styles, which we lump into three main categories. You have your lip-grip ones that attach to the bottom jaw of the fish, carry them down, and either pop open due to pressure or have a mechanical release where you jerk the rod up and it opens the clamp. Then there's inverted hook styles, exactly what it sounds like, an inverted barbless hook that, in combination with a weight, carries the fish down, and when you reel back in it slides right out of their mouth like a skewer. And then some people use weighted crates, crab traps with chains around them, or milk crates with dive weights, I don't see those used as commonly. The most popular is probably the SeaQualizer, which you can set the depth on, they make a shallow water standard version and a deep water version, you simply set the depth, clip it on the lower jaw, drop it down, and as soon as it hits that depth it releases. There's also the Fish Saver, Captain Roy's Fish Saver, that inverted hook style, it was invented because they were dealing with this issue and didn't want to see floaters, but the fish were out of season, so they got fined by FWC for keeping some because they didn't want to waste them, and they shared that story with us, that led them to invent a fish saver, which is a great one. There's a Shelton Fish Descender too, a lot of different commercially available styles, but like you said you can make them at home yourself, there's really no excuse, you can't use cost as an excuse because you can bend a wire and use a weight for less than ten dollars.

Tom Rowland: Can you pull one of those out and show it to the camera?

Nick Haddad: Yeah, so this is the Fish Saver, it's kind of a bigger inverted hook style with a tuna clip on it, you put a weight on one end, it carries the fish down, and when you reel up it slides right out. Right here you have the SeaQualizer device, which looks just like a Boga Grip, you clamp the jaws on the bottom, pop them open, and set the depth on the back by aligning the split ring with the screw head, pushing and turning, you can adjust it. And this is the Shelton Fish Descender, this one's popular more in California for rockfish, it's a little smaller, so if you tried to use it on bigger snapper or grouper it might be more challenging, but those are three of the more commonly known commercially available devices. This is also a Seaqualizer sibling, a sealator, simply an inverted hook that flips on its own, you lower it down and it sends the fish down based on buoyancy in the water, then you reel in and it slides right out. So there's lots of different devices, and we promote the use of them and try to teach people how to use them properly, how to make it an easy part of the fishing experience, that's a big thing I'm working on right now, we're doing well to overcome that awareness gap, but now how do we make it easier on anglers, because we want this to be a positive part of your fishing experience, the easier it is, the more positive it'll be, and the more time you'll get to spend fishing.

The Insurance Policy for the Fishery

Tom Rowland: I don't think anybody wants to see a line of red snapper floating behind their boat, it's bad, and if that continues, my thought would be, what would FWC do to prevent that, well, they might just close that area or close off fishing. So you're trying to save the fish, but anglers should also be thinking, we should really be watching out for our fishing rights here, because if you're not operating ethically and legally, and even if it's by accident, but you're not doing anything about it and these fish are all dying, well at some point somebody steps in and says, this can't go on like this, we're gonna have to do something, and the most likely thing would be to close it down, nobody wants to see that.

Nick Haddad: Look at the South Atlantic, there's discussions of closing the whole bottom to fishing for part of the year, I don't think that's gone through, but that was a discussion, and we don't wanna see that anywhere.

Tom Rowland: Why would that even be a discussion in the South Atlantic?

Nick Haddad: Because there are so many dead discards, what do we do, how do we overcome this dead discard problem.

Tom Rowland: I wasn't aware that was even being considered, but that was my first thought when I was preparing for this podcast, that's something that really could happen, they say, we can't seem to do anything about this, it's happening accidentally, but the only thing we can do is close this whole area or season, which nobody wants, I don't even think FWC wants that. But if that's the only solution, then I guess you have to, but it's not, if you learn how to use these descending devices, and if we can get them into the hands of way more anglers than have them right now, because you're saying it was roughly a quarter of anglers fishing in the Gulf of Mexico that have them and know how to use them?

Nick Haddad: A third were even aware of them, that didn't mean they use them, I think less than half of those use them, so you're talking a lot less than a quarter who even use them.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Nick Haddad: But based on what you said, you make a great point, and the way I see it, using these devices is kinda like our insurance policy. We can't fully control red tide, there's chemical pollution, stuff getting dumped in the water which doesn't help, but we can't control red tide, we can't control changing ocean patterns, food availability, wind current, sea surface temperatures to an extent, there's all these things affecting our fishery we have no control over. The one thing anglers have control over is what happens to that fish after we release it, not everyone's gonna survive, no one's ever gonna say that, but what you do have control over is giving that fish its best chance to survive release, it's an insurance policy, because if something goes wrong somewhere else, at least we're doing our part to keep the fishery as healthy as possible.

Tom Rowland: Now, with the funding from Deepwater Horizon, you're able to buy these commercially available products, and right on your website one of the first things you see is get free gear, how does that work, and which devices do you choose, maybe somebody out there has a device that works better than anything you've seen and wants to get in touch, or anglers just want a free one, how does the whole program work?

Nick Haddad: Yeah, so we spent a lot of time discussing the package, which I have right here, this is what you get at your front door after you complete our online education module, which only takes about fifteen minutes. We had an open invitation to bid process through the University of Florida, so any manufacturers could bid on this project, and if anyone wants to get involved I encourage them to reach out because we're not exclusive to any company. From different effectiveness studies, user error, what anglers preferred, we awarded contracts to three different manufacturers, actually the only three that bid on the project. Now the package includes a SeaQualizer pre-rigged to a weight via a three-way swivel and a loop knot, plus a second, inverted hook device.

Tom Rowland: Who pays the shipping on that, that seems like the weight is expensive.

Nick Haddad: We do, and unfortunately shipping costs have doubled in the last year as a lot of things have increased, but you also get an inverted hook descending device, so we send two descending devices and the weight, it's really as easy as can be, this weight is looped on too, so I tell people if you're catching more undersized fish, loop on a smaller weight, you might not need three pounds, but this will get, from my personal experience, a fifteen or sixteen pound snapper down, pretty good sized fish, and you'd rather have more weight than not enough and the fish still floating.

Tom Rowland: Now is it possible to take them down too quickly?

Nick Haddad: From most of the research out there, currently no, it seems like they do okay going down pretty quick, and given the state of sharks and dolphins, I think getting them to the bottom closer to their habitat quicker is actually a good thing. It's a question asked frequently, because as divers you come up slowly and adjust, but based on current research and evidence, get them to the bottom as quickly as possible and get them released back to where they can find protection from the school or the structure you caught them from.

Tom Rowland: And when you're using the SeaQualizer and setting a depth, how do you instruct people to use that?

Nick Haddad: I tell people to set it and have your setup rigged before you even drop a first bait down, so if you're fishing in a hundred and seventy feet, set it to a hundred and fifty, always as close to the bottom as possible. The science is kind of varied, but it usually says a third to a half the capture depth is how far you want to get them so they can recompress enough to swim back down, but I prefer to get fish as close to the bottom as possible, because you don't want them swimming past predators any more than they have to, especially after they just fought their whole way up, they don't have all the energy they had ten minutes prior.

Tom Rowland: That's a good thing, so you're like twenty feet off the bottom in whatever depth, if it's one seventy put it at one fifty, if you're at two hundred put it at like one eighty or something?

Nick Haddad: Well, that's the thing, with the SeaQualizer that's the one downside, you have set increments, the standard one you can only set to fifty, a hundred, or a hundred fifty feet. They make a deep water version at a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred feet, and a shallow water one at thirty, sixty, ninety. So as close to the bottom as possible, if you're at a hundred ninety I still have to do a hundred fifty, but if you have a deep water one and you're at two ten, do two hundred, close to the bottom is what's best. In my opinion the science may say halfway is all you need, but I'm very well aware of the current state of predators that we deal with, so I think getting them down close to the bottom is best.

Getting Free Gear and Best Practices

Tom Rowland: Wow, so how long do you expect the funding will last on this project to continue doing what you're doing, do you have any forecast on that?

Nick Haddad: I can estimate, it depends on how costs go up, if we change the package, reduce the value, take the weights out, shipping's less expensive, we could probably give out more devices. But since we launched in May, it's been a pretty incredible response, as of today we've had twelve thousand four hundred anglers who fish offshore complete our module, and we've shipped them all gear, so that's twelve thousand four hundred more people with gear in their hands, aware of the issue, and we make sure they go through the training first, we're not just giving gear to anyone. From a gear perspective, we're looking at maybe forty or fifty thousand packages over the next couple years, depending on demand, but since May of last year we did a little over twelve thousand packages.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's really good, did you expect more or less, did you have any expectations?

Nick Haddad: We had quite a successful launch that first month, I think we did two or three thousand packages the first week, we had a lot of initial demand, a preregistration list, our press release was picked up like thirty times, and last year we had sixty-five media mentions, so a lot of press led to a very quick launch, and we actually scaled it back, it used to be one per angler, three per household max, but we had to deal with the demand and scale back to one per household or shipping address. Realistically with continued education, outreach, and marketing, we could probably do ten thousand a year, so you're looking at forty thousand over around four years or so.

Tom Rowland: Wow, that's really good, one of the things I'm trying to do on this podcast more often, instead of waiting till the very end to give all the important information about the website, walk through the process of where you'd go and what this education looks like, and how somebody would actually get one of these devices.

Nick Haddad: It's as simple as could be, you go to returnemright.org, you'll see a button right on the home screen that says get free gear, there's instructions on the little module, you click to begin, and it starts with a few questions so we can gauge your role in the fishery, where you fish, and immediately upfront we tell you if you're eligible for gear or not, because I encourage anglers, if you're an inshore fisherman with no intention to go offshore, don't say you fish offshore just to get this gear, because it's meant to support the resource. From there you have the option to begin, and it takes about fifteen minutes, a couple slides on general best practices, how to be prepared for your trip, we all make a plan when we're fishing, but a lot of us don't really think about the plan for releasing fish or what bycatch we're gonna encounter, it's frustrating when anglers go offshore and there's a fish flopping on the deck for five minutes while they look up the rules trying to figure out if they can keep it. Then we go into barotrauma, venting, and descending, the average completion time is fourteen minutes, not burdensome at all, a couple cool videos on there and how to vent, I think you had a podcast with my colleague David Moss, he mentioned the video from Brendan Runde about a red grouper descending, an absolutely awesome video, caught in two hundred fifteen feet of water, and since red grouper have that softer body they really blow up more than red snapper, so you can really see the recompression upon descent, and that fish was actually tracked for five months to demonstrate long-term survival. Then at the end there's a shipping form, click to submit your address, confirm you want the gear, and within a week or two, depending on demand, we mail it to your front door.

Tom Rowland: That's cool, and so there are other people, like you mentioned David Moss, Nature Conservancy if I'm not mistaken, how do you work with them and other organizations with a similar mission to get this information and these devices into the hands of people who need them, is it a competitive thing or a working-together kind of deal?

Nick Haddad: Yeah, we're all doing this for the same common goal, it supports anglers, we don't wanna lose access in the future, and it supports the future of the fishery, the end goal is a healthier overall fishery that we get to utilize as much as possible. We support each other, David and I had a booth next to each other at ICAST last year, we actually have a Southeast Descending Device team, we meet a few times a year to see what's going on and collaborate on anything we can, we share resources and try to have a common message, obviously the regulations are a little different in different areas, but we work together really well, we try to make this a concerted push and keep education flowing as much as possible.

Best Practices on the Water

Tom Rowland: For the purposes of education, there are people out there who've already purchased descending devices, they understand they need them, they're fishing in areas where they can use them, one of the things you mentioned was how to be prepared before you go out, so let's go over the best practices when somebody's going reef fishing, maybe a new area, maybe they have no idea what they're gonna catch, what kind of advice do you give people?

Nick Haddad: Well, first and foremost, if you're planning on fishing deeper than thirty, forty, fifty feet, have a descending device and a venting tool on board, and enough weight to descend fish, you can use a swivel or a loop knot, but make sure you have a one, two, three pound weight, have a couple in case you catch a monster black grouper out of season or something and need to descend it, just be prepared, bring what you need in case you run into a situation. And then it's really just knowing the signs and symptoms and situations where you'd have to use those devices, if you're yellowtailing or fishing shallower depths like thirty feet, have a dehooker with you, and if the fish isn't displaying signs of barotrauma, its eyes aren't bulging, it's not bloated, its stomach isn't coming out of its mouth, use a dehooker, get that fish back in the water as quickly as possible. As you go deeper, pay attention to the depth and know when you might experience barotrauma, if you're fishing eighty feet you should know a fish you release might float off, so you'll need to vent or descend, and be prepared at that depth, if you're fishing a hundred and twenty, have your device already rigged up and set to the right depth before you begin fishing, it's better to be prepared in advance. And work quickly, I tell everyone, whether you're dehooking, venting, or descending, I can't stress enough how important it is to get those fish back in the water quickly, I've vented hundreds of fish, and if you mess around on the surface and they're out of the water too long, the survival isn't as great.

Tom Rowland: That's great advice.

Nick Haddad: On that notion, I've heard a lot of people say, oh, that fish is gonna swim down eventually, almost like justifying to themselves that they didn't accidentally kill a fish by letting it float off. Barotrauma actually gets worse on the surface, there's the ideal gas law for anyone who likes physics, PV equals nRT, volume is related to temperature, so if you've ever left your water bottle in your car on a hot day and it's expanded when you get back in, that's the volume increasing to offset the temperature increase. So the longer a fish sits on the deck or floats on the surface, the barotrauma is actually getting worse.

Tom Rowland: So they're not just gonna swim down eventually, they're gonna get eaten by a shark, they're just gonna float off like that. What about when the stomach comes out of the mouth, should you try to push that back in, or just descend them, is there anything you should be doing when that happens? Sometimes these fish look like there's no possible way they'd be okay, their eyes are almost popped out of their skull, their stomach is out, but from the videos I've seen those fish do really well, I'm just wondering if you should push that stomach back in, a lot of times it's like a balloon, and I've seen people pop it thinking that's gonna keep it from swimming down.

Nick Haddad: Yeah, you never want to pop that stomach, that's an old misconception, that you just take the hook and pop the stomach, they might go down, but putting a hole in their stomach is not a good idea. If you look at our Instagram we have a lot of videos, a few red grouper videos with their stomach sticking out, and we descend them, descending them is the best option in my opinion, you're letting all those gases recompress naturally, so that stomach will go back into place naturally. You can vent the fish too, but you don't want to stab the stomach, vent behind the pectoral, let the gas escape, and throw them back, but when the stomach's coming out like that, the best thing to do is descend them, clip it on the lower jaw, or if using an inverted hook you can go in the mouth and out the soft tissue under the chin so you don't pierce the stomach, and just send them down and let that gas recompress. Even the eyeballs, it's all the gases in the body expanding on the way up, not just the swim bladder, that's why you get the bulging eyes too, some fish can have permanent damage like in the lens of the eye if it's severe, but they go back to pretty much normal a lot of the time if you just get them as close to the bottom as possible. That Brendan Runde video I mentioned, that fish's eyes were fully out of its head, and it lived for five months.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Nick Haddad: It's pretty cool, and that's a huge misconception that videos and GoPros have helped overcome, that the fish is dead anyway, a lot of anglers tell me that at fishing clubs, and I say, check out these videos, they're not actually dead if you bring them back down.

Tom Rowland: Tell people where they can see those videos.

Nick Haddad: Yeah, through our education module we'll show you a couple, but if you go to our YouTube at Return 'Em Right we have more, and follow us on Instagram, I like posting a lot of videos and reels, I send a camera down with almost all the fish we descend, it's all at Return 'Em Right on social media and YouTube.

Tom Rowland: It's cool to see the fish kinda go back to normal.

Nick Haddad: Now survival's never gonna be a hundred percent, but we can give them a pretty darn good chance.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, and with all the different species you're returning and videoing, is there one that just seems to do the very best with it, like you mentioned red grouper really blows up like a balloon and when you send it back down it looks like a big difference, but I wondered if there's one that always pops off that device every time and swims away real strong, or if you've noticed any species doing better than others?

Nick Haddad: I don't know if I've noticed by species, the red grouper, just their softer bodies, are naturally gonna blow up more like a balloon, same thing's happening with red snapper, but they're so armored you don't really see them bloat as much, you kinda have to feel their stomach and feel that it's hard, so you don't see the recompression as much, but I haven't really noticed a single species do a lot better or worse on descent. I will say the smaller fish, maybe because they didn't fight as hard getting up, or got to the surface quicker, or didn't build up as much lactic acid, they really pop off the device and take off like a bullet back to the bottom, which is kinda cool to see.

Tom Rowland: Well, that is exactly what we're trying to do, so when you see it on video, it's encouraging for sure. That's awesome, man, do you have any other goals with this program, any offshoots, or is it straight up just trying to get these devices in people's hands?

Nick Haddad: Like I mentioned, Return 'Em Right, through Florida Sea Grant, we work heavily on the education outreach side, there's a whole research, monitoring, and evaluation side I haven't talked much about, my colleague at the commission works on that side, we're a partnership in this effort. He's funding studies to address release mortality and depredation, and he's establishing or reestablishing observer programs in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida so we can have observers on the water accounting for device use. This is an all-encompassing project, we're not just getting these in people's hands, we're actually collecting the data so it can be incorporated in the stock assessment process, because that's the end goal, we want the resource managers to know we're doing the right thing. That's a really cool side of the project most people are probably unaware of, we're putting a tremendous amount of resources into the people who do surveys so this can be recorded, and on some surveys we've had questions added on venting and descending, in hopes that stock assessment scientists can incorporate this into future assessments.

Tom Rowland: Where would these observers be, on commercial boats, where would an observer be?

Nick Haddad: They're typically on charter-for-hire boats, either head boats or charter boats, a lot of the head boats in my area will have observers on them in Tampa Bay here.

Tom Rowland: That makes sense, cool man, well, I think what you're doing is definitely very good, I encourage everybody who fishes offshore to go do your surveying, whether they get the free gear or go buy a descending device or make one yourself, I definitely encourage the use of it because it works, and if you doubt that it works, go check out these videos, it's really incredible to watch these fish just swim right off, and see what they looked like before, because they didn't look like they were gonna swim off.

Nick Haddad: Absolutely not.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, but anyway, thanks for coming on, man, I appreciate it, once again, why don't you give everybody the places to go, the social media, and everything one more time just to make sure everybody got it.

Nick Haddad: Yep, returnemright.org, for best practices, science, resources, everything involving barotrauma, email us, any question, I'm happy to talk, whether it's about setup or how to make it easier on your boat, info@returnemright.org is our email, and on all our social media platforms at Return 'Em Right, message us, we're here to be a resource to anglers, I'm a fisherman, I'll answer anyone who reaches out, whether it's about this project or you just wanna talk fishing, we're here for you.

Tom Rowland: I think they want some of those big black grouper spots.

Nick Haddad: I think you'll get a lot more emails.

Tom Rowland: You're gonna get a lot more emails if you start giving those spots out. But anyway, alright, man, well Nick, thanks, man, I appreciate what you're doing, and let us know how we can help in the future, but as of now, I appreciate you coming on, man, it's a great program.

Nick Haddad: I appreciate talking with you, Tom, thanks for having us.

Tom Rowland: Alright, that's it for this week, we'll be back next week, see you.