Capt_Keith
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Joined: Apr 02, 2009
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Location: Myrtle Beach SC
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 Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:35 pm Post subject: Pew and Recreational Fishing Alliance taking competing agend |
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Pew and Recreational Fishing Alliance taking competing agendas to Washington
Members of Congress will be grappling with two radically different visions of the fishing industry in the coming weeks.
On Thursday members of The Recreational Fishing Alliance met with House Speaker John Boehner in an attempt to spark changes in the way the federal government does stock assessments and other changes to the regulations that currently govern fishing.
“This is not just about going fishing,” said Jim Donofrio, the executive director of the alliance. “This is all about jobs.”
The alliance is a national political action organization that represents fishermen and the fishing industry, according to their website. They say their mission is to safeguard the rights of saltwater anglers, protect marine, boat and tackle industry jobs, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the nation's saltwater fisheries.
Meanwhile, officials with the PEW Environmental Group say they support the current law and said Congress needs to fund and increase and expansion of independent data collection programs.
“I think, ultimately, overfishing, taking fish out of the water faster than they can reproduce, is a losing proposition for fish and for fishermen,” said PEW spokeswoman Holly Binns.
U.S. Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Panama City, said funding does need to increase for research but also believes the researchers are doing a bad job of setting catch limits and determining population size.
“I believe that a lack of funding for fisheries research has led NOAA to make poor decisions based on out-of-date science,” Southerland wrote in an email to The News Herald. “Many of our Gulf fishermen have been put out of business when our economy can least afford it due to crippling and unrealistic catch limits. I have personally questioned NOAA Administrator (Jane) Lubchenco about their reliance on insufficient and outdated data in setting catch limits, and I will continue to hold the administration accountable for failing to hear the concerns of North and Northwest Florida's fishermen and coastal industries.”
Bob Zales, a charter fishing captain who serves on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, agrees a funding increase should be implemented. Zales said he wants a full stock assessment every three years and annual updates so that management officials can react quickly to changes in the population. If those proposals were already in place captains could have caught 2 million more pounds of red snapper this year and charter boats could have been on the water many more days, Zales said.
PEW and The RFA usually disagree over those catch limits each year on a variety of fish and this year the focus is on red snapper and gag grouper. Red snapper was on a protection plan for several years and the Gulf is now overflowing with the scaly beast, Donofrio said. In many places fishermen are “tripping over these fish,” Donofrio said, adding that not only was the population rebuilt it was “overbuilt.”
Charter captains can catch their limit within minutes, Donofrio said, and they often find it hard to get the bait past the snapper to the bottom to catch grouper.
However, a lot of fish isn't the ultimate sign of success, Binns said.
“What hasn't happened yet is there aren't enough of the older red snapper spawners,” she said adding that there needs to be a “good healthy balance in terms of the age structure.”
That age structure is needed so that the species can sustain itself when the fishing restrictions are lessened, Binns said.
“You don't want to take the first sign of success and turn around and hammer them back down into a hole,” Binns added. “That would be counterproductive.”
As for grouper, both sides seem to agree that the fishery is below a healthy amount.
“I believe the grouper stock, perhaps, is lower than what we like, but I don't believe it is in the dire shape that (federal officials) say it is,” Donofrio said. “I would say, whatever they're saying; you can add more fish than that.”
He added that the current legislation is too rigid and the stock assessments are often very wrong.
Binns pointed out that all the assessments are “peer reviewed by independent scientists.” She also took issue with the rigidness of the law noting that 10 year repopulation plans can be extended to 20-year plans to ease the pain on fishermen and that federal officials are quick to loosen the rules when it becomes apparent that the fishery is improving.
“The most recent study found gag grouper population is in really bad shape,” Binns said, adding that once again the problem is that there are not enough older fish to continue the reproduction cycle.
Also, Florida's population has exploded over the past few decades, fishing technology is much better than it used to be, boats go faster now and gag grouper tend to spawn in the same areas the same time each year, she said.
“Folks know where they are and it's easy to fish them out,” Binns said.
However, if the regulations are too tight it will kill jobs not just in fishing but also among boat suppliers, marinas and even restaurants, Donofrio said.
“They're all suffering right now,” he added. “Because people are not going to get back into fishing if they don't have access to the fishery.”
Zales agreed.
“The environmental community has a tendency to do everything on the extreme conservative side,” Zales said. But why shouldn't the limits be less restrictive over a longer period of time as long as positive progress is being made, he asked.
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Captain Keith
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