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Striped Bass Commercial harvest increase?

10K views 22 replies 7 participants last post by  Mark P 
#1 ·
Read this article on Zeno's Blog and it made my head spin. :einstein:

…………..
News Release
Coastal Conservation Association
Email: twvenker@joincca.org Website: www.joincca.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 7, 2010 CONTACT: Ted Venker, 1-800-201-FISH
ASMFC Continues Effort to Increase Commercial Bass Harvest
Gamble to increase commercial take by up to 50 percent heads for public hearings
WASHINGTON DC - Anglers will soon have the opportunity to comment on a new effort to increase the coastal commercial harvest of striped bass by 20 to 50 percent, after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board voted this week to send the proposal out for public hearing.
Last February, conservationists were stunned when the Board chose to ignore a litany of significant concerns from scientists and enforcement officers about the health of the striped bass population, and instead directed its staff to draft the proposal. This week's 10-6 vote to send the proposal out for public hearing indicates that many members of the Board are committed to ramping up commercial harvest even as anglers are seeing serious warning signs on the water.
"This is the wrong message at the wrong time for striped bass, but it is not surprising," said Charles Witek, chairman of CCA's Atlantic Fisheries Committee. "When recently faced with even worse situations involving weakfish and the southern New England stock of winter flounder, both very badly depleted and both faced with apparent increases in natural mortality, ASMFC ignored clear scientific advice and voted to maintain harvest at unsustainable levels. Our greatest conservation challenge may simply be to convince managers at ASMFC to do their jobs."
Among the recent information presented to managers was a report on the declining trend in the striped bass Juvenile Abundance Index, a report from law enforcement personnel on "significant and unreported" poaching in the Exclusive Economic Zone, and a report on the potentially devastating impact of Mycobacteriosis in Chesapeake Bay, the primary striped bass spawning ground for the entire Atlantic Coast, where 70 percent of the fish sampled had lesions associated with the disease. In aquaculture, Mycobacteriosis infections are virtually always fatal.
"While the stock is still not overfished nor undergoing overfishing, ASMFC's Striped Bass Technical Committee recently issued a report which predicts that the number of adult bass will steadily decline through the year 2015. Clearly, a cautious approach is warranted, yet the Board has chosen to roll the dice with the most important recreational species on the East Coast," said Richen Brame, CCA's Atlantic Fisheries director.
Unlike the 1970s when rampant overfishing was the primary cause of the stock collapse, the current wide variety of factors that are negatively impacting striped bass will be much more difficult to address. Nonetheless, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Delaware, Maryland, the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, the District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service voted to push forward with increasing commercial harvest.
"This is a dangerous, unnecessary gamble," said Brame. "We will be doing our part to make sure managers know that anglers do not want to risk the future of this fishery by increasing commercial harvest."
###
CCA is the largest marine resource conservation group of its kind in the nation. With almost 100,000 members in 17 state chapters, CCA has been active in state, national and international fisheries management issues since 1977. For more information visit the CCA Newsroom at www.JoinCCA.org.
 
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#2 ·
This is the second time in two years they have proposed this. Last year it was evident through public comment that the idea was unpopular. If it gets enough pub with the rec community hopefully it will be knocked down once again. The Management group is traditionally sensitive to commercial fishery needs. They will use data that states commercial harvest is far less than recreational harvest etc. etc. They never take into account catch and release data and have yet to propose limiting the recreational catch to one a day.
 
#3 ·
Keep throwing it against the wall and see if it sticks.
I can see the other 9 commercial interests voting to send it to public hearings but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?
What happened there? A large increase in funding from the Bumma administration?
 
#4 ·
Imagine how this would play out. Maybe my overactive imagination? But

Catch Shares are adopted allowing sector managers to handle a certain portion of a coast lines commercial Quota. Fisherman managing fisherman essentially all overseen by NOAA.

As I understand it the quota points will be allocated or "bid for"? If I am wrong someone tell me i want to know more about this. This system essentially will allow those with a larger fleet to underbid the smaller guys due to the fact that their costs are less etc. etc.

Now add in to this a 50% increase in quota across the coast which is now under the control of quadrant managers appointed by NOAA.

Within ten years you will have The largest fishing fleets catching fish and the small guy will be working for them. The sector managers will be managing the catch data. Sounds like a new Recipe for disaster courtesy of OBama and Lubchenco.
 
#6 ·
Now you're getting it. What a flipping Joke

“While the stock is still not overfished nor undergoing overfishing, ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee recently issued a report which predicts that the number of adult bass will steadily decline through the year 2015."

So Just to make sure of it let's increase the quota and continue to allow 2 a day coastwide to all rec's. :smiliedoh:
 
#7 ·
From what I've read they are claiming that commercial fishermen are still harvesting the same amount of Stripers a year since the moritorium was first lifted back in 1990, But the harvest by Recs has increased 400% in that time. The Coms want a bigger piece of the pie. In other words the number of fish harvested will stay the same but Coms will harvest more and Recs will have to harvest less
 
#9 ·
That is what they are saying. But the question is who is saying it? More than likely the people who are proposing the increase in quota.

The Rec. Take has decreased over the past 4 years 2006 was a huge year by REC take standards.

The past 3 have consistently gone done.

The other thing that they do with those studies is use a 70% Mortatlity rate or something to that effect on released fish which boosts the total.

They are willing to count a guess on mortality rates for the Recs but will not count fish caught illegally by comms to their total? There has been some pretty large busts that we know about over the past couple of years what about the stuff that goes on that doesn't get noticed. Should we also guess about that like we do on the released fish mortality rate?
 
#13 ·
Economics 101
It will trickle down - Too much money involved in recreational fishing, tourism etc.
The big guys like K2 and Pradco will pour money into lobbying for the rec sector once it hits their pocketbooks. The State economies will suffer as will the various state run agencies that spend the wallup breaux fund monies.
 
#14 ·
This proposal was in fact shot down by the NMFS it will not even be allowed to be considered as an ammendment/addendum whatever to the management plan. Federal management groups have been taking a huge beating this year from Rec goups through the IAOPTF and NOAA alike and want no more bad blood.

Penobscot that is how you make a difference annoy the hell out of Jane Lubchenco with letters and marches on Washington and they will get tired of hearing about it. :icon_thumright:
 
#16 ·
Next time stop the crying and better understand how a democracy works. It's supposed to be people actively voicing and acting on their interest. It's not about cynically blaming one politician or one political party for a basic systemic problem with our democracy. That is, corporate America has a more effective voice then citizen America. No body does anything about it...but give me a break on the critisim of President Obama's administration and all this sissy "the socialist sky is falling on us" nonsense.

It was the conservative wing of the Supreme Court that formalized our reality....didn't they recently rule that corporations essientilly have the rights of individuals under the constitution....stop drinking the rightwingnut kool-aid and spitting it on the rest of us...it's Spring...go fishing and keep your mouths shut...for the rest of our sakes.alright.gif
 
#23 ·
Next time stop the crying BSBSBSBSBSBSBSBSBS CRA PCRAP CRAP CRAP MINDLESS DEFENSE OF WHAT THE MEDIA TELLS ME IS GOOD I LOVE KATIE COURIC RACHEL MADDOW IS GOD

I HAVE TIME TO GOOGLE OBAMA POLITICS AND FISHERIES MANGEMENT AND COME UP WITH A FORUM TO SPEW MY DEFENSES OF THE LEFT WING EVERYTHING IS GEORGE BUSHES FAULT go fishing and keep your mouths shut...for the rest of our sakes.alright.gif
The above is not a direct quote it is more of a paraphrase

First Post Huh:welcomeaboard: thanks for contributing and giving us another reason to believe people are mindless sheep following the media herd in this country.

I never do this crap I just couldn't resist it was too easy.
 
#18 ·
dreadk said:
No body does anything about it... But give me a break on the critisim of President Obama's administration and all this sissy "the socialist sky is falling on us" nonsense.
It was the conservative wing of the Supreme Court that formalized our reality....didn't they recently rule that corporations essientilly have the rights of individuals under the constitution....stop drinking the rightwingnut kool-aid and spitting it on the rest of us
Yea I thought this thread was about a proposal to increase the commercial harvest and not on the Conservative Supreme Court that is collectively about a thousand years old.
The Supreme court recognized that corporations were considered persons for purposes of the 14th ammendment in 1886. Probably some of the sitting justices were part of that ruling.
Cynical towards a politician, or a political party? Never.
- Your self righteous scolding of us is laughable because you did the exact same thing here, and in the process perpetuated what your attempting to stop.
"It's not about cynically blaming one politician or one political party".
Its pretty funny actually - "rightwingnut Kool-aid drinkers" need a better understanding of how a democracy works. -
Corporate America surely has a more effective voice than Citizen America - Money talks, B-S walks. What would you have us do about the huge corporations Mr. Dread? Close them down?
Take all their holdings? Or simply continue to allow them to employ the free world.
What your trying to articulate - and I'm taking a wild guess here - is at Campaign finance reform and lobbyists.
Google - 'Corporate personhood debate' and learn something instead of spewing rhetoric from Al Gores ahole. Didn't he invent the internet?
Obama is just as much of a hypocrite as the rest of them, maybe even more so.
Not saying that funding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife is a bad thing but maybe it makes them nudge closer to voting for the left wing greening agenda. Which by the way is also big!!! business.
I'm guessing your a philosophy major who tells his kids there really is no Santa Claus because it's never ok to lie.

"Just the facts, ma'am"

Department of the Interior received $3 billion, of which $280
million is for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service)
http://recovery.doi.gov/press/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/arra-factsheet_12-02-09.pdf
 
#20 ·
"...Second, we have actually ended up with two Amendments to the Senate budget bill in MA. The Amendments, Senate Budget Bill: #222 by Senators Timilty and Creem and #224 by Senators Richard Moore, Brewer, Donnelly and Spilka state that the commercial allocation of striped bass must be justified economically. This will give legal teeth to our argument that the recreational fishery for striped bass provides the greatest economic value and most jobs to the Commonwealth.

The amendments are identical, and we expect that they will be melded into one successful amendment as debating begins later in the week. If you are concerned, as we are, about the declining quality of striper fishing, these Amendments are a great conservation initiative. The commercial fishery value depends completely on killing as many fish as possible but recreational fishing is a far more powerful economic engine, even in the event of possible reduced bag limits or a largely catch and release fishery. ~

Even if you are not a MA resident, but spend some time in the Commonwealth fishing for stripers, your comments to the Senator in the towns that you fish are very much worth presenting. A copy to the Senate president would also be a good idea. You will find the names and contact information in this LINK which lists state legislators by town. We must act quickly, and in enough numbers to make a significant impression. THIS IS NOW YOUR FIGHT! Just ask the legislators to do the right thing for the public and for striped bass conservation - support Senate Budget Bills #222 and #224.

I thought this was a bit of good news in my inbox...
 
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