Is B.S. short for Best available Science?
Well here we go again…from the best available science that the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council implements regulations on commercial snapper grouper fishermen…they’ve made a mistake! They closed the Vermilion Snapper fishery this March, same as last year, indicating the data dictated that the quota was caught up; so they closed the fishery.Â
Well surprisingly enough they have found that they made a mistake, and surprisingly enough as well they are opening back up that fishery to allow us those 40,000 pounds.
Still more shocking is that National Marine Fisheries Service, and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, in all their brilliance has determined the best way to give us back this poundage is to open the fishery for 8 days…8 days of derby fishing! This is the worst kind of fishery there is where people will fish in bad weather or not to try and make up for their loss of income.
That is right, risking their lives to make a living. This is the height of incompetence and mismanagement on the part of the SAFMC and the NMFS to implement a derby fishery. They did it with the Black Sea Bass also this past winter…a very dangerous thing when other choices are available.
Commercial fishermen in NC have had a long, hard winter due to the council’s refusal to properly manage the quotas with trip limits. Instead of trip limits we have quotas and closures. Closures mean no work, no money. NC weather is detriment enough without closures. Trip Limits on each species would be the absolute best management measure.
But they choose to open a fishery for 8 days and we will have to try making some money during that one week opening regardless of the weather. We lost a fisherman last year as a direct result of bad weather during a derby fishery. The derby fishery will also flood the market with week old Vermilion Snapper. The price will be low for fishermen and the consumers will be left with inferior product.
The Vermilion Snapper will be illegal to sell or purchase after the one week opening. We will then be forced to discard them again. Apparently, the council did not think discarding inflicted enough abuse on the poor fish and decided to mandate the use of circle hooks. Those hooks often break the fish’s jaw while removing them. Vermilion Snapper have a soft mouth that is prone to tearing and breaking. Can you imagine the public outcry if a law caused thousands of animals on land to have their jaws broken and be discarded to stagger around starving until death finally ended their torture?
The simple solution to this one week derby fishery would be to set a 500 pound Trip Limit. This would keep the fishery open for most of May. This would keep the price up while giving consumers access to fresh fish all month and stop some of the government mandated pre-meditated fish abuse!
We could stop most of the derby fisheries and these insane closures that waste our resources, destroy our businesses, compromise our safety, and restrict your access to safe American seafood with this common sense approach of TRIP LIMITS. Fishermen have been told by the Council to offer them suggestions for better management, and we have been. Thankfully our Senators and Congressmen have started hearing us and helping us.
We do not want to discard dead fish, we do not want to discard mutilated fish, and we do not want to risk our lives fishing in 30 knot winds just because the fishery is only open a few days.
To quote Walter B. Jones, “The last thing our government should be doing in these economic times is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to expand programs that will put even more Americans out of work”; fishermen say this applies not only to Catch Shares, but to all new regulations and half of the old ones!
Please contact your public servants and let them know that you want the SAFMC to stop the derby fisheries, and these closures that are starving fishermen out of their industry…by using the Trip Poundage Limits!
Please email Walter B. Jones through his website at www.jones.house.gov or by calling 202-225-3415.
And email Roy Crabtree, Administrator of NMFS, at roy.crabtree@noaa.gov or call him at 727-824-5301.
Sincerely from 30 year veterans of the commercial fishery,
Capt. Gilbert & Kathy Mathis
Morehead City
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