NJ Public Hearing on Atlantic Striped Bass Draft Amendment 7 March 14, 2022

[Gumada]

NJ Public Hearing on Atlantic Striped Bass Draft Amendment 7

March 14, 2022

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board (Board) approved Draft Amendment 7 for public comment.

Amendment 7 was initiated to update the management program to better align with current fishery needs and priorities. The Board intends for the amendment to build upon Addendum VI to Amendment 6 to end overfishing and initiate rebuilding in response to the overfished status of the stock.

The Draft Amendment proposes options to address the following topics:

management triggers
recreational release mortality
stock rebuilding plan
conservation equivalency
Anglers and interested groups are encouraged to attend New Jersey’s public hearing to provide input on Draft Amendment 7.

NJ’s public hearing will be held via webinar on:
Monday, March 14, 2022 (6:00 pm – 8:00 pm)

Webinar Instructions and Additional Information (ASMFC News Release)

For those who cannot attend the hearing, a recording of the presentation will be posted on ASMFC’s YouTube page in late-February.

Comments should be submitted by 11:59 PM (EST) on April 15, 2022 to:

Emilie Franke
Fishery Management Plan Coordinator
1050 N. Highland St, Suite A-N
Arlington, VA 22201
703-842-0741 (FAX)
or at comments@asmfc.org (Subject line:Draft Amendment 7)

Please contact Brendan Harrison, NJ DEP Marine Fisheries Administration, with any questions at brendan.harrison@dep.nj.gov or 609-748-2066.

[dakota560]

Public meetings and fisheries management are like oil and water. They're required to be had but you're never given enough time to speak, the audience your speaking to isn't interested in what's being said, in many cases they know less about the fishery than the attendees and if you say something they don't want to hear you risk being escorted from the meeting.

Big government could care less about public input. Sounds harsh but it's been proven over and over. It's a legislative requirements that factors zero into final regulatory decisions.

It saddens me to make this post but how many times do we have to be misled into attending a public meeting for input, how many times has ASMFC and MAFMC made greater transparency with the public a key strategic goals all for decisions to repeatedly be made without any consideration and in most cases contrary to the public's input, both from the recreational and commercial sectors. If you're going to ignore valuable input and contribution from people who actually spend time on the water, don't insult them or waste their time asking to attend public sessions if you have no intention of valuing their input or incorporating them into policy decisions. Truthfully it's a disgraceful and insulting part of the process.

[Salt]

Agree with Dakota 100%

[dakota560]

Perfect example of my earlier post. Received this email regarding the upcoming 3/24/22 meeting by ASMFC to consider final action on 2022 Recreational Measures for Black Sea Bass and Summer Flounder. Take note of the following notice included in the email.

Public Comment Guidelines

With the intent of developing policies in the Commission’s procedures for public participation that result in a fair opportunity for public input, the ISFMP Policy Board has approved the following guidelines for use at management board meetings:

For issues that are not on the agenda, management boards will continue to provide opportunity to the public to bring matters of concern to the board’s attention at the start of each board meeting. Board chairs will ask members of the public to raise their hands to let the chair know they would like to speak. Depending upon the number of commenters, the board chair will decide how to allocate the available time on the agenda (typically 10 minutes) to the number of people who want to speak.

For topics that are on the agenda, but have not gone out for public comment, board chairs will provide limited opportunity for comment, taking into account the time allotted on the agenda for the topic. Chairs will have flexibility in deciding how to allocate comment opportunities; this could include hearing one comment in favor and one in opposition until the chair is satisfied further comment will not provide additional insight to the board.

For agenda action items that have already gone out for public comment, it is the Policy Board’s intent to end the occasional practice of allowing extensive and lengthy public comments. Currently, board chairs have the discretion to decide what public comment to allow in these circumstances.

So let me translate. They're required to have public meetings. They're own strategic plan is to be more transparent with the public and include them in the management process of fisheries. BUT like everything else they're going to control / censor the content of information disseminated as a result of the public's commentary by placing restrictions on what can be said and the extent of time it can be said. In other words, they just voted to censor public comment and only allow what the Chair of these fisheries wants shared.

Outrageous. The practice of allowing extensive and lengthy public comment I'd bet is to a large degree directed to the five years of analysis I've sent ASMFC and MAFMC Members based on their data. They don't want the data known, they don't want policy decisions to be questioned or data driven which happens to be the mandate of MSA and they basically want to keep the general public in the dark and be the judge and jury of which comments will be shared and which comments will be censored.

This is precisely why the summer flounder fishery has been in a substantial decline because policy decisions are ignoring the data science has given us and decisions are being made for two reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the health of the stock. Marine fisheries key metrics for sectors are catch values for the commercial sector and fishing effort for the recreational sector, neither of which have anything to do with addressing the issues threatening this fishery. Why, commercial catch values stimulate the economy as well as recreational fishing effort. From a relative standpoint, they could care less about whether you catch anything and would prefer you didn't to come in under the RHL quota. Exactly why recreational size minimums have been insanely increased over the years. Fisheries management wants the recreational sector to spend as much money as possible to stimulate the economy but constrain harvest which is precisely why in 2018 83% of angler trips based on their own date resulted in ZERO fish being harvested.

I would venture to say 3/24/22 is not going to at all be what people are hoping for. The absolute incompetency in how this fishery is being abused has reached new levels. This is not at all about managing a fishery, it's all about decisions being made for the sake of the economy and specific sectors as opposed to decisions based on what's best for the overall health and sustainability of the stock. Absolutely disgusting what's happening with this fishery.