[Gerry Zagorski]

The regulation issues we face are due to a few things:

First and foremost is the Magnison Stevens Act. It's purpose of this act and the 2007 revisions to it were:
- Acting to conserve fishery resources
- Supporting enforcement of international fishing agreements
- Promoting fishing in line with conservation principles
- Providing for the implementation of fishery management plans (FMPs) which achieve optimal yield
- Establishing Regional Fishery Management Councils to steward fishery resources through the preparation, monitoring, and revising of plans which (A) enable stake holders to participate in the administration of fisheries and (B) consider social and economic needs of states.
- Developing underutilized fisheries
- Protecting essential fish habitats
- Additionally, the law calls for reducing bycatch and establishing fishery information monitoring systems.

That all sounds pretty good right??

Well as usual and just like the Affordable Health Care Act, although it sounds great in theory, the reality is not so good.

With the act we are losing the ability as a state to control our regs within our state boundaries. The fisheries management is now regionalized so states can no longer choose different regs... You saw it with Fluke and Stripers recently and you'll probably see it with Blackfish soon too. Problem here is we as states have no individuality and no say in our local waters so like it or not, we get what the Regional Councils decide.

Next is as a result of the Act, if a fishery is deemed to be in trouble, the government has no flexibility and by law they need to take measures to protect the fishery. They do this by either making the regs more restrictive or in extreme cases, closing an entire fishery down. I think I speak for most of us recreationals when I say "if a fishery really is in trouble, then let's do what we need to do to bring it back". Problem here is we are told we are overfishing and stocks are in decline or headed that way and the science they use for stock assessment are flawed.

So what we need to do is 2 fold. Politically we need to try and add some Flexibilty to the Magnuson Stevens Act and have our interests better represented in the Regional Fisheries Management Councils. At the same time we need to force the government to use proper science and methods to assess the stocks.

Thats why I support the NJRFA and the SSFFF. RFA is fighting more on the political side and the SSFFF is fighting the science.