[Gerry Zagorski]

Well we have an important decision coming up from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission on Sea Bass this week on 5/3.

NJ is being treated as it's own region and it was looking like we were going to get an significant increase in our quota. That was not the case in the northern region which includes NY, CT, RI and MA. They on the other hand were facing a significant reduction, they took issue with that and filed an appeal.

Here's where it gets interesting.... Unlike Fluke where if individual regions and states decide to got out of compliance, the penalties for doing so rather then apply only to that state, applies to the entire Atlantic fishery.

So it looks as if NJ is at a standoff here. If NY decides to go out of compliance everyone suffers with the same reduced regs no matter the region, or we give up some of our quota to them so they choose not to go out of compliance.

The rub here is the norther region has nothing to loose by going out of compliance since the fishery wide non compliance regs would be an improvement to regs they were facing because of the regional reduction they were facing. That would not be the case in NJ.

Things don't add up here and once again the federal laws in Magnuson make no sense.... We have a fishery that based on their own science is 270% rebuilt and yet we're staring down the barrel of a reduction??

Once again and we've talked about it here at length... Magnuson needs to be reformed and the light at the end of that tunnel is The Modern Fishing Act. Until that happens, we will continue to be on this dysfunctional federal fisheries management tread mill and forced to fight each other for the left over scraps they throw us. This needs to change.....

For those of you who have asked if we are going to be fishing for Sea Bass here in NJ on 5/15. Even if the northern region does decide to go out of compliance, the default regs for all regions would be 5 fish at 14 inches from May 15 to September 15.

More on this once everything plays out and thanks to everyone here in NJ who continues to fight on our behalf.