[Broad Bill]

Dan while beyond appalling it's actually not surprising. North Carolina and Virginia are brutally corrupt states. It's what you and I have been saying for years. Any stock with a commercial presence in their own waters or any coastal stock they have a commercial interest in is at risk. They'll take the last fish until there's no more to take without giving it a second thought and everyone else pays for their corruption which isn't only fisheries management although they routinely turn a blind eye. It's corrupt elected officials on the take and a group of businesses who make a living bribing politicians to profit from a public resource. It's a completely broken system used by politicians who have the authority to make decisions and pull strings to become extremely wealthy. And after watching this video, no one should have any doubt, in the case of summer flounder, what happened to the Chesapeake stock which at one time was the most southerly part of the biomass. It was wiped out by NC and Virginia commercials and for years now they've taken their show on the road and will destroy every part of the remaining northern biomass.

Was especially interested in a few things. People who buy commercial licenses can retain countless summer flounder a day themselves for personal use while the recreational sector is shut down. Commercial licenses can be leased for profit to someone who knows nothing about commercial fishing. Third and maybe the most poignant is the statement that inshore trawling by commercial concerns causes discard mortality which exceeds the entire recreational quota AND goes unreported and not counted against the commercials annual quota. Can you imagine what happens during the winter offshore in the depths these schools are being harvested from. And we wonder why the fishery has fallen off the cliff. It only takes a minority of bad apples to rape the ocean, kill juvenile age groups and destroy a fishery. Selective harvest and regulations that give preferential treatment to the commercial sector will ultimately kill every stock. And in North Carolina it apparently is done completely in the open and not only allowed for but promoted by state politicians and enforcement agencies. Absolutely ^&$%#@! unreal!

Anyone interested in how the corrupt process we call fisheries management works should watch the video.