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Originally Posted by Kensdock
If you read all the information concerning the weakfish decline and did not support the moratorium option: You have failed to assimilate the information offered by the ASMFC or you have completely disregarded the depleted condition of the weakfish out of greed or self-serving interest.
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Kensdock, the same could be said for you.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ATLANTIC STATES MARINE FISHERIES COMMISSION WEAKFISH MANAGEMENT BOARD - August 19, 2009
DR. DANIEL:
“My whole career has been focused in on weakfish and now we’ve made a big circle. I do want to say a couple of things from the North Carolina perspective.”
“I do have to say I do have a great amount of concern. A lot of you around this table recall the proposal to close the EEZ to weakfish harvest back in the mid-nineties. We vigorously opposed that suggestion because of the multi-species nature of the fisheries off North Carolina and I think some of the other states as well.”
“The sink net fleet will still be operating in the same areas at the same time catching the same fish. They’re just going to have to discard all the weakfish.”
“… but there are also going to be some inside fisheries as well as gillnet fisheries that can have very high quantities of bycatch of weakfish unknowingly.
The last example I’ll give you is the Valentine’s Day Fishery back in 2002, I believe, when a group of about four or five sink net boats went about 30 miles offshore in 360 feet of water, fishing a large-mesh, six-inch gill net for large bluefish, and they all rounded off their boats with tens of thousands of pounds of eight- to fifteen-pound gray trout; very unexpected, unavoidable.
Those fish were all dead …”
MR. O’REILLY
"Given that, I’m going to spend just a minute here, if you don’t mind, but on the moratorium idea I clearly remember in 1991 and the proposal of the technical committee to the management board was as long as you remove all the gear out of the water and do regional blocks of having gear out of the water a moratorium will be very effective."
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Kensdock,
Your idea of simply a moratorium was not going to get us much in the way of commercial reductions of dead fish as opposed to what they voted for. Unlike other recreational anglers who just believed what you had to say, I did my own research and reached a different conclusion. One that was more in alignment with the RFA's points.
Time to move on, this has already been decided for now and there are a ton of important issues that need our attention today.
