Meeting with Tony Bogan

[shrimpman steve]

Sport,
I consider you a friend and respect your opinion even though I disagree. I attended the meeting and very much respect Tony B., he has been doing this for many years. As I stated publicly, I wanted protests and publicity. After speaking with Tony and Jimmy I have shifted my focus. What we need is money and membership, this is what keeps the commercial fleet in the forefront. Every one need to do what they feel is best, but I think it is time to join the rfa and suppoert the ssfff in large numbers. I will be taking a few days to figure out some kind of fundraising and membership drives for both orinizations. I have a call into capt Adam and am waiting to hear what he has to say about the RFA. In the meantime you must do what you feel is right and I must work to change your mind. We have a lot of members on this site and if we could get a large percentage to get on board who knows what can happen.

I will be in touch with dales shortly to get his ideas on said fundraisers and membership drives. With numbers, anything is possible.

PS Thanks to all who have already joined and contributed due to this one thread!

[Wreckfish]

I just joined. Thanks for the nudge.
Wreckfish

[TurboDan]

Originally Posted by PBangler

It’s not about which administration is in office, because the last reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA) took place in 2006 under a Republican President, with both chambers of Congress having a Republican majority.

It is the result of huge amounts of monies spent by environmental groups to convince the masses in this country, no matter which side of the aisle, the sky is falling with all of our fisheries.

True, to an extent. I'll get political for a minute - Obama has made the situation much, much worse by appointing Lubchenko to head up the NOAA. Now, all of the regional commissions (that vote on things like closures, etc.) are being packed with environmentalists and Obama is now proposing a larger council to vote on ocean policy initiatives, which if taken over by enviro-whackos, will be absolutely horrible for anglers. This administration is an absolute disgrace in terms of appointing the most radical, outright despicable people to the highest positions of influence in government. Google "Cass Sunstein" to learn about the new "Regulatory Czar" who has argued that eating meat should be illegal, hunting should be illegal and animals should have the right to sue in court with human representation.

That said, the MSA reauthorization went through because some congressman from the midwest has no concern over marine fisheries, his constituents don't care about it, and he votes to do the simple thing which is to just reauthorize it. On the opposite end as Obama, we luckily have two Democrats in NJ who are fighting for us - Pallone and Adler. Our "conservative" Republican, Chris Smith, hasn't even bothered to sign on as a co-sponsor of Pallone's bill.

So while I do agree that it's not a totally partisan issue, any administration that had a campaign bankrolled and supported heavily by the environmental lobby is not to be trusted.

[PBangler]

Dan,

I hear what you're saying. Another argument could probably be made that the MSA reauthorization would have been far worse had it passed under a Democratic majority in Washington. I guess my point was people are spending a lot of time thinking if the Republican's were in, we'd be home free and that just isn't the case. Unfortunately, enough legislation was passed in the last reauthorization to cause tremendous damage and this can’t be blamed on Obama.

Had they (the environmentalists) not been appointed, they would have controlled the process (via the new legislation) anyway by simply taking the new MSA “marching orders to NMFS” to court if the councils didn’t comply. That’s been their MO to date.

To me the real problem is how successful the Enviro campaign to convince the masses that all US fisheries are doomed due to overfishing (i.e. Worm study, etc.) has been. Just ask people who don’t fish in this state how our fisheries are doing and most will say they're in trouble. It doesn’t matter whether they’re dems or reps, it’s what they believe. And if that sentiment is within our own state, it’s surely a held belief by many across the country.

Heck, my husband’s own family, when I missed a get together because of attending a fisheries management meeting, asked which side is she on, killing the fish or saving the fish … it never dawned on them that I could be for both!

[TurboDan]

Originally Posted by PBangler

To me the real problem is how successful the Enviro campaign to convince the masses that all US fisheries are doomed due to overfishing (i.e. Worm study, etc.) has been. Just ask people who don’t fish in this state how our fisheries are doing and most will say they're in trouble. It doesn’t matter whether they’re dems or reps, it’s what they believe. And if that sentiment is within our own state, it’s surely a held belief by many across the country.

Very, very true. That comes from the use of the word "overfishing," which is simply a legal term and not a scientific one. I rarely (if ever) use it in the magazine I publish, and I wish the others, as well as newspapers, would follow my lead.

It's a very common tactic used by enviros on a host of issues. The air is bad, the water is bad, we'll be wiped off the map in 15 years thanks to global warming. It's all smoke and mirrors to get people in a tizzy while they get their very anti-progress agenda passed quietly through the legislature so politicians can advertise on TV that they are "committed to protecting our environment." Republicans are just weasles on the issue while Democrats are often far more sinister, using enviro-hysteria to create new streams of tax revenue to promote their social agenda. See: cap and trade.

I was talking to someone recently who said "there are no flounder out there anymore." I tried to educate the fellow, he didn't believe me.

[shrimpman steve]

Here is the difference between "overfishing" and "overfished" as explained by T.B. at our meeting. I hope I get this right

Overfishing-If you go over the quota by one fish or one pound, it is considered "overfishing"

Overfished- the more serious of the terms, is when fishing overtakes the ability of the stock to self sustain itself.

I hope I got that right.

[sportfishingusa]

Originally Posted by shrimpman steve

Here is the difference between "overfishing" and "overfished" as explained by T.B. at our meeting. I hope I get this right

Overfishing-If you go over the quota by one fish or one pound, it is considered "overfishing"

Overfished- the more serious of the terms, is when fishing overtakes the ability of the stock to self sustain itself.

I hope I got that right.

you got it right steve.. my original post came out a little construed and you know where i stand from our previous conversations...

I am all FOR AND I AM ALL ABOUT WORKING TOGETHER TO GET IT DONE... i dont feel that just sending money is getting it done.. i think everyone needs to do both.. send, join, donate, and be involved..

You say masses of members are the answer.. but no matter how many people are "members" i do not FEEL IMHO that its enough.. we need letter send (which i have done) and we need people to meetings and showing like the commercial guys!!


LETS MAKE CHANGE.. I AM NOT ONE TO SIT BACK AND TAKE IT IN THE PIPES.. I WANT CCHANGE AND I WANT TO BE A PART OF IT.. TO ME PEOPLE JUST JOINING AND SITTING BACK ARE JUST AS BAD AS THOSE WHO DONT WANT TO BE INVOLVED... ONCE AGAIN IMHO!!

SO LETS GETS THIS BATTLE/WAR STARTED!! IM IN COLONEL TONY, SARGEANT STEVE, AND ADMIRAL DALES!! POINT ME IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!

[CaptTB]

Originally Posted by sportfishingusa

SO LETS GETS THIS BATTLE/WAR STARTED!! IM IN COLONEL TONY, SARGEANT STEVE, AND ADMIRAL DALES!! POINT ME IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it.......

Patricia Kurkul, regional administrator of National Marine Fisheries Service

This is one of the main people that we need to educate. She scoffed at our comments on Fluke....she was wrong. She scoffed at our comments on Porgies....she was wrong. She scoffed at our comments on Sea Bass.....she was wrong. She scoffed at our comments on MRFSS.....she was totally wrong.

We have been proven right so many times despite her best efforts to squash any comments contrary to the "best available" data it's pathetic.

It's a shame she still holds onto her job. Never a more closed minded person have I met.

[Leif]

Kurkul admitted data errors in 2007

By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer


Two years before the National Marine Fisheries Service acknowledged widespread mistakes in catch histories it calculates that will determine groundfish earnings in the coming New England catch share/sector-based fishing system, the regional administrator admitted the data assembling system was a mess.

Patricia Kurkul, regional administrator of NMFS, said responsibility for the errors is "shared" by the agency and "the fishing industry."

In a July 12, 2007, letter to Daniel Furlong, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which is based in Dover, Del., Kurkul wrote that "we strive for maintaining information that is an accurate record of an individual fishing activity in federally regulated fisheries.

"However," she said, "given the amount of data we receive and process each year, currently exceeding 1 million records, errors do occur on both the reporting side by the fishing industry and on processing the reports submitted.

"The responsibility for ensuring that we do have this information rests on both parties," Kurkul wrote.

The region she administrators runs from the Canadian border through the Carolinas.

"How does one build a house without a foundation?" Furlong wrote in an e-mail to the Times. "When it comes to catch shares and one's livelihood, it behooves us all to have accurate and verifiable records."

But he said "unless the harvesting sector initiates its own quality control process to verify the NMFS records, it will be held hostage, and therefore bound and accountable to the records NMFS has on file."

The importance of catch histories and accurate calculations has been highlighted by the transition into sectors and catch shares. The New England groundfishery will be split into two different business models next May — the sectors, which are fishing cooperatives, will work off catch shares whose size is related to catch histories. The rest of the fishermen who have decided against joining a sector will fish under modified effort controls and days at sea.

The entire fishery currently is governed by effort controls.

Faulty records have also been cited as triggering erroneous prosecutions of fishermen for violating their catch quotas or days at sea.

The Inspector General of the Department of Commerce, the parent agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which includes NMFS, has been investigating NMFS' enforcement practices since the start of summer.

Kurkul said she understood that the conversion of fisheries into "Limited Access Privilege Programs," such as the catch share sector model to be instituted for groundfish in 2010 in New England, requires "accurate accountings of each vessel's landings history."

The New England Fishery Management Council last June voted to use a 10-year history of catches, starting in 1996, to determine individual catch shares — the percentage of the total allowable catch for the fishery granted as a limited access privilege.

Kurkul's spokeswoman Maggie Mooney-Seus has said the agency cannot process the complaints and fix the errors in time for the start of sector fishing via catch shares next May. But she said the service will fix mistakes for 2011 that are noted in writing to NMFS by Oct. 31.

Erroneous computations of catch histories will produce erroneous grants of catch share — and because of the decision to split the total allowable catch, for each loser there will be a winner.

In recent days, many New England fishermen have concluded that the catch histories that were distributed by Kurkul's statisticians were dramatically off, shorting some by hundreds of thousands of pounds of fish landed and certified by the dealer sales slips.

Their complaints added to those of scallopers in a lawsuit against NMFS which cited a set of minutes of a NMFS committee meeting from March 2006 where members conceded "continuously discovering ... many errors in vessel trip reports and dealer data-sets" that were considered beyond NMFS ability to reconcile or fix.

[Leif]

By the way. We don't need any name calling. There are extremists on both ends of the spectrum. It just makes us look bad.

Sport. Give it up. Please.

They got the guns but we got the numbers. Gonna win, yeah were taking over!

Leif