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Gulf Council Hijacks
Common Sense
SPORT FISHING
editorial
Nov/Dec. 2007
By Doug Olander
If anyone doubts the
validity of the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished maxim, he or she
doesn’t know fisheries management
— at
least as it’s being practiced these days by the Gulf of Mexico
Fishery Management Council. Here’s a step-by-step recap of the
council’s recent decisions regarding amberjack (which prompts me
to echo Dave Barry: I am not[[ITAL]] making
this up).
In the late 1980s,
sport fishermen voiced concern for amberjack stocks,
particularly with a suddenly burgeoning commercial fishery
starting to take scary numbers of the hard-fighting game fish.
So they pushed for more regulation, including a bag limit for
themselves. The council responded by instituting a three-AJ
daily bag. It also added some commercial restrictions, but while
the recreational harvest in the early ’90s declined by 42
percent, the commercial take went down just half that much.
Still concerned for amberjack stocks, anglers pushed to further
reduce all harvest, and the state decreased their limit from
three fish to one.
In the face of
continuing anxiety over AJ stock levels, the Gulf council at its
most recent meeting noted that the commercial sector takes a
relatively greater share of AJs now than in the past. Could that
be because (1) recreational fishermen asked for tighter AJ rules
on their harvest while (2) commercial AJ fishermen were annually
disregarding/exceeding their own quotas?
But the Gulf council
alluded to none of that when it decided to reallocate the
harvest of amberjack in a way that rewards the commercial
fishery for its overharvest while punishing the recreational
side for its largely self-imposed conservation.
In other words, the
council voted to cut the recreational harvest even further while
fattening the commercial allotment. Thank you, sir, may we have
another?
As if that weren’t
outrageous enough, one can only marvel at the brilliant plan the
council came up with to accomplish this. Having reduced
amberjack sport take from unrestricted to three to one per day,
it decided to put into effect a novel bag limit of a half fish
per day —
so total strangers in the popular partyboat fishery would
somehow have to share any amberjack caught.
In
fairness, the entire council did not vote to change the
allocation from its current recreational/commercial split; all
three Alabama members and one Louisiana member voted to continue
the current allocation (while increasing enforcement of laws
already in place commercial AJ fishermen). However, the
remaining 10 votes —including
all four of Florida’s members
— voted
to shift the allocation more heavily to the commercial sector.
At
presstime, following a unified protest from all factions of
Florida’s sport-fishing community, the state’s Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commissioners had announced their support to keep
the current allocation (while actually enforcing commercial
regulations), and it seems possible that some and hopefully all
of the state’s council members will vote accordingly when the
council convenes again in late October/early November.
There
still may be time to make your voice heard if you want to let
the Gulf council know what you think of a plan like this that
would reduce the recreational harvest of amberjack to one-half
fish per person per day while increasing the commercial take. If
so, e-mail gulfcouncil@gulfcouncil.org or fax 813-348-1711.
Certainly this sort
of management, punishing conservation and rewarding
greed, sets a bad
precedent, but with any luck, enough council members
will have heard
enough public outrage to rethink their vote.
Let’s hope so.
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