Fighting for 

YOUR FISHING RIGHTS and

THE FUTURE OF RECREATIONAL FISHING

South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council main page

JOIN THE FRA IN FIGHTING FOR YOUR FISHING RIGHTS

Your very right to fish is at stake.

The South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council will hold a series of public hearings from January 24 to February 3 on SEVEN different amendments. You can submit email or written comments until February 14, 2011 at 5 PM Eastern. For an easy way to submit comments, go to http://safmc.deep-blue-sea.org/ 

For the SAFMC website click here.

 Scroll down for a list of legislators.  Below is live video, if available, of the public input hearing at Cocoa Beach, FL.  TO START THE VIDEO, CLICK THE SMALL ARROW IN THE LOWER LEFT CORNER OF THE VIDEO SCREEN!

FRA Guidance on comments:

I wish I could tell you that public input carries weight with the Council.  Sadly, it appears as though that is not the case. HOWEVER, your comments become part of the public record.  That public record DOES carry weight with your elected officials. 

YOUR GOVERNOR appoints your state representatives to the Council.  Your CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES provide the funding for the Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service.  Your comments for the record will be used to indicate to our elected officials that you did speak out and you were ignored. 

We simply must stop this train now.

How to comment at the public hearing

Fill out a public input card which will be available at the meeting (you will be limited to 3 minutes so be ready with your notes!)

2.       When you’re called, state your name, your affiliation (FRA, Fishing Club affiliations, etc) what type of angler you are.

3.       Tell them what your impression is of the present status of the fishery

4.       Tell them if the science used to establish this rule iconflicts with your personal observations.

Seven different amendments at once?  What rationale was used to generate this debacle?

We do not know how much time will be allotted for each speaker.  They key is to be on the record as making comments. If you do not want to speak, you can write your comments on a piece of paper and submit them at the public input hearings, or you can email them to the addresses below.  We recommend that you write all of your comments in one letter, then simply send it to all of the email comment addresses listed for each amendment.  You should not have to do seven different emails for one comment period. 

Your comments will stand out more if they are individually created, as opposed to copy and paste.

At least try to write in the first paragraph who you are, where you live, where you fish, what you fish for, if you have a business that is related to fishing, why fishing is important to you and to our economy, if you own a boat and more. 

This will carry weight when you contact your legislators about these issues.  You MUST make a comment by email or in person.

CompACLAmendPH@safmc.net; SGRegAmend9PH@safmc.net;  CEBA2PH@safmc.net; SGAmend21Scoping@safmc.net; SGAmend22Scoping@safmc.net;  SGAmend24Scoping@safmc.net; GCAmend5Scoping@safmc.net

Comprehensive Annual Catch Limit Amendment

ACL’s are not supposed to be implemented until AFTER the recreational data collection system is repaired.  That is still years from happening.  To establish ACL’s based on fatally flawed data is irresponsible and will result in lost jobs, lost economic activity, loss of heritage and more.  It will, in fact RUIN SOME PEOPLE’S LIVES.  Based on uncertainty?

This entire process is wrong.  None of the ACL framework takes into account any increased landings that ALWAYS result from a rebuilding fishery.  Failure to take this into account causes further economic damage, further loss of jobs and further erosion of our heritage.  As a reward for a rebounding or expanding fishery, more people’s lives will be ruined, forever.  Does anyone realize what happens when a person is put out of business?  Economic pressures are bad enough, but when fatally flawed data and ‘uncertainty’ combine to ruin people’s lives and cost our state jobs, we have truly reached to point of insanity.

You are way over the line on establishing ACL’s.  Magnuson’s intent is being twisted to reduce or eliminate fishing effort.  Uncertainty of management is being translated into certainty of job loss and reduction in economic activity. 

We suspect that this is part of the squeeze play to force catch shares upon the participants in the fisheries.

Snapper Grouper Regulatory Amendment 9

Trip limits should be considered for a preferred method of management, as they provide some protection from market glut, and they help to prevent overcapitalization of individual fishing boats. 

Accountability Measures (AM’s)  (ACL’s) should include carry-over of unrealized allowable catch.  This would help with the balancing of the cyclical nature of the size of a stock’s given year class.  Rebounding stocks will penalize fishermen, causing Annual Catch Limits to be reached quickly, thereby kicking in Accountability Measures which will further penalize the fisherman beyond the reach of the ACL itself.

We are concerned that ACL’s and AM’s are overly broad and punitive, failing to take into account the certainty with which jobs will be lost, economic activity will be decreased, and lives will be ruined.

Comprehensive Ecosystem-Based Amendment 2

Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC) IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR SOON-TO-BE NO FISHING ZONE

Act 2 alt 1 DO NOT usurp management power from the Gulf Council.  Where are you getting the additional resources in these times of budget cuts and economic downturn.

No action on Action 9

This appears to be an attempt to install a system which allows for the elimination of all effort to protect one species.  A federal judge has declared that practice illegal.  We urge the Council to choose to follow the spirit and letter of federal law.  We are concerned that any excess mortality on one species would lead to a complete closure of a wide range of species. 

There is no biological threat, so this is an unwarranted economic constraint.

Long term economic growth is impaired, even though no biological threat exists.

Action 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 will have excessive and unnecessary economic impacts on the residents of the coastal states.  There is no biological threat and no quantifiable benefit, nor is there a defined mechanism or set of indicators which would produce the warning of such a threat.  It would require additional management resources, detracting from the more significant problem of data collection. It would also add an unnecessary layer of management to other species.  There is little information available on sargassum and there is no biological threat or need. 

Comprehensive Catch Shares Amendment (Amendment 21)

What part of NO CATCH SHARES did you NOT hear the first time around?

The FRA adamantly opposed the use of catch shares in recreational fisheries.  We further opposed the use of catch shares in fisheries which are shared by commercial and the recreational sector. 

Any commercial catch share program should not give ownership of shares to any individual or group, rather, it should allow any revenue generated from sales of shares to be used to manage the system and enhance the resource.

Snapper Grouper Amendment 22

We said NO CATCH SHARES

A tagging program would be unmanageable.  Individual tags for fish would create a management problem of epic proportions.  NMFS can’t even accurately estimate fishing effort and landings now, yet we are to believe that EVERY FISH counted would be an achievable goal?  The only thing certain about a tag program would be the loss of opportunity for the recreational angler to fish,  Why not use all this money and FIX THE REC DATA COLLECTION problem AND RUN MORE STOCK ASSESSMENTS?

Try adjusting the annual catch limits to allow for a rebounding stock.  How come more fish caught means overfishing and less fish caught means overfished?  What about CPUE Catch Per Unit of Effort?  What about all the jobs lost over uncertainty?  People’s lives are being destroyed while the fisheries thrive.   This is not right, nor will we stand for it.

The for-hire operators have no way of tracking their catch relative to anything else. They would have a GREAT incentive to misreport their landings and inflate their landings history if they think it will result in additional allowable landings or ‘shares’.

The angler who catches the fish should not lose his/her right to that fish just because the angler did not own a boat. Sector separation is no wanted in the Gulf and it is not wanted in the South Atlantic.

The fish belong to the recreational angler, not the captain who took the angler fishing,  Catch shares in the recreational sector are unwanted, unwelcome and will CERTAINLY destroy the opportunity to fish for generations to come.

Snapper Grouper Amendment 24

The FRA opposes any reallocation based on the fatally flawed MRFSS data.

We adamantly oppose any notion of giving ownership of any fisheries to for hire operators.  The operators amount to a high end boat ride with a knowledgeable captain.  We fail to understand how this captain would be entitled to own any shared of a fish that he did not catch.

SUBMIT COMMENTS TO:CompACLAmendPH@safmc.net; SGRegAmend9PH@safmc.net;  CEBA2PH@safmc.net; SGAmend21Scoping@safmc.net; SGAmend22Scoping@safmc.net;  SGAmend24Scoping@safmc.net; GCAmend5Scoping@safmc.net

Representative's links for all SE US states:

Join the FRA!!! click here.

SUPPORT OUR SUPPORTERS

E-SEA RIDER

Marine Bean Bag Chairs

HOT LINKS