If Chris is honorable the proof will be in his actions. If a vote comes up that has the potential to enrich him, will he abstain from voting?
As far as the 29 proposed MPA’s - my questions would be - has anything been done to enhance the existing MPA’s? Like adding reef material? Have the MPA’s added to the biomass? Is there any demonstrative good that can be realistically be shown from the present MPA’s. in other words - prove it! If MPAS are so great why do we have so many regs? If we fished a larger area wouldn’t the impact be spread out more evenly? If were fishing harder on a smaller bottom area - doesn’t that cancel out the mpa’s increase? Since mpas reduce fishable water will more lost area reduce ACL? Don’t MPAS only really exist to give enviros warm fuzzies? Does not catching pelagics in an MPA do any more good than spit in the ocean?. I’ve thought lots about MPA’s and the one idea I might like would be closing an area for a year or 2 and re-opening. Rotating MPA’s - What u think?
Grady18, you are right about Chris being a good guy. We just disagree on catch shares and a few other fishery management issues. I do believe he will listen IF enough of us will speak up in support of or opposition to something.
natureboy, your post shows some deep thought has gone into your MPA observations and ideas. Enhancing current MPAs with Artificial Reef habitat and marking them with buoys equipped with video cameras to monitor any poachers should come before any more MPAs are even considered. I could support very limited rotating MPAs if I had any confidence in the NMFS to reopen closed areas. The only new MPAs I could support at this time would be newly created Artificial Reef habitat.
Didn’t Chris Conklin speak at the public comment portion of the Raleigh meeting asking to volunteer for catch shares?
Doesn’t he stand to capture over 50% of all the shares?
I read that info, can’t remember where and don’t know if it is true.
If he is in a position to lock up our fisheries for himself via catch shares and is actively trying to accomplish that goal at the expense of ALL OTHER fishermen, he should not be on the council.
Those of you that know him, ask him his position and let us know. Hell, invite him here to participate. Perhaps the info I have is wrong, I sure hope that is the case.
I remember when we could fish grouper all through the winter. Conklin and I put an absolute beat down on some grouper on a Super Bowl Sunday not too many years ago. Chris knows that the powers that be are changing the laws, and his main goal is to reach an agreement on both sides. He runs a fleet of around a dozen commercial boats. Do not confuse him as some large corporation. He runs a fish market and wholesale company. They only have 8 employees. This guy is not a huge operation out there making millions. Chris wants to keep the guys running the commercial boats fishing. He does not stand to make enormous gains off of any of the decisions made here. His main goal is to keep his fisherman employed and create a viable renewable fishery. Chris is a family man with a yound daughter. He is a Citadel Graduate and hard working individual. Give him a chance to use his knowledge and experience to help pave the way for the future.
Just because someone runs a fish house doesn’t mean that they are qualified to ENGINEER solutions using critical thinking.
That’s one of the major issues I have with this whole process. Scientists should observe and report. We get in trouble when they try to “solve”. That’s what engineers are for. How many engineers are on the council?
Those of you that know him, ask him his position and let us know. Hell, invite him here to participate. Perhaps the info I have is wrong, I sure hope that is the case.
Squid Row II
22 Shamrock WA
Flounder Pounder II
16 Sandpiper Skiff
I can tell you that Chris is not going to get into it on the internet. He is a face to face person and a professional. He is a Citadel graduate, and any of you that are as well can relate to his willingness to take things head on and not over a computer. While all of you have pre-determined ideas of him, please stop by Seven Seas and let him know your opinions. He will do a great job and also remember that their decisions are pretty much decided by the MSA and poor data so let him know your stance. I can tell you that he will make himself available to everyone that is interested for sitting and discussing at a table instead of over a computer screen.
There! I am going back into hiding for another year!!!
I have not posted on here for years, I could not even find the log-in info. I still troll this site a couple times of week to get a pulse what is going on and see what people are saying. While I do not know most of you or your intentions, I can attest to Chris’s.
I have fished with Chris everywhere, known him forever, and can speak to his character. I can promise you one thing, if anyone is looking out for you it is him. Chris, a Citadel Grad, is what I have always thought of as “hybrid”, one half of him comprised of commercial fishing and one half comprised of a well rounded, sociable, and intelligent person. Honestly, Chris’s intention to keep the commercial fleet running is as inherent in his blood as your desire to get up everyday.
To somehow insinuate that Chris here is the enemy encompasses the entire problem that lays in front of us. Although some believe that things are going “back to the way they used to be”, you simply are simply mistaken. Would I like that to happen, yes. Is it? No. I am not an expert in catch shares nor want to project that image, but some solutions to these regulations have to be found. Everyone is so quick to criticize Chris before action has been taken, but yet fail to recognize what has happened to the commercial fishing fleet while others have been at the watch tower. Chris is a man of solutions and someone I believe in.
Knowing Chris, his door is wide open. You can find him at Seven Sea’s everyday working at his family business. Which, like Grady18 pointed out, is not some corporate operation but a 8 man show, local guys, that are trying to earn a living in this crazy world we live in. My advice, drive to Murrells Inlet and unless you want to be constructive, stop the internet attacks. Don’t knock it before you try it.
Please let Chris know I will be calling on him. My name is Wes Covington.
I feel sorry for him because of what he is getting into.
What Tom did for us takes an unusual sort of character, and I sense that Chris has things in his blood that will make him a good advocate for us.
I understand the arguments for and against catch shares. Anything in moderation can work. Anything in excess is bad. We are in an age of excess regulation…
I am hopeful that Chris will not be naive as to where we are headed. He has been around the process for a long time, and I am counting on him to be our ONLY voice on the council now. There is no need for any of us to alienate him.
Tom will be missed, but he will still be engaged if I know him…
As to the comments about Haley- she doesn’t appoint. The federal govt does, specifically, the President’s administration. Haley submits 3 names per seat, and the Secretary of Commerce picks. Do you really think Sarah Palin’s buddy Nikki Halley could get an Obama appointee to comply with any request?
The MSA is stacked against the states and the people who know the reality offshore. The sooner we realize this is the real problem, the better. The SAFMC is a rubber stamp for NMFS and NOAA. They are supposed to be an accountability measure and conduit for the community to be involved in decision making. The system is obviously broken, and it is getting worse as we waste our time fighting one another and chasing boogie men instead of educating ourselves about what is really going on and why.
Just watch- someone will argue with what I am saying here although I am only making general observations and a few predictions…
Some of you are missing the picture regarding catch shares. Right now Snapper / Grouper complex fishing permits are “owned”. You can not just go and get a permit and start fishing for them. You must purchase two existing permits and cash them in for your permit. Permits are not cheap, running in the $20K and up range. So catch shares will go to the people currently fishing on permits now. These will be bought and sold, and from what I hear they will be worth huge money. Think about a group like PEW with deep pockets, they will be scooping shares. Do you really think that fisherman won’t sell their shares for something they did not have to pay for. Catch shares are the death of commercial fishing in the South Atlantic.
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NMFS = No More Fishing Season
“Back home we got a taxidermy man. He gonna have a heart attack when he see what I brung him”
What you also aren’t told is that the government can decide to cut the shares it offers in a given year by half… Or maybe to nothing at all. You have just closed your own industry, mr commercial fisherman who thought catch shares was the only way to keep the fishery open.
I can also provide you with reams of evidence that catch shares don’t improve the health of stocks either. If you want to save yourself the trouble, look to our wreck fish, wish has been 100 percent catch shares since the early 90’s and is abysmal compared to the fishery’s early years that we know can be yielded by the habitat.
Add in how privatizing a public resource And giving it to a select few is against thousands of years of western law, philosophy and religion, and you have to wake up at some point and reject the propaganda being peddled by the NGO’s and federal agencies right now. I can make arguments against the concept from economic or biological facts, but all you will hear from the supporters is this simple idea that this simple framework can be a panacea for all our problems. First, let’s understand that the problems being focused on aren’t real. The real problem that can be solved is how to respond to an increase in demand for a resource. Wouldn’t you look at increasing supply rather than cutting off demand with laws? Of course not- not when you can make money trading public resources and manipulating prices by lobbying the government.
All of the arguments against Catch Shares are exactly right. They are NOT a management tool, they are an allocation scheme. It is important for us to offer and publicly support solutions to solve problems that were CREATED in order to advance agendas like Catch Shares and Marine Protected Areas. Managing quotas is not rocket science. This three point plan would achieve any honorable goals of Catch Shares without all of the well-documented negative impacts.
Align opening dates for co-occurring species.
Manage quotas with possession limits that fill quotas without long closures. (some fish will have higher limits than others based on the size of a quota and amount of pressure on it)
Create By-catch Allowances that allow at least one fish and up to 10% of a catch to be undersized or over the limit. (EDF told me they would support removing size limits and seasonal closures if we accepted Catch Shares)
This simple plan would go a LONG way toward greatly reducing the MILLION+ pounds of regulatory discards that are currently deducted from our Total Allowable Catch limits.
Chris is not our enemy. He is a good guy that will listen to different points of view. We just need enough of us to support an alternative to Catch Shares that limits waste and provides a dependable supply of seafood to the markets. Please check out the SAFMC Visioning Project webpage I set up for us to discuss ideas we can present as a united front to the council in September. http://www.freefish7.com/safmc-visioning-project.html
I have not posted on here for years, I could not even find the log-in info. I still troll this site a couple times of week to get a pulse what is going on and see what people are saying. While I do not know most of you or your intentions, I can attest to Chris’s.
I have fished with Chris everywhere, known him forever, and can speak to his character. I can promise you one thing, if anyone is looking out for you it is him. Chris, a Citadel Grad, is what I have always thought of as “hybrid”, one half of him comprised of commercial fishing and one half comprised of a well rounded, sociable, and intelligent person. Honestly, Chris’s intention to keep the commercial fleet running is as inherent in his blood as your desire to get up everyday.
To somehow insinuate that Chris here is the enemy encompasses the entire problem that lays in front of us. Although some believe that things are going “back to the way they used to be”, you simply are simply mistaken. Would I like that to happen, yes. Is it? No. I am not an expert in catch shares nor want to project that image, but some solutions to these regulations have to be found. Everyone is so quick to criticize Chris before action has been taken, but yet fail to recognize what has happened to the commercial fishing fleet while others have been at the watch tower. Chris is a man of solutions and someone I believe in.
Knowing Chris, his door is wide open. You can find him at Seven Sea’s everyday working at his family business. Which, like Grady18 pointed out, is not some corporate operation but a 8 man show, local guys, that are trying to earn a living in this crazy world we live in. My advice, drive to Murrells Inlet and unless you want to be constructive, stop the internet attacks. Don’t knock it before you try it.
If a commercial fisherman gets a quota based a 10 year average to catch his fish throughout a 12 month period vice a 3 month period what is the problem? My family is in the seafood industry and they sell “fresh local seafood”. Why should it only be that during the “season”? Or why should we buy grouper/snapper from the gulf every year bc it’s closed here when it may not have to be. I spoke to Chris last night about this. I can assure you, he is looking out for the fisherman. He wants our guys fishing year round and employed.
Can anyone tell me how many corporations/enviro groups currently hold South Atlantic Commercial Unlimited Snapper/Grouper permits?
If we are concerned about these groups buying up catch shares, what is to keep them from currently purchasing current permit-holder’s permits? Wouldn’t the end result be similar?
Native, implementing some version of catch shares would eliminate the derby fishing that occurs in the commercial sector. The first season of vermillion snapper closed in 6 weeks, and golden tile was similar. If the idea is to have a consistent but smaller amount of fish hit the dock, than catch shares could work. However, the devil is in the details of such a scheme. If some version of catch shares is implemented, I hope it has some type of clause that makes it null and void after a year or two just in case…
I got the impression that your share was based on your 10 year average and your share would fall under your permit. I’m trying to get both sides, so what’s the scam? The industry is so over regulated it’s hard to keep up. Why shouldn’t a seafood restaurant serve fresh local fish year round? Chris wholesales fish to local restaurants more than anything else. What’s the problem with keeping a fisherman fishing year round? Right now com fisherman sit at the dock more than anything throughout the year. If the majority of grouper in sc come from the gulf bc they’re on catch shares why shouldn’t we do it to keep it local?
Guys I’m not trying to start $#!T I’m just interested in both sides bc I don’t see the problem with catch shares.
I got the impression that your share was based on your 10 year average and your share would fall under your permit. I’m trying to get both sides, so what’s the scam? The industry is so over regulated it’s hard to keep up. Why shouldn’t a seafood restaurant serve fresh local fish year round? Chris wholesales fish to local restaurants more than anything else. What’s the problem with keeping a fisherman fishing year round? Right now com fisherman sit at the dock more than anything throughout the year. If the majority of grouper in sc come from the gulf bc they’re on catch shares why shouldn’t we do it to keep it local?
Guys I’m not trying to start $#!T I’m just interested in both sides bc I don’t see the problem with catch shares.
The problem I see with catch shares is it allows only a select few to be able to fish. Free enterprise will be lost. I agree that seasons should last for most of the year. How can this be accomplished through catch shares and not how it is done now? I see it as the same thing. ACL limit is set and once this limit is met, fishing shuts down. Same for catch shares as current fishing.
