The following is from the CCA e-mail release. What do you folks think abouth this proposal from ASMFC? Will it lead to recreational fisherman alos being unable to net mendhaden for bait?
Act now to help recover Atlantic menhaden populations
The Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission is currently considering adopting Amendment II to the Atlantic Menhaden Fishery Management Plan, which would begin to restore the abundance of menhaden.
The facts here are simple:
Menhaden are at historically low levels of abundance.
Overfishing is occurring.
The primary ecological attribute of menhaden is their abundance; they are eaten at some point in their life cycle by virtually every marine predator. Thus, restoring menhaden abundance is the most critical goal. Amendment 2 can do that if the ASMFC chooses the right management measures. CCA chapters on the Atlantic coast are submitting testimony at public hearings, stating our position that restoring the menhaden resource to historic levels of abundance must be the primary management objective of the Amendment.
We encourage every angler to make his or her voice heard during this historic process to finally manage menhaden, Click here to send a message to your state’s representatives on the ASMFC. It is time to turn the situation around, begin managing this important stock and restore it to a level of abundance adequate to serve its role as one of the most important forage fish in the ecosystem.
Industrial harvesters will be using every resource available to them to defeat these efforts, and so we need concerned citizens like you to assist our efforts by contacting your representatives on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Please act now to send a message to your state’s ASMFC commissioners.
Click the link below to log in and send your message: http://www.votervoice.net/link/target/coastal/ibWi9rF8.aspx
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The following is from the CCA e-mail release. What do you folks think abouth this proposal from ASMFC? Will it lead to recreational fisherman alos being unable to net mendhaden for bait?[/b]
Very likely the case if the ASFMC truly does everything possible to restore a stock to “historical levels.” I think doing that is biologically impossible, btw, because historical levels can be hyperinflated quite easily, and the environment has certainly changed off the east coast in the last 200 years- for the worse (think about roller nets, channelization, dredging, beach renourishment, etc.
CCA took a similar “rebuild to historical levels immediately since the sky is falling” approach to red snapper. They did not challenge the science- but took it as “fact” (see “the facts here are simple” statement above) that red snapper were fished to 2% of “historical levels.” You see what almost happened, and you see what is still happening. The commercial operations that are able to withstand the drought, i.e. closures and restrictions, are the biggest and most politically and financially connected. These operations are exactly the ones who do the most harm because they’re not local, multi-generation, small-time operations who have lived off a resource and care about it. The operations that are left when a fishery is reopened later are the ones owned by the foreigners that we kicked out of our waters in the 70’s since they didn’t give a dang out our resources then. We are enriching them at this point with all our domestic closures though, and we are being fools to believe that they will respect our recreational interests and passion for the fisheries at some later date. You are pitting money against money, and we will lose that battle every time.
I don’t think we need any restrictions around here, but when you watch some of the modern purse seine fishers out of Virginia using the spotter planes it makes you wonder how long they can stay sustainable.
Read all about Omega…They are well connected with congressmen, senators, governors and Mid Atlantic board members. They have lined every pocket they can think of and have destroyed the menhaden stocks in just a few years. The stripers in the Chesapeake are starving to death and Omega is getting filthy rich.
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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”
One of the things that I still feel we on this site might consider is getting together, chew the fat, and think about how we can direct energy towards something that will work. Pointing fingers does not work. Together we can be strong.
Put CCA and RFA aside and start something fresh on a local level. Continue to support who you like but add to the fight.
Menhaden on the east coast are definitely not the way they were even just a few years back. I been in commercial fishing boats w my dad since I was old enough to walk and remember using them for everything from grouper bait to crab bait. I crab for a living now and catch them when it is convenient for bait in the traps. Saves me several thousand in expenses every year. I agree with phin 100% that the ones that will benefit in the end are not guys like me. If there is any kind of management that will cut what the bait fishermen can catch, which only make up 15-20% of total catch per year, crab/lobster bait could double or worse make it unable to get any for bait. If that happens it will only put more pressure on other bait fish such as herring and sardines. Just my 2 cents. I hope something is done to help the stocks but I just hope it’s done in a way that will allow me and probably hundreds of thousands of other fisherman that depend on that particular species to continue doing what we do
One of the things that I still feel we on this site might consider is getting together, chew the fat, and think about how we can direct energy towards something that will work. Pointing fingers does not work. Together we can be strong.
Put CCA and RFA aside and start something fresh on a local level. Continue to support who you like but add to the fight.
big dog
I agree with this, but what do you do when leaders of the established orgs send out emails, among other things, to influential people in the community in an effort to undermine the “local efforts?”
I did not want to point fingers with my reply above- merely express my opinion here since expressing my opinion privately/directly with folks in the past was not only ineffective but basically mocked…
In the end, I am just a “hot head” that will be forgotten about in “two weeks.”
Or are we?
National groups have their own priorities, and I agree that a local group can be more effective. The partisanship type stuff between orgs is something I would love to see go away. Isn’t it interesting that when I’d talk to cca, the objective seemed to be making sure I didn’t become an RFA guy, and when I’d talk with RFA the inverse was true…
Blame is on everyone for that. It is just mighty hard to be led by or join up with someone who won’t listen to you and who mocks you…
There are those that will ***** at the sun rising. Nothing in the press release mentioned that you will not be able to throw the net.
Purse nets for hadens are a problem. Can we agree on that?
big dog
Cca took the position of supporting one per person weakfish for recs. Cca took the position of closing red snapper to recs and NOT reopening until at least 2 per person limits again. I can go on and on, but the point is that if you want to restore stocks to "historical levels according to the so called “facts” in all this stuff, then recs will have to suffer just like commercials- and usually disproportionately/undeservingly so.
Don’t be naive enough to think that restoring a stock to historic levels (arguably an impossible goal) doesn’t mean we pay the price along with the bad guys…
I think the point that Phin is making is, “Should ‘historic’ levels be the restoration goal?”. Many of us disagree with that notion especially when the ‘historic’ level is a guess interpolated from crappy data. Maybe there is a threshold between current and ‘historic’ that will still yield a great sustainable fishery while minimizing pain to the fishing community…
In general though, most net fisheries that i have been exposed to seem to have a common theme of unsustainability at least in their current state of management…
They shut down the use of herring during the chesapeake striped bass spawning run… All the while the omega b boats sit at the mouth of the bay an process herring 24-7.
When they are able to bring deer, turkey, and quail back to historical levels then let them do the same for fish…!
We have done that with Deer and Turkey, now if we could only crap our pants while hunting them due to a covey of Quail taking flight in front of you. Betcha the Tuna fishing would have been spectacular in the 18th century.
Fred67, they have made a come back, but are you sure that they are at “historical highs” as in pre-Colonial America highs? Remember, the goal of federal fisheries management is not to restore a fishery to “good enough” status, but they want to restore them to pre-human harvest status…
Deer and turkey populations are higher than “historical” numbers because we now have thousands of acres of row crops for them to eat.
Quail won’t come back as long as invasive species like coyotes are around and we replace upland forest with planted and clearcut loblolly.
Trying to restore wildlife levels to some utopian level by regulating fishing pressure along is ridiculous.
As Skinneej has pointed out, why not try to solve the problem with human ingenuity rather than being stuck inside a tiny box? “Plant” private reefs and blow up the habitat carrying capacity. People in this world are not going to simply quit eating fish suddenly.
Some fisheries that are heavily industrialized like the menhaden and tuna do have serious problems, and we have a responsibility to do our part to help instead of just pointing fingers. However, that doesn’t mean to accept the Feds’ assumptions and conclusions blindly like a bunch of sheep.
The groundfish off SC being so heavily regulated with closures and backwards management is a giant JOKE that a few individuals and organizations are profiting from at the public’s expense. The assumptions and conclusions being used to manage these fisheries are laughable scientifically and statistically. It would not hurt for organizations who have paid scientists on staff to simply QUESTION the basic fundamental assumptions used to arrive at conclusion of “immediate crisis and disaster prevention needed at all costs.”
The following is from the CCA e-mail release. What do you folks think abouth this proposal from ASMFC? Will it lead to recreational fisherman alos being unable to net mendhaden for bait?[/b]
Very likely the case if the ASFMC truly does everything possible to restore a stock to “historical levels.” I think doing that is biologically impossible, btw, because historical levels can be hyperinflated quite easily, and the environment has certainly changed off the east coast in the last 200 years- for the worse (think about roller nets, channelization, dredging, beach renourishment, etc.
CCA took a similar “rebuild to historical levels immediately since the sky is falling” approach to red snapper. They did not challenge the science- but took it as “fact” (see “the facts here are simple” statement above) that red snapper were fished to 2% of “historical levels.” You see what almost happened, and you see what is still happening. The commercial operations that are able to withstand the drought, i.e. closures and restrictions, are the biggest and most politically and financially connected. These operations are exactly the ones who do the most harm because they’re not local, multi-generation, small-time operations who have lived off a resource and care about it. The operations that are left when a fishery is reopened later are the ones owned by the foreigners that we kicked out of our waters in the 70’s since they didn’t give a dang out our resources then. We are enriching them at this point with all our domestic closures though, and we are being fools to believe that they will respect our recreational interests and
I haven’t researched this issue at all, let me ask a couple of questions I’m sure some of you can answer.
Didn’t the menhaden seiners use to work the entire eastern seaboard, but were essentially regulated/stopped from fishing Florida, NC, GA, etc, (maybe 10 or 15/20 years ago)leaving only the VA and Chesapeake Bay for them to fish?
How does the Chesapeake Bay menhaden stock relate to the coastal SC stocks of fish? Same bunch of fish or a different one?
Could the downturn in menhaden stocks simply be a natural cycle? Menhaden don’t exactly strike me as a long lived, slow-to-reproduce, fish stock. There could be a bumper crop of them next year if the environmental conditions are favorable.
Yes, menhaden was a huge fishery up and down the coat. And yes, Virginia is where they only operate now,
There might be some other stocks around, but the vast majority of menhaden up and down the coast are the same stock that is being targeted by Omega Protein in/off the Chesapeake Bay.
Menhaden are definitely more like shrimp then sharks: they are more susceptible to population fluctuations (see, perhaps, this year’s shrimp baiting season).
Finally, one important note. No fishery manager wants to return fish stocks to virgin levels. They use virgin levels as a reference point for stock assessments, and NGOs sometimes use the info for scare tactics, but that is no the goal of management. Managers try to maintain MSY or other similar targets such as optimum yield that are below virgin stock sizes. The goal is maximize the availability of the resource for economic reasons. This is the classic difference between fish managers/fishery biologist and marine conservationists. The latter might want to see virgin stock sizes, but not the former.