Can’t go fishing anymore without being a criminal.
(@&%(@)%^#)!%)*?#%!#&%##!%(&)!!!
Picked at the fish all yesterday. Hot color for tuna seemed to be black and purple with pink head.
Missed a wahoo, but got one small one on the planer.
Stopped in 90ft and picked up a few limits of GROWN B-liners for sandwiches once the grease got hot back home.
Got back to the dock, and green jeans asks for everybody’s licenses and then looks into the box and sees the B liners and pulls out the ticket book.
Dude, these things just came back in season. Opened up April 1.
He says no… your VMS shows you were in the Edisto MPA this morning, and I am going to have to write you a ticket for each of those vermilion snappers. $400x12 fish!
WTF!!!
$4800, and I did NOTHING WRONG!
This will be an actual report if you sit back and do nothing while the SAFMC mandates vessel monitoring systems on commercial (and recreational soon to follow) guys.
How?
Deputy Director Gregg Waugh of the SAFMC said this last night on the record: ANY vessel required to have a VMS on board would have to declare a target species before leaving port AND if the target species was in the Snapper-Grouper complex said vessel would NOT be allowed to even enter the MPA or would be in violation of the regulations.
You’d better get informed and learn what you can do to stop this. This month is your chance. You spend hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours doing what you love to do offshore this time of year. Please take 5 minutes and help with this. Take responsibility and stop letting other people worry about it. There will be no more “other people to worry about it” if you don’t help right now.
I oppose VMS on commercial, charter, or recreational fishermen because it will add an economic burden that is not justified, and in many cases VMS will cause people to stop fishing altogether. The closures and restrictions on the fishery have pushed most charter captains and small commercial fishing operations to the brink of closing their doors for good. VMS and its added costs and hassles, like the subscription fees and declaring targeted species before leaving the port, will put people out of business. A charter is not going to pay a business to go on a trip where the government is watching them at all times. This initiative will cost for hire fishermen countless dollars, and you must understand this.
Also, many people will choose to discontinue fishing altogether before placing a monitoring device on their vessels. The information on the habits of fishermen that you may desire from these systems will not reflect the natural behaviors in the fishery because the requirement of these systems will in fact change the behavior they seek to record. The very reason many go fishing offshore and spend millions of dollars in our local economy in order to do so is for saltwater offshore fishing’s freedom, and mandating VMS on boats fishing for snapper-grouper species will jeopardize all these millions of dollars in our local economy needlessly.
Please oppose VMS in Amendment 30 or any future FMP amendments.
If you want to focus on a particular person or two, please understand that the Chairman and Vice Chairman would be best.
Chairman
David M. Cupka
(At-Large Seat)
P.O. Box 12753
Charleston, SC 29422
843/795-8591 (hm)
843/870-5495 (cell) palmettobooks@bellsouth.net
Vice-Chairman
Ben C. Hartig
9277 Sharon Street
Hobe Sound, FL 33455
772/546-1541 (ph) mackattackben@att.net
The NMFS person on the SAFMC who wields the biggest fishing rod, so to speak, is this guy, and I think he needs to understand how much the public is against any VMS tracking system.
Dr. Roy Crabtree
NOAA Fisheries Regional Administrator
Regional Administrator
NOAA Fisheries, Southeast Region
263 13th Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
727/824-5301 (ph)
727/824-5320 (f) roy.crabtree@noaa.gov
