You have to dig to find this & it seems to be another govt. control mechanism & tax coming our way. Please correct me if my concerns are unjustified.
If you have time and want to read the SAFMC upcoming mtg agenda have a lot of caffeine or other stimulants handy. Here is the snippet that caught my eye.
13.2.
Staff Contact: Myra Brouwer
Overview
Staff Contact: Myra Brouwer
The purpose of Amendment 22 is to create a recreational tag program for the South Atlantic region that could be applied to any snapper grouper species with a small Annual Catch Limit (ACL) as determined by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Regional Administrator (RA).
Proposed actions include: establish a recreational tag program to track harvest of snapper grouper species with low ACLs, establish eligibility criteria for individuals or entities to participate in the program, establish an annual issuance progress for recreational tags, and establish a cost-recovery plan.
13.3.
? Provide guidance on data collection aspects of recreational tag programs. Can such programs provide data for use in assessment or other status evaluations?
Action
? Provide guidance on the use of a tag program to track harvest or evaluate AMs.
“Establish eligibility criteria for individuals or entities to participate in the program”
The ocean is everyone’s ocean. You can’t determine who can and cannot partake in the abundance we’ve been blessed with.
Not saying I necessarily agree, but I don’t see how this is much different than turkey or deer tags or the red drum tags that Texas issues for overslot fish. I don’t hear a lot of outcry about those programs.
Not saying I necessarily agree, but I don’t see how this is much different than turkey or deer tags or the red drum tags that Texas issues for overslot fish. I don’t hear a lot of outcry about those programs.
Comparing it to alligator tags is probably a better analogy. You get turkey tags and deer tags when you apply, not the case with lottery type systems. There is a good chance that SC will be on the short end of the stick when we get allocated "tags", because they will ration them out to states based on population. That means that guys in the Florida keys will be eligible for red snapper tags, even though they have never seen one and may never see one. You may or may not get a tag. That's really going to piss you off when someone takes tags out of the pool and sits on them and doesn't fish the entire year, when you are out there every weekend.
Also, what happens when you invite a friend to go fishing, who only get’s out once or twice a year? Are you going to let him use your tag? How does that work, when you are getting a last minute fishing trip together and most of your buddies do not have tags?
Also, I hate the fact that they are called “tags”. These are “catch shares”. Catch shares are a hotly debated topic, so to deceive you, they changed the name to “tags” in order to fool you into thinking it’s like a “fish tagging” program.
Another reason that catch shares are hotly debated is because they are typically transferable. That means, that some enviro is going to buy them up and take them off the market. There are also commercial guys in some parts of the country that were allocated thousands of catch shares. They don’t even fish any more. They just sell their tags to other people and sit at home sipping on lattes while they receive hundreds of tho
We need to disband the current board and find politicians that are fisherman friendly. The same dozen people that go to these pony shows are not going to make a difference. Unless we can get 200+ people to go to the meetings, nothing will ever go our way. Some of us have been preaching since the early 90’s and we are tired of the fight. Again I ask…WHERE ARE THE….Tackleshop owners (with the exception of Atlantic Game and tackle), Boat companies (Key West, Scout, Sea Fox,) Marina owners, Charter Captains, Seafood Restaurant owners, You all should be at EVERY meeting! But no…the same 12 - 15 people have been time and time again. I didn’t go to the last one because I was told that calling out David Cupka was not going to help the cause…I doubt I will ever go again. I will keep fishing and catching!
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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”
Comparing it to alligator tags is probably a better analogy. You get turkey tags and deer tags when you apply, not the case with lottery type systems.
Good points. I guess I don’t have a problem with a FREE tag system that allows scientists to collect better data and still allows an angler to get more tags when they run out, but I do have a problem with choosing who gets the tags or the possibility of outside groups buying up allocation.
jt, we really don’t know how it would turn out. They are talking about the potential of charging money as well. Nothing is off the table, I think it’s still in the early phases, so nothing is set in stone. They typically ask for something to anger us and then “negotiate” down to something that just slightly pisses us off. Again, the thing that seems to smell the worse is the need to change what they are calling it. That’s purely an act of deception\mis-direction, so if you have to deceive someone to get something done, that’s a red flag in my book.
There is a LOT more pressure on inshore resources (flounder, redfish, stripers, trout, etc). So, why does SCDNR not need to go to a tagging system with the inshore fish? I bet flats boats outnumber bottom fishing boats 10-1 and the ocean is a lot bigger than our estuaries. Somehow we seem to manage…
Also, these tags are FEDERAL. Meaning, we could see people getting tags in south florida and then making the trip up to SC to use them. Wouldn’t that piss us off too? Imagine the thought of someone catching snapper in your own back yard and you not being allowed to.
We need to ask the council to suspend all amendments on the table while we focus on how we want to see our TACs managed through the Visioning Project. We need to offer our own solutions rather than waiting until the final stages of a Delphi Technique guided amendment process has left us with a few bad options to pick from. Is anybody interested in discussing how we can take control of the management process? It can be done without most of you ever having to attend a council meeting.
What we need is a caravan of coordinated comments flooding the council. It’s amazing how hard it is to get fishermen to have a conversation about how we can easily take control of how our fisheries are managed. Come on guys, I know you care about this issue. Please engage in a productive conversation about how we want to see our fisheries managed. I will stand with recreational fishermen in opposition to tags and would appreciate you standing with me in support of alternatives to catch shares and derbies in commercial fisheries. We can all stand united against closing even more of our traditional fishing grounds with new or reoriented MPAs.
sniper7, let’s begin a conversation on this thread about what amendments we want to comment on and say in them. I have had many discussions with council members and know that they listen when they receive multiple comments saying basically the same thing. The council does what it wants when they receive a bunch of comments saying totally different things. A coordinated message from hundreds of concerned fishermen is the key to our success. Look at the VMS comments that stopped a law almost everyone thought would pass. Below is what I posted on another thread for anyone to use as a guide to comment on MPAs.
Please send your comments to Kim Iverson until an official public comment email address is set up for RA17. kim.iverson@safmc.net
Regulatory Amendment 17 Public Comment
I OPPOSE any new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and/or reorienting existing MPAs to include more prime fishing areas. There is no proof existing MPAs have had any positive impact.
I SUPPORT enhancing existing MPAs with new artificial reef habitat rather than closing more traditional fishing grounds.
Is there anything you think should be changed about this comment or added to it? What do you think we should say about the recreational tag amendment? This is a new development and I would like to hear from recreational fishermen before commenting. Once we coordinate our message, we need to get everyone we can to comment on the SAFMC facebook page and formally at each amendment’s dedicated email address. These official email comments should also be cc’d to our local, state, and federal politicians.
Thanks BlueFly. We need to push for better management of our Acceptable Biological Catch limits rather than rushing to set up a tag program that does nothing to address the real problems. We could have an 8 month Red Snapper season with a one fish per person limit that coincides with shallow-water grouper if the council did not allocate over half a million pounds of the ABC to Post Season Discard Mortality. We need to show that fishermen are willing to release illegal fish with decent assist devices that dramatically increase survival rates. I ask everyone reading this to consider taking some pictures of your crew using some sort of decent assist device when releasing an illegal fish and send the council your photos. Post it on here with a comment encouraging other fishermen to do the same. Post them on the SAFMC facebook page with a polite comment explaining the photos. We do not have to attend the meetings to influence how our fisheries are managed. We just need to coordinate our efforts and harness the power of the internet.
Our State manages the deer herd closely & is more flexible than some oversized Federal agency.
That's another very valid point. SCDNR has "boots on the ground". Many of those guys are sportsman, and love hunting and fishing just as much as we do. They are a lot more in touch with reality than the federal government, who take a LOT of input from environmental organizations like PEW...
I once asked Greg Waugh (SAFMC), “Greg, why are environmentalists even allowed to be involved in this process?” His answer was, “Well, it’s their resource too.” Honestly, as someone who is hardly ever at a loss for words, I was at a loss for words… But, I found it pretty interesting that was the answer.
Can you imagine what hunting would be like in South Carolina if PETA was the biggest voice inside of DNR? Thank GOD we are actually represented at the state level by people who actually enjoy the outdoors as much as we do!
Note that the Magnusson Stevens act was not written to conserve as many resources as possible. It was written to MAXIMIZE a sustainable, realized benefit of our fishery!
How about it skinneej and sellsfish, are you guys interested in discussing ways we can take control of the fishery management process? Does anyone have a solution for managing species with low quotas that does not involve tags? I would like to hear from you guys before offering my idea.
freefish, that is a very open ended question. I would have to know what species we are talking about and what the options are. I don’t like to come up with solutions before finding a problem to use them on. And that is what is being done in Amendment 22. They haven’t even named a species!!!
That being said, if we were talking about a deepwater species like snowy grouper\tilefish, I think that getting rid of bottom longlines and moving some of the commercial quota over to the recreational quota would be where I would start. I mean come on. How are longlines still in use out there? I would also want to see how they are calculating recreational quotas, etc. Also, I would want to know if the species is migratory or not. I don’t know that there is any evidence that suggests that snowies are migratory, so if they are not, then maybe the state should manage them. And again, I have no issues with the federal government creating some MPA’s out of sand and stockpiling them full of artificial habitat. Who needs a tag system if they did something like that? Lot’s of options I supposed depending on species, circumstances, etc.
Let’s use Red Snapper for this discussion. There was a 611,000 ABC for Red Snapper this year. The recreational share of that was 72% or 439,920 pounds. NMFS allowed recreational anglers to keep 54,922 pounds or 9,585 fish. They allocated 384,998 pounds to Post Closure Discard Mortality. That is around 64,000 fish they say are dying after being discarded. That means they think recreational fishermen will catch hundreds of thousands of these rare fish outside of the three day season.
We should take pictures to show the council and John Carmichael that fishermen are releasing illegal snapper suffering from barotrauma with decent assist devices. Rather than allocating 90+% of your quota to dead discards, it could be more like 10%. A quota of almost 400,000 pounds would allow for a one fish per person bag limit during the shallow-water grouper season. The ABC is scheduled to increase just under 100,000 pounds each year which will allow for longer seasons and higher limits over time.
Is the discussion over? Does anybody agree or disagree with the plan I laid out for Red Snapper. I agree with skinneej’s ideas of artificial reefs on sandy bottom and managing some species by state rather than region. We are going to keep losing more of our freedom to fish if we cannot even have an honest discussion between fishermen to come up with some solutions and present them in a somewhat unified way to the SAFMC.