From 10/28/01</font id=blue>
Over the years shrimping has quickly become a family tradition in the Pickett household. While it is a little more work than fishing, it still provides a great avenue for the guys in our family to get together and share a few laughs and catch some shrimp in the process. I have a feeling this is the case with many other folks as you can hear the laughter over the sounds of nets crashing the water on any given night.
Recently many of you have emailed me concerned about the state of recreational shrimping. Over the last year there was talk of dramatic changes in the rules that would have changed shrimp baiting and made catching your own shrimp more difficult than ever. Among the proposed changes were:
-Limit shrimping to daylight hours only
-Limit season to 45 days
-Limit the sale of bait casting licenses
-Reduce the current 48-quart limit
-Restrict shrimping to certain areas
-Restrict shrimpers to a certain number of trips
-Restrict shrimping to certain days of the week
Several more people asked me if I could provide more information on the Recreational Shrimpers of South Carolina (RSSC). What is their mission? What do they do with the funds generated by memberships? How can you find out more about them? To make sure I got the facts straight I called Kevin Egan, the current President of the RSSC. Kevin was happy to share information about the RSSC and how this non-profit organization came about.
The RSSC was founded in 1985. During this time there was a tremendous amount of pressure from commercial shrimpers to ban shrimp baiting. Several guys banded together and decided there was strength in numbers and they were going to make a stand to assure the commercial shrimpers did not dictate the fate of recreational shrimping. Their philosophy was and is “Natural Marine Resources belong to all citizens of South Carolina for non-commercial consumption if and only if supply is greater than demand shall a commercial allocation be permitted”. While many peopl