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Originally Posted by JonDevin
I wonder if the program didn't exist, would there be a larger poundage allocated to all? If not, then what happened is that the total available catch is reduced to allow for this program. That's a tax in my book, no matter how you feel about how those funds are used.
Then again, I find this all very confusing and may be completely wrong in what I just wrote.  |
As I said previously, it would add a couple days to our season, depending on when you added it. It is 3% of the TAL, taken off the top (sorry, but I have already explained this several times) before any allocation.
And, it is not 3%, it is NO MORE THAN 3%. It has been less. Any unused or unallocated amount goes back into the TAL, as has happened before also.
That is why I said if people do not want the research to be funded then go to the MAFMC meeting and tell them you want your lousy three more days of fishing and I'll stop wasting my time fighting for all this shit.
The simple fact of the matter is that the fishermen, not the government, worked with the MAFMC to come up with a way to fund science and research that would otherwise not get done. Since we only have fish to work with, we used fish (I say 'we', I did not create this program)
Someone made the intelligent post more than once that "it is all about money" or something to that effect.
Well duh! of course it is about money. What else do you think pays for the research? Collectively commercial and recreational fishermen got together and took a small portion of the allowable harvest each year and agreed to have it auctioned off. Those buying it would have the potential for a bonus (that is assuming they can get more money than they paid for it...ask PF how that worked one year for him) and all the money would fund research that no money existed for.
As proud as I am to have been involved with SSFFF and all we have accomplished, do you realize that the three years of painstaking work we all did and the HUGE investment in time and personal financial loss taken by all of us involved raised less money in three years than one fraction of one year of the RSA program raises?
And guess what, it all goes to the research regardless of what the paranoid might believe.
