[Gerry Zagorski]

So here are my thoughts on what happened here. Don't take this as fact as it my opinion based on what I've observed and heard...

NJDEP did an end around when they went directly to the federal government Secretary of Commerce instead of through the ASMFC with our appeal to stay at status quo. No one in the ASMFC was ever going to approve our status quo regulations. So, NJ was effectively on an island since all the other states in the commission had accepted one of the 5 options they were presented with. That's why the NJDEP went right to the top since this is where our appeal was going to wind up anyway.

At the same time the Secretary of Commerce offices were telling the NJDEP there was no way for them to approve status quo so lets do some bargaining here. That's when the 3 @ 18 with a shorter season idea came up and the back door deal was done.

Now as a formality 3 @ 18 goes to the ASMFC and they deny it like we knew they would so it gets escalated to the Secretary of Commerce.

Sec of Commerce can either side with us and give us the back door deal which was agreed upon or we go out of compliance and its back to the drawing board....

In the mean time we are at 3 @ 18 with a shortened season until our appeal is approved or denied.

As far as what this means next year? Not sure it matters since we are going to almost assuredly going to be faced with a quota reduction if we were at 3 @ 19 with a longer season or 3 @ 18. Bottom line is we will all be fighting over fewer scraps next year too...

It's a vicious circle here and the only way out of it is to get higher quotas. That will only happen if by some miracle, they deem the stocks are suddenly rebuilt and I doubt that will happen... Even if it does, look what happened to Sea Bass.... Totally rebuilt and yet no relief on the regulations???

There are much bigger issues that need to be addressed. If things don't change like the science and Magnuson, we're going to find ourselves in the same place every year and facing more cuts. It's as simple as that...

You either take on those fights long term or in the short term we'll continue to fight over scraps.