[Broad Bill]

Pennsy, it's not time to be done it's beyond time to speak out. Aside from the fact that our restaurants and retail markets are being flooded with fish from foreign countries with potentially high degrees of toxins from being farm raised, no domestic stocks being commercially fished 12 months out of the year will survive. Fluke is a perfect example. They get absolutely pounded year round, especially during the winter months offshore by the commercials (NC in particular) , discard rates are through the roof and that's why every year we wonder why all those fish that just missed the legal recreational size limits by a quarter to a half inch the prior season never seem to reappear the following season. And the milder the winter, the more access commercials have to the biomass and the problem is compounded. It's been happening that way for 30 to 40 years and it'll continue to happen that way until the stock is beyond irreparable damage. Nobody will admit to the fact that we're very close to that point right now and policy decisions need to change if anyone is serious about the long-term prospects of this fishery.

And as Dan has alluded to many times on the site, get North Carolina and Virginia boats out of our waters, change their weight assignments used to quantify their catch to coincide with recreational weight assignments, reduce the percentage harvest they're allocated and reassign them to the northern states where the biomass is located and mandate that their harvest can't be taken exclusively during the winter. And for Christ sakes, protect the spawn by stopping commercial activities during that two month period for 3 - 5 years. NC and Va. collectively destroyed the southern biomass and now they're doing the same to the last remaining biomass off our coast and up through the Gulf of Maine. One state can't be allowed to **** up the striper and fluke fisheries for their own financial benefit while all the other states making up the Mid-Atlantic pay the consequences of their greed and corruption. It'll take a lawsuit just like New York State initiated against NMFS about 7 years ago to change allocations that are based on data from almost 50 to 60 years ago. It's time for another reauthorization of MSA to bring the provisions and terms current based on current data as opposed to what took place back in the '70s.