Window of Opportunity to Change Regs?

[Broad Bill]

Originally Posted by dales529

Hi Gerry, as your friend / fishing partner at times and regardless of political affiliation a couple of thoughts:
Yes I am with you in this fight!
It appears new secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick has appointed or is trying to appoint more Rec friendly people to the boards vs Wilbur Ross .
https://sportfishingpolicy.com/comme...ppointments-3/
Albeit not our area yet.

I have posted many times that NJ NEVER went out of compliance on Fluke as NMFS threatened to pull ALL NJ / Federal Permits from Rec Charters so a last minute deal was cut while we were listening to the meeting (waiting to see how Out of compliance would work) that went to being NJ being its own region outside of NY and CT which was a win but not OUT of Compliance.

Christie had nothing to do with this and on a call with Jim D from RFA stated his secretary told him he should look into this Fluke "thing" in NJ. Duh?

Having said the above I will as always join the effort but with baited breath to see what a new Governor may or may not do as he has less record on rec fishing than even Christie and they usually follow commercial interests.
Based on his policies I cant vote for him but will support if he gets in.

Gerry as Dave said in his reply, I'll help out any way needed as long as my input is valued, incorporated and I'm involved in decision making. Otherwise, I have no interest wasting anyone's time including my own. I agree with Dave that NJ if they decided to go out of compliance with fluke it would have I believe closed all fisheries in NJ, both recreational, commercial, party boats and owner operators or charter boats for all fisheries as I recall. Interesting bargaining chip or leverage against the commercial machine which came with draconian risks for party boats and any businesses associated with the recreational fishing industry in the state. Small business owners would have been devastated including marinas which would have essentially shut down the entire industry in the state. It really wasn't an option.

The issue in my opinion is an unfair allocation of the resource and basing allocations on quotas from the 1970's or 1980's based on language in the original MSA. Provisions completely outdated today. Even worse, everything with fluke is weight based and something no one even talks about which might be the biggest inequity in the regulations is the disparity in weight assigned of comparable age classes being harvested between the recreational sector, the commercial sector and North Carolina commercial which has it's own set of standards, completely outdated and without scientific reasoning or logic. There's a 50 - 60% higher weight assigned to recreational harvest of the same age class fish which directly impacts annual regulations and quota usage. Being everyone is harvesting from the only remaining biomass including North Carolina and Maryland commercial operators in our local waters during the winter, all sectors should have the identical weight assignments which today isn't close. It's a huge problem which gets zero attention. I've asked why to Kiley Dancy and the likes at meetings and on various calls and she wasn't even aware of the disparity if you can believe that. Sea bass and BFT have their own sets of disparities.

And protecting the spawn NEEDS to be addressed in every fishery as does the level of dead discard from commercial netting which is majorly under reported and crippling stocks. It's the exact reason with fluke that "just shorts" every year never manifest themselves as keepers the following year. They're killed every year offshore from September through April by commercial operators harvesting the highest value fish based on market conditions. Everything else coming up in the nets goes back dead.

Make those changes and we'll have a sustainable fishery and fair and equitable allocations between sectors both of which contribute tens of billions of dollars a year to the economy based on just a few fisheries.