Closure of the Recreational Amberjack fishery!!! This scathing quote below comes straight from the CCA Press Release room. And I have to agree that yet again the feds have screwed up again in a big way.
"The one-sidedness of federal fisheries management is at a level that makes it almost impossible to believe recreational interests will ever be considered in any meaningful way,” said Brewer. “No fishery has ever been overfished by recreational angling alone, and any number of economic studies indicates that the recreational sector is by far the most valuable part of our marine fisheries. And yet, fishery after fishery is closing down for anglers while the Councils bend over backwards to keep the longlines and nets in the water. In the eyes of many recreational anglers, the federal management system is on the edge of a total breakdown."
Why you ask is the CCA so upset? Shouldn't they (feds) do what is neccessary to protect the resource? Well for starters lets clarify something right of the bat. This
IS NOT crying over the protections placed on a species in need. This whole issue goes way way beyond that.
The issue is that there are two competing user groups that harvest Amberjack. Recreational fisherman and the commercial fisherman. The outcry comes from the simple fact that the feds declared the Gulf Amberjack over fished in 2007. They went on to then INCREASE, that's right, INCREASE the commercial sectors quota while reducing the recreational sectors quota. This was done despite the fact that money wise the recreational fisherman have a bigger economic impact that the commercial fisherman and it was the commercial fisherman that have most severely impacted the Amberjack fishery in the first place.
Insane is the word that comes to mind. Now the feds have struck again and closed the recreation fishery completely in the gulf for the year as of Oct. 24th.
This is analogous to a boss with two employees cutting the pay of employee A and giving employee B a pay increase despite the fact the employee A brings in more money for the boss than employee B. It is completely insane.
To make matters worse, this type of action isn't a one time deal. It is a firmly established pattern which has been being followed with other fisheries such as Red Snapper. Red Snapper in the Northern Gulf of Mexico have not been replacing themselves fast enough to reach the replacement level required by law. So restrictions must by law be tightened.
So each year the recreation fisherman get squeezed tighter and tighter. Soon recreation fisherman might not have a season at all. But that will not help the Red Snapper much because the real problem has nothing to do with the recreational fisherman. It all comes back to Shrimpers. Shrimpers are killing the baby red snapper so fast that the red snapper population is in trouble but the feds do little to stem this killing despite the fact that they are required to by law. Once again the recreational fisherman get the short end of the stick and once again it makes no logical sense.
And just so you know other fisheries such as billfish have had to endure the same illogical decisions. The feds keep hammering the recreational fisherman and it doesn't help because we aren't the problem. Am I in the twilight zone!
