Will it come to this in time?

[IrishAyes]

Let's hope not. I can not fathom the reasoning of some people.

I received this via email from RFA. Unbelievable how some people think. 

It may be a little bit long but it needs to be read and put out there to show what we are up against.

April, 29, 2009
Contact: Jim Hutchinson, Jr.  888 564-6732
 
Conservation Group Offers "Freedom to Fish" To Highest Bidder
New Management Approach Would Sell Off Recreational Access
 
 
Galloway, NJ - In what can best be described as a "pay to play" version of fisheries management, the Texas-based conservation group, Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), has gone on record with a new socialized approach to managing the nation's coastal fisheries, whereby access to the resource is offered to the highest bidder.  According to Dr. Russ Nelson, Fisheries Consultant for CCA, a "free market-based approach to managing red snapper and other marine fishes" could create individual fishing quotas (IFQ) for the recreational fishing community, the same as commercial fishermen.
 
"IFQ programs have demonstrated some success in controlling commercial fisheries, but restrict access by the general public and necessitate difficult allocation decisions," Nelson said in a CCA discussion paper delivered to the Gulf Council on April 10.  Citing current discard mortality problems within the recreational sector, particularly with regard to the red snapper fishery, Nelson said "We are facing new, stricter control measures to assure that our annual catch doesn't exceed the allowable level, and the recreational sector remains without an accurate means of counting the fish we catch."
 
CCA's proposed "free market-based approach" would issue individual, non-reusable tags for red snapper to account for the total allowable catch during an annual cycle.  The tags would be issued for public auction every year, and those members of the public who wish to catch red snapper would make bids on the available fish tags.  "Let anyone who so desires to place their best bid and distribute to the highest bidders," Nelson's paper stated, "bidders could be individuals, states or organizations."
 
Tags would remain on individual fish until cooked and consumed, whether in a residential home or at a seafood restaurant, which CCA explains will allow all fishermen who gain access to the tags to do with the fish what they please.  "Those who buy the tags can used them any way they desire - take the fish home and eat it, give them as Christmas presents, sell them, take their fish to a market and sell them," the CCA paper continued.
 
The authors of the discussion paper explain that the current method of surveying recreational anglers through the Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey (MRFSS) could be eliminated, since only anglers possessing tags would be allowed to fish for regulated species like red snapper, and only a certain allotment of tags would be issued during any given cycle.  "It is simple and arguably the most fair and equitable approach.  Every one - anglers, commercial harvesters, seafood processors, investors and conservationists would have the same opportunity to access the resource," the CCA paper added.
 
Many members of the recreational fishing community fear the proposal, if put into policy, would take the common man out of fishing.  "We think it is bad policy to rest fishing rights in a select few," said Jim Hutchinson, Jr. Managing Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA).  "Such a proposal would create a fishing elite to the exclusion of the American fishing public."
 
"Together with marine reserves, this plan, if implemented, would completely eliminate open-access fishing in America," Hutchinson added.  "Hopefully, the Gulf Council can squash this idea before it gains any credibility within fisheries management circles." 
 
"We do not intend that our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests of the many. Our aim is to preserve our natural resource for the public as a whole, for the average man and the average woman who make up the body of the American people."   
- President Theodore Roosevelt.
 
######
 
The Recreational Fishing Alliance is a national, grassroots political action organization representing recreational fishermen and the recreational fishing industry on marine fisheries issues. The RFA Mission is to safeguard the rights of saltwater anglers, protect marine, boat and tackle industry jobs, and ensure the long-term sustainability of our Nation's saltwater fisheries. For more information, call 888-JOIN-RFA or visit www.joinrfa.org.

[PeggyLee]

 

[Pops Soul]

WOW and they wonder why people go POSTAL !!!

[CaptTB]

This is right in line with the "Oceans of Abundance" plan from EDF and Marine Conservation Biology Institute. One of the "working group" panelists was NJ's very own Congressman Rush Holt!

I had a meeting with the congressman this past winter on the subject of Congressman Pallone's Flexibility in Rebuilding Fisheries legislation (along with 2 other people from SSFFF) and the Congressman asked me for my opinion on the Oceans of Abundance paper as well.

Suffice to say the Congressman and I did not see eye to eye on the merits of this item 

Here is a link to Environmental Defense Fund's summary page on the topic. Click the link to download the PDF (it's only about 12 pages long) and read it. This is what the anti-fishing advocates and elitists want, and CCA has bought into the concept lock, stock and barrel. It's the same concept: If you can afford it then you are allowed to do it.

I always think back to CCA NY's leader Charles Witek (whom I sat next to for a couple years on the Mid-Atlantic Council) who said years ago(and I am paraphrasing here) that the "common man should not be allowed to catch stripers."

Also, while on the council discussing fluke at one point he turned to me and said "you guys are catching all MY fluke." You guys being the for-hire industry, whom he and much of CCA believe to be two steps above the Devil, with commercial fishermen being one step above.

Once you read the report feel free to start a thread or continue in this one on the topic, I provided the Congressman with some info (including the Journal Nature report from Dr. Maunder and others) refuting some of the underlying "science" used by EDF et. al. to support their claims.

Capt.TB

[IrishAyes]

These people are a bunch of whackos. 

If they had their way everyone would be sitting at home sipping wine and listening to opera. To them, it's their way or no way.

[Fishin Dude]

With Lonegans plan, this might fit right in here in Jersey.

Lonegan calls for less state spending by cutting DEP, community affairs departments
by Chris Megerian/The Star-Ledger
Wednesday March 04, 2009, 7:40 PM

AP Photo/Mike Dere
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan in an April 11, 2005 file photo. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan today vowed to severely curtail government spending if elected, saying he would slash several state departments and eliminate the state's tax rebate program.

Among those on Lonegan's chopping block are the departments of Environmental Protection, Community Affairs, Health and Senior Services, and Labor and Workforce Development. He said he would combine "essential functions" -- such as labor law and pollution regulation -- into other departments and discontinue "redundant" programs.

"The state government has exploded, three times the rate of inflation," the former Bogota mayor said at the Statehouse today.

He also said tax cuts would eliminate the need for the rebate program, very popular in a state with the highest property taxes in the country.

"They're a pure political gimmick," he said. "This is an income redistribution scheme."

Gov. Jon Corzine is expected to unveil a $29 billion budget on Tuesday, down from $32.9 billion in spending he approved last year. Lonegan said he would look to cut the budget even further, to less than $25.5 billion.

He described the current budget as "redundancies on top of redundancies on top of silliness," and insisted that cutting programs and consolidating agency functions would help eliminate about $4 billion in spending.

Lonegan's favorite target at the press conference was the "anti-business" Department of Environmental Protection. He described it as "a textbook example of empire building and bureaucratic growth."

He said the department should be downsized -- no more archeological surveys, environmental education or grant programs -- and folded into the Department of State. Oversight of parks, wildlife and fisheries would be given to a new, separate agency.

Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the department, said the agency has already been downsizing, decreasing its work force by 12.7 percent, to 3,026 people, in the last four years.

"I think (Lonegan) is presenting the public with misinformation," she said.

Lonegan's opponent in the Republican primary, former U.S. attorney Chris Christie, has promoted a more activist role for government in attracting business to the state. Christie said companies would be better served by combining certain regulatory efforts and economic programs under one organization.

Lonegan has criticized Christie's program as adding more bureaucracy to government.

"Mr. Christie shares that belief with Governor Corzine, that the state's government is the answer to our problems," he said. "We need to get government out of the way of business".     <'((((><

[Pfishingruven]

These people are a bunch of whackos. 

If they had their way everyone would be sitting at home sipping wine and listening to opera. To them, it's their way or no way.

That would be organic wine and opera played on solar powered stereo equipment...

 

 

[wb]

  "Those who buy the tags can used them any way they desire - take the fish home and eat it, give them as Christmas presents,

ohpleezohpleezohpleez
Santa?

hahahaha that would be a stinker under the tree