Bill to be Reintroduced
A last-chance attempt to ban commercial fishing gear from New Jersey's artificial reefs failed Monday, but the bill's prime sponsor says he will reintroduce it in the new Legislature, even as the state Department of Environmental Protection prepares a seasonal exclusion of fish and lobster traps.
Despite winning clear approval in the state Senate Thursday, the outright trap ban failed to get enough support on the last day of the Assembly session and died with a 42-31 vote to table the measure.
"There are absolutely plans to reintroduce," said Sen. Sean T. Kean, R-Monmouth, who on his last day in the state Assembly sought to force a vote on the measure he authored at the behest of recreational anglers.
Recreational fishing and diving groups that pressed to have commercial gear moved off the fish havens would need to get a new bill introduced to keep the movement going in 2008, and "we are going to figure that out," said James Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance. "Obviously we're very disappointed."
Donofrio said the state's commercial fishing sector lobbied the Assembly leadership in opposition to the bill.
"We've been reaching out at the grass-roots level and at Trenton to get our point across," said Greg DiDomenico, executive director of the Garden State Seafood Coalition. "I think that's what carried the day."
Advocates of a trap ban formed an ad hoc group, Reef Rescue, which has argued that the state's artificial reef sites are overcrowded with commercial traps. Kean and other sympathetic legislators proposed requiring that traps be deployed outside the boundaries of designated reef sites, and a yearlong debate ensued over the history and intent of New Jersey's reef program.
Recreational advocates contended the reefs originated with their community in decades before the DEP created a statewide program in the 1980s. Commercial fishermen insisted the reefs were originally intended to benefit both the recreational and commercial sectors.
The legislation had passed the state Senate unanimously last Thursday and backers hoped the Assembly version would sail through and land on Gov. Corzine's desk for his signature.
"It was probably after midnight when I asked for the Senate bill to be order of the day," and subjected to a vote, Kean said. But he didn't have the support of Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., D-Camden, "and we lost some members who had to leave," Kean said.
Lawmakers "on the spot"
It was a difficult vote for Shore legislators.
"It put a lot of people on the spot, who were trying to have it both ways between their commercial and recreational guys," Kean said.
Last summer, the DEP proposed seasonal reef exclusion rules that would keep lobster and fish traps off the reefs from May through October. That measure is proceeding through the DEP administrative process and could take effect later this year, state Division of Fish and Wildlife Director David Chanda said at last Thursday's meeting of the state Marine Fisheries Council.
"We're in the initial rule-making stages. It would have to go through the process of council review and public comment," said Darlene Yuhas, a DEP spokeswoman.
As planned by DEP officials, the rule would first apply to reefs within the state's three-mile territorial limit. But the agency also plans to ask the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, a quasi-government board with authority in federal waters, to apply the same rule to artificial reefs outside three miles.
The idea of a seasonal exclusion did not satisfy either side during last year's debate over the reefs; recreational advocates said it did not go far enough, while commercial lobstermen said it would ruin their business by kicking them off the reefs during the peak lobster season.
Commercial fishermen said they would agree to a May through Oct. 15 exclusion of fish traps, but want to keep using lobster traps that use sinking line as required by new federal rules, DiDomenico said.
Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728 or kmoore4@asbury.gannett.com
