http://www.njoutdooralliance.org/traps/reef.htmlBELMAR — With a recent assurance of support from state environmental Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson, leaders of a movement to ban commercial fishing traps from New Jersey's artificial reefs said Tuesday they are re-mobilizing support in the state Legislature for a proposed trap ban.
"We need to get the votes from people all over the state . . . We need to get momentum," said state Sen. Sean T. Kean, R-Monmouth, whose bill (S-336) could be approved soon by the full Senate.
Kean nearly got the measure through the Legislature's last session, but was stymied in the Assembly. He told anglers meeting in the Taylor Pavilion here that the pressure point is Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., D-Camden, whom Kean said held up the reefs bill last January at the behest of the Garden State Seafood Association, a commercial fishing trade group.
Advocates of a trap ban contend that commercial lobster and fish traps laid around some of the 15 artificial reefs collect too many fish and interfere with the ability of hook-and-line anglers and sport divers to use the reefs. Commercial fishermen say the state-run artificial reef program that began in 1984 was designed to benefit them too, and say critics are exaggerating spatial conflicts on the reefs.
But the Reef Rescue group, a coalition of recreational users, now has some backing from the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Anthony P. Mauro Sr., chairman of the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance.
"We went to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service" to question whether the reefs, managed in part with federal revenue-sharing funds from excise taxes on recreational fishing tackle, can also accommodate commercial trapping, Mauro said. He contends allowing fixed-gear trapping on the reefs puts New Jersey's program out of compliance with the federal Sportfish Restoration Act.
The federal wildlife service in turn asked the DEP, and on May 22, Mauro got a letter from David Chanda, who heads the DEP's Division of Fish and Wildlife. In the letter, Chanda assured Mauro that the state agency will support legislation to remove traps from two reef sites within state waters, and ask the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to do the same for the 13 other New Jersey sites in federal waters beyond three miles of shore.
Federal wildlife officials "are explicit that such use cannot interfere with the purposes for which the lands are managed" using federal wildlife dollars, Chanda wrote.
