Patrick is famous in NJ
 

Nice, but can he divert traffic off the Trenton Makes bridge and jam things up around the State House to send the message?

link only shows local trenton news(?)

Link works for me. The title of the article is "Sides line up to debate fishing measure."

maybe you are a subscriber, that link only takes you to the homepage of the news
once there you can do a search in the site for Patrick Paquette

Not a subscriber, and the link takes me right to the article. I wonder why the difference?

link works in Chrome, but not firefox

maybe that's why

Still strange, I'm using Firefox. :confused:

HEY MAKO copy and paste the article
to a rich text document
then paste it here

With economic pain spreading — from a downsizing New England fishing fleet to the continued depression of the New Jersey recreational industry from superstorm Sandy — fishing industry advocates are pressing for changes to the federal fisheries law and environmental groups are fighting to keep reforms they won years ago.

Congress will be moving toward reauthorizing the 1996 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a reform measure that aimed to end decades of overfishing in American waters, and by many measures has succeeded. But it’s come at a stiff economic price in some regions, with fewer recreational fishermen paying to catch fewer fish and commercial crews fishing fewer days.

Amendments to the law proposed by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, would give those economic factors a bigger role in government management and decision making, allowing easing the timelines for rebuilding depleted fish stocks.

Doing that “would waste years of effort ... all in the name of short-term economics,” warned George Geiger, a Florida charter fishing captain and longtime member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, in a Friday telephone news conference organized by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Philadelphia-based Pew foundation has been a major financial backer of efforts to change fisheries management, and it’s made the group a nemesis of both the commercial and recreational fishing sectors. Those fishing advocates have been getting more political traction — their allies in Congress recently won a modest $75 million fishery disaster-aid package in the new federal budget — and they hope a hearing in Washington Tuesday will help their cause of liberalizing fishing rules.

“These guys are trying to sandbag this,” Jim Hutchinson Jr. of the New Jersey-based Recreational Fishing Alliance said of his Pew rivals. “We’ve had eight hearings over the last three years” with Congress hearing fishermen’s complaints, he said.

One persistent complaint from New Jersey captains has been over the recreational fishing data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They say it’s not accurate enough to use for setting catch levels or reducing catches when managers think anglers take too many fish.

Pew ally Patrick Paquette, a New England fisherman, said that data is getting better with new survey techniques. But there’s a basic problem, acknowledged Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations: NOAA doesn’t have enough money and resources to do its job properly, he said.

i've yet to hear one biologist on the EAST Coast tally up the harvested
Fish /lobsters in tonnage by our ever increasing Seal Population

they ACT like this is merely an extension of SEA world :hs:

He's not a biologist, but I believe Nils Stolpe recently wrote a piece that did exactly that.

Hey thats me. The following comments and my involvement in the MSA debates is not done on behalf of any organization that I serve or represent.

The US Congress is one year into the debate over reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Act. I testified before the US Senate last Spring suggesting that instead of allowing more time to end overfishing (a scientific term) and extending rebuilding timelines that congress focus more on subjects like mandating that the economic impact of recreational fisheries be considered in management plans, that forage species contribution to healthy fishy stocks be included in management plans and that the ever so slow roll out of the MRIP recreational data collection plan be accelerated.

The first draft of what will be many versions over the next year was written by US Rep "Doc" Hastings and in my opinion it has many flaws. I decided to join the press call so that recreational subjects would be included the debate.

Yes, there were environmental groups involved but there is no secret that I will work with pretty much any group that shares common goals that benefit the recreational fishing community. Pew has backed our North East fight over the effects being felt by the Atlantic Herring and Mackerel mid water trawlers. EDF has backed efforts of for hire captains in Southern New England trying to establish electronic reporting so their fleet can reduce uncertainty in recreational catch data and hopefully access a higher portion of available allocation.

The current language in MSA has allowed enough flexibility for Gulf of Maine Cod to be in a rebuilding plan for 20 straight years and that has HURT recreational fishing in New England. Wait until you hear what is about to happen to recreational Haddock fishing. (rolling eyes now).

Many people that don't have the time to actually attend the technical meetings and gain an inside understanding of how the plans work feel the work "flexibility" is going to get us more fish. Sorry but it won't work the way this draft legislation is proposing.

I agree with the comments that environmental factors such as seals need to be addressed however this legislation also ignores these factors as well.

I will say that it's not really worth getting into a huge public debate of this draft as it is well known that Alaska Sen Begich is due to release his version any day and there are at least four other versions also being released in the coming months.

Next September or so we will likely have great debates over this but since my name got posted here I decided I would chime in at least one time.

I was waiting for you to chime into this thread Pat. :)

Thanks Patrick :btu:

maybe congress will include it instead of just "considering" it

Here is another view from yet another radical that put in his time…lol

http://www.reel-time.com/articles/co...sea-of-change/