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JohnR, I have no idea what your motivations are or who you are affiliated with to state such blatant misinformation. I won't waste my time going into it with you because the facts or many published books and reports. There are many sites on the internet as well. The legal amount of fish allotted may be lower to comms than recs but the kill enormous on the comms side. ENORMOUS.
Here is an example of hundreds if thousands:
From Keith Walters:
UP THE CREEK FRIDAY 3-5-04
"We picked up 11 illegal nets yesterday," a Natural Resources Police (NRP)
officer told me recently. None of the nets had the required buoys marked
with the fisherman's license number, it could be concluded the nets were
illegal, or had been abandoned. Some people call these freed, or lost,
gill nets "Ghost Nets." They have been mostly previously-illegal
monofilament that is more deadly than the old nylon material, and the
now-legal "multi-filament" (two strands make it legal now) material has an
estimated 50-plus year life; it keeps catching and killing for years. This
change from the old nylon net to the deadly twin-strand mono sometimes
called "crystal" due to its clarity in the water, was actively supported
by Pete Jensen in his previous incarnation as Fisheries Director.
After the officer's net confiscation, some people indicated an interest in
buying the illegal nets (back?). The NRP cop I'll call Officer X for good
reasons, couldn't believe the economics of that situation. If someone
admitted ownership, the fine could be as low as $150 to get back a net
costing $300 or so. (Judges often return net to poachers after they pay
their fines, I was told by another officer at headquarters).
"Bidness-wise" that chap better get a job on land; he has no future as a
striper-poacher.
Officer X saw a broken balloon floating on the surface and motored over to
it, thinking it might be a marker like the small corks or tiny floats
poachers use to mark their nets. The balloon was free floating, but X
looked down into the water and saw an unmarked gill net. He and his
partner picked it up, then found another, and another, etc., and
confiscated them, too. After they pulled in several more nets, they went
back to the place they found the first one; X had marked it on his GPS.
They circled around with grappling hooks and - guess what? - more
unbuoyed, unmarked gill net. Some nets were free-floating; others had
anchors. They soon had so much net in the boat they had to proceed to
shore slowly so they wouldn't swamp their small boat.
As we talked, X admitted the NRP has had trouble with state officials
getting poachers off after the officers have made a good case, "Even
testified AGAINST us," another X told me. That is very demoralizing. Your
own bosses testify against you in court after you've worked hard,
sometimes undercover, to make a case.
"We are getting a lot of illegal net," a supervisor told me, "compared
with past years, it's about the same yardage. They [poachers] are not
getting any more honest as time goes by."
No wonder so many NRP officers support the twin bills in the Maryland
Legislature that would meld the NRP and Park Rangers into the Maryland
State Police - to get the politics out.
Will the NRP ever get free of the DNR crook-protectors? I doubt it.
Government agencies rarely give up a piece of their turf without a fight.
If you are not a comm then you must be for the recs. Greed is the only thing comms are about and therefore they must be dealt with a heavy hand as they do with recs. Do you think the last moratorium was do to recs? There are 100 times more rec striper fishermen now than in the early 80s. It was due to bad management and typically greedy business men who influenced government to look the other way and still do. Get with it man or you'll be looking at another moratorium.
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