[JohnR]

Whereas the RFA may have stepped on their cr..., uh well, shoes with this one that does not mean that the RFA/Rec sector is now infested with the self righteous, corrupt, mob connected types and that the commercial sector is all honest, underdog, level headed, forward thinking people. It's not like commercial fisherman have never been caught with their hand in the cookie jar either. Remember the Fulton fish market??? What was it, couple hundred thousand pounds of unreported fluke??? All hush hush under the table??? Or the DEP guy from Rhode Island or what about the town enviromental police type fellow from Truro last year, found cleaning the eggs out of female lobsters so he could sell them at his fish market??? You're going to find more corruption in any area that worships the almighty dollar, no matter what side of the fence you fall on. Sure, most people are honest - maybe as much as 70% of the people are honest but you don't have wolves guarding the hen house now do you (or however that old saying goes). Yet you look at most of your advisory commitees and state DEMs that have a much stronger levy of commerical interest types on board then recreational or biologists/scientists and you correctly assume that there doing what is best for the fish for the longterm??? Hell no. They want as much as they can get today, not next week. And look where it gets us. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that if the RFA looks after there own interests first, keeping the tuna and billfish open which in turn keeps their big boat sales going (who will spend a million on a boat to chase bluefish). And the vast majority of commercials on advisory commitees are there to keep the quotas up...

If this goes under the microscope and it turns out that the RFA has screwed up, that will not help their cause, which BTW is to more to keep the pelagic species from extinction (and sell a couple extra Viking Yachts in the process)... Not as much focus comes from the RFA on the striped bass or the codfish does it??? (although the RFA did work towards removing/limiting some of the reduction boats which was a good thing...)