[MakoMike]

Please read this all the way through before responding.

As many of you know, I sit on the Recreational Advisory panel for the New England Fisheries Management Council. I represent you, the public, and I would like to hear your views on a proposed change. This change is only a proposal, the council has not hear it yet and probably won’t be presented with it until some time in the fall.

The New England Fisheries Management Council is considering some changes in the way the Total Allowable Catch is allocated and controlled in the recreational sector for northeast groundfish management. For recreational anglers this will primarily mean, cod, haddock and winter flounder.

For the Shore anglers/ Private Boat modes, nothing would change. There would no allocation of the allowable catch and the catch would continue to be accounted for (believe it or not) as natural mortality.

For the Charter/party boat mode things would change:
First, there would be an allocation of the allowable catch to the charter/party boat fleet. This would mean that, as long as the fleet did not exceed its allocated part of the catch, its portion of the allowable catch would not be reduced, in the event that the total allowable catch was exceeded. This could, and probably would result, over time, in the party/charter boats having different catch limits than the shore/private boat anglers.

Secondly, there would be limited entry into the charter/party boat mode. A control date would be established, and no additional permits would be issued to charter/party boats to fish for northeast multispecies. Current thinking is that there are presently about 500 permitted charter/party boats in the fishery and that the allocated part of the allowable catch would only allow about 350 boats to participate profitably. So some sort of catch history would have to be used to select the 350 boats that would be allowed to continue fishing. This would have the effect of “kicking out” some boats currently in the fleet and reducing the number of boats than anglers have available. A secondary effect is, in my opinion, that, eventually, if not immediately, the fees that the remaining boats charge anglers are likely to rise.

If you’ve read this far, I would like you to answer the following questions: