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If the commercial landings quota isn't increased, I don't have an issue with expanding the area in which stripers can be caught. I can see Baldwin's point in not wanting to artificially select for small-sized fish, but the flipside in that argument is that allowing harvest of fish in all areas will promote genetic diversity, as long as all effort does not concentrate on the "larger offshore cows". I have a feeling that, as macojoe said, because of gas prices, some fishermen will continue to target the inshore fish. We will also be able to find out what the deal is with the fish offshore. People will find out where they are, and we may be able to get better figures on relative abundance, migration patterns, etc. This opening of the EEZ could actually be good for the striped ones.
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