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Can the striped bass sustain the pressure? Incredible how many of these fish are already harvested by all sides, commercial, rec., party and charter. I'm dumbfounded at the amount of meat that gets taken on the southwest Ledge on Block Island. We're going to be sorry if we keep the pressure up. We need to be smart--I don't know if a group of managers and scientists can be smart. In a funny way they are too smart and therefore trip on their toes. These groups have gotten too big--they behave like the tower of babel, all the jargon and data--whatever happened to eyes.
And yet the whole commercial side--because of the very tight quotas on other species like scup and haddock and yellowtail flounder; plus the whole coming of fleet consolidation and allocation grabbing--where the benefit goes to those with the deepest pockets---the small boat commercial fisherman in many Atlantic States, feels that it is his/her American Right to harvest striped bass at a higher level. It's a mess Paul. A total mess. People need to be smart about this. I like one fish per day. But I don't own a charter boat and I don't sell them. And I don't think that striped bass has caused the collapse of the southern New England lobster fishery. . .
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