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I went to a fishing club meeting and we had a couple DMF speakers present what they do. (count fish, fishermen and data analysis and collection) at the end of their polished PP presentation they asked...any questions? I looked around and no one was making any movements in the audience. I raised my hand and said...Yeah, I have a lot of questions, first, don't take what I am about to say personally, I am sure you are good people but you have done a terrible job and have a real credibility problem as well as a pubic image problem.
Lots of questions but when I got to the Cod status..he said...well cod have been over fished now for decades and we think golbal warming is causeing a problem as well.
I said....Global warming always seems to be the political scapegoat for everything these days but weren't you in charge of regulating fishing limits for the last few decades? How come you didn't do anything if you knew we were overfishing ? How come you let the hoards of fisherman take large breeder cod in known breeding areas when you knew the population was trying to recover? How come you didn't act in a conservative manner so that if you were unsure about the stock size we would not collapse the fishery. You did the same thing for SB! You were in charge when the stock collapsed! How could you let it get to a point where you nearly wipe them out and need to have a moratorium to save the species? That is not conservative management!
...This went on for a while. Nice people but they have their head up their ass and have been pressured by commercial fishing industry to squeeze the fishery for all it is worth.
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