http://oneanglersvoyage.blogspot.com...interests.html
thanks Mike Jones for putting a link to it on the MSBA facebook page
and this is the jist of it here copy and pasted
Thus, a fisherman may only harvest a very small percentage of the total landings for any species. But if that species accounts for a big percentage of that fisherman’s income, and he sits on a Council or ASMFC, you can pretty well be that he will be more interested in maintaining a healthy cash flow, rather than a healthy fish stock.
When you’re worried about paying the bills next month, you’re not too concerned about rebuilding the codfish, or the striped bass, within the next decade.
And decisions made, and votes cast, by folks with those kinds of worries have been setting back fisheries management efforts since the first such efforts were made.
It is long past time for a new paradigm.
A conflict of interests occurs any time “a direct or indirect financial interest…conflicts with the fair and impartial conduct of official duties.”
If anyone worries that a proposed conservation or management measure would, if passed, have an adverse impact on their income, they must be barred from casting a vote that reflects such concern.