Quote:
Originally Posted by Sashamy
I want to know how old all of you nay sayers are?
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60 and I've been involved in this since the fight for the 200 mile limit. I watched us mis-manage stock after stock. The ocean could, if given the opportunity, supply far more fish and have a much greater economic value then it presently does if we would just quit regulating it with a short term view. But we just keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
How can anyone put any trust in ASMFC when they make statements like the one below on weakfish:
"The reduction in harvest has resulted from a drastic decline in weakfish biomass since 1996. Over the last decade, while fishing mortality has been modest and stable, natural mortality (deaths due to predation, starvation, and other natural causes) has increased to levels previously unseen. The result is a weakfish stock not subject to overfishing, but which is, nonetheless, depleted."
I would think that once a stock has reached the level of being "depleted", any fishing would be overfishing. Yet ASMFC continues to allow both recreational and commercial fishing for weakfish. Sure fishing may not have caused the stock to reach this level but stopping fishing is the one quick tool we have to protect the fish while we try to resolve the base issue.
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