Quote:
Originally Posted by MakoMike
The key take away for the purposes of this discussion is that the ACLs will be designed to keep the biomass at MSY. In the case of stripers the biomass is already above MSY, so there will be no tightening of the regulations. You can bitch and moan about it all you want, it won't affect national policy unless and until you get your Congressmen and Senators to change the rules of the game. Right now the ASMFC would be breaking the law to enact stricter regulation on stripers.
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Problem is the MSY can be the most manipulated number of all of aspects of requlation. Even ASMFC guidelines allow for adjustment based on human factors. Plus they would not be breaking the law on this in that they can adjust the MSY. The only real hard number is if they drop below the target guidelines that forces them to take action but then target numbers will change as you adjust MSY.
Determining the MSY is based on so many factors the number is close to being a pull out of your butt number. The main factor being it has to be determined on the whole bio-mass rather then just stripers. If we were looking at reaching the MSY for just stripers we would stop all bunker fishing and reduce herring, mack and squid harvest to ensure a larger food supply for stripers so the ocean could support more. If we were looking to max out the MSY harvest of bunker we would try to kill all of the bluefish and stripers. Here is where ASMFC comes into play in that they are trying to set this balancing act. You do not need to have congress change anything. You need to get ASMFC to put more focus on increasing the major food fish (stripers, blues, fluke ..) MSY. This can be done by protecting the prey fish by recognizing that the MSY needs to be lower for them because we need them to feed the food fish to support higher MSY for them.
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