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Keep the EEZ Safe for Stripers
Here is a letter I wrote up to address the latest striped bass fishery management problem. Just copy it, add your name, and send to each of our CT congressional representatives, senate and house. Don't just "like" it, that won't save our fishery. Do it.
Dear ______________ ,
(Representative)
I am writing to voice my opposition to HR3070, which would open up a section of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between Montauk and Block Island to harvest of striped bass. The EEZ is federally-regulated waters that extend from the limits of state jurisdiction, three miles offshore, to the limit of our territorial waters, 200 miles offshore. The EEZ was closed to both commercial and recreational fishing for striped bass after a serious population crash in the early 1980s, because it was deemed necessary to protect the large females that are found there and necessary for the rebound of the stocks. There was currently a moratorium on striper fishing which, along with tight regulation, brought them back from near extinction to numbers still touted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) as their greatest fisheries restoration success.
After a stunning comeback in the early 1990s, the biomass of spawning-age female striped bass again started to slide. Last year (2015), the ASMFC mandated a 20% coastwide reduction in striper harvest, in hopes of preventing another all-out crash. This cutback was admittedly given a 50% chance of achieving its restoration goal, and many put the needed reduction at 50%. This year, they said that it is too early yet to determine the impact that this reduction has had on the fishery. Common sense dictates that it would be a foolish move to expand the fishery (especially opening up waters that were deemed necessary to close to rebuild after the first crash) during a time when we are supposedly tightening up in order to restore the ailing fishery.
Poaching by both recreational and commercial fishermen is well known to be rampant along the striped bass’s range, and fisheries managers can’t put an estimate on the magnitude of illegal harvest. In these times of difficult financial situations, fisheries enforcement is operating on a shoestring with few officers patrolling impossibly large expanses of sea. The EEZ is already difficult to enforce. Opening it up to legal striped bass fishing would expand the number of boats fishing there by many times, making enforcement that much more difficult.
This fishery is very important to the states of the Atlantic seaboard from North Carolina to Maine. In addition to the money and jobs supported by the commercial fisheries, recreational fishing for striped bass is the main contributor to salt water fishing licenses, bait and tackle shops, bait fishermen, marinas, boat sales, guides and charter boats, motels and restaurants near fishing destinations and many other endeavors that keep Americans working and put money into the economy.
In conclusion, the striped bass provides the most important saltwater recreational fishery on the Atlantic coast, providing huge amounts of money to the American economy as well as an important commercial fishery. It also provides sportsmen with a superb gamefish that is readily accessible from both shore and boat, and caught with bait, lure or fly.
We’ve already been through a near extinction of the striped bass as a commercial and recreational fishery, brought back from the brink only by the actions of the fishermen who pressured the federal government to act in time to prevent total disaster. We are again at the point where government agencies are enacting changes in hopes of preventing a recurrence of the same magnitude. The right path is obviously to continue the closure of striped bass fishing in the EEZ, as the safeguard that was put in place in 1990 as a refuge intended to protect this fishery from collapse.
I care very deeply about this fishery, and I vote. Vote against HR3070.
Thank you,
_____________________________
(Full Name)
______________________________________________
______________________________________________
(Address)
____________________________________________
(Phone)
_____________________________________________
(email)
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