New regulations starting May 1st are going to seriously reduce the amount of groundfish discards while at sea. Boats won't be required to discard that bycatch, they'll be allowed to land it and that poundage is taken out of a total quota. It's part of the new NE shift to Sectors.
Now whether or not sectors will work in the NE ports is a completely different debate... no comment.
Islander, I understand you're pissed, and you have every right to be. But please realize that not all people at noaa/nmfs are "nerds". Some are in management, and make the rules/regs. Others strictly perform research and are devoted towards providing the best possible data for fisheries management. And there's entire divisions of noaa devoted towards working with fishermen to obtain quality data. Some of us are a little more united than you might think
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