Response from The Director of RIDEM

[piemma]

In my opinion, she is a very honorable woman. She sent me another email thanking me for my concern and indicating that she will do all in her power to change this.
She is incumbered by national laws and laws that prevent discrimination against out-of-state fishermen. As she stated in her original response to me, there was a movement to ban pair trawling in general but it was voted against because there were RI commercial interests who wanted it to stay in place. Of course, now the RI comms are rethinking their position as the big boats from out of state are trumping them.

[ivanputski]

Some of the RI commercial fishermen cant see beyond the end of their own nose when pounding their drum for laws that will help them. When they push hard to put laws in place to protect their own livelihood, they often don't see that these same laws just might make it possible for giant out of state boats to come in and clean out their local waters. Their own short-sightedness just might be coming back to bite them in their own backside...

Watch them scramble now in a "No no... that's not what we meant we wanted! We meant the law was only supposed to let US take tons of fish... not someone else!" It seems like it's only OK to rape the ocean if you are the one benefiting from it financially.

It really sucks that the state of RI only gets a few hundred bucks out of all this... Everyone loses on this one, except the pair trawlers.

Despite the response from the recent events, change (if any) will take years...

[MarshCappa]

Nice to see a response like that. Good for you in contacting her. Keep it up.