They?re back again.
For the third time since 2009, the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina plans to seek ?gamefish? status for three species of fish ? striped bass, red drum, and speckled trout.
CCA, a non-profit group that promotes sport fishing interests, lobbied to have bills introduced in the General Assembly in 2009 and 2011. Both attempts died in committee.
Stephen Ammons, executive director of CCA of North Carolina, said yesterday that the group will try again and that he expects a bill to be introduced in the General Assembly next week.
It would be similar, he said, to bills that have been introduced in the past.
The bill would stipulate that the three fish can be caught only by hook-and-line and only by recreational fishermen.
The fish would be off limits to commercial fishermen and could not be bought, sold, or traded. They would, therefore, no longer be available to consumers ? in markets or in restaurants.
?This is an economic issue for North Carolina,? Ammons said yesterday. ?These three fish are worth more as recreational fisheries than as commercial fisheries.?
Recreational fishermen catch more of each species than do commercial watermen, the thinking goes. The recreational fishermen spend money to catch these fish, so groups such as CCA think that giving them all of the fish would bring in even more money.
Since the commercial catch of the three fish is so low, nobody will miss it. And the 2011 version of the bill provided $1 million to compensate some watermen for loss of income.
Obviously, the well-funded and powerful CCA thinks the third time will be the charm.
On the other hand, commercial fishermen and the communities in which they live see nothing charming about giving up even what is their meager share. Most of these men and women make their living by cobbling together catches from several different fisheries, depending on the season.
At one time, such groups as CCA argued that they wanted gamefish status to conserve the species. But no more.
Now it?s all about the fact that people who fish for fun are more valuable to the economy than those small business folks who fish for a living.
Also, in the past, most of the supporters and sponsors of the gamefish bill have been from inland districts, not the coast.
Paul Tine, Dare and Hyde counties? newly elected representative, says he is against the gamefish bill and always has been.
?The commercial fishermen get only 10 percent of those three fish now,? he said. ?I don?t know why we have to pick winners and losers of what is a public trust commodity.?
Tine adds that, ?We should be managing the species for all, not one group over another.?
According to the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, commercial fishermen caught 91,951 pounds of red drum in 2011, while recreational anglers caught 212,245 pounds. For striped bass, those numbers are 410,685 pounds to commercial fishermen and 2.04 million pounds to recreational anglers. And, finally, the commercial watermen caught 73,119 pounds of speckled trout compared to the 403,160 caught by the recreational sector.
So now the CCA and some other groups want to take all of those three fish and give everything to recreational fishermen so they can have more fun and the state can make more money off what they spend to go fishing.
If you do not own a boat, cannot afford to hire one, or have no inclination to fish from a beach or a pier, you will no longer have access to stripers, or drum, or speckled trout.
Reserving a public marine resource for one user group and cutting out folks who make a modest living catching a modest amount of these three fish is nothing short of, at best, arrogant and misguided and, at worst, elitist and just plain greedy.
Finally, I am going to close this third blog on gamefish status as I did the first two by quoting Ernie Foster of Hatteras village, who wrote a guest column in the Island Free Press in 2007 when President Bush declared gamefish status for red drum and striped bass in federal waters.
I want to note that Ernie, like his father and uncles before him, makes a living taking recreational fishermen on charters on his three boats in the Albatross Fleet. But he, like so many others, has fished commercially when he?s not running charters. He knows and understands the value and contribution of both fisheries.
Here is part of what Ernie wrote:
?According to an article in The Washington Post, the executive director of Maryland?s CCA, Robert Glenn, believes that striped bass are too valuable to be ?plundered for commercial sale.? Killing for fun is good. Feeding others within highly controlled harvest restrictions is bad. Go figure.
?As you look up and down the coast, from Maine to Key West, in every marina you see boats, boats, and more boats. Most are pleasure craft. Does anyone believe that people are buying such expensive toys, with their discretionary dollars, because they are not having fun? And yet, the notion prevails that we must get rid of professional fishermen so that we will have even more fun.
Even more fun? We are already having fun, folks. Otherwise, we would not be spending our money on the charters, the boats, and the tackle. Do we really need to wipe out fellow citizens financially, socially and geographically so that we can have even more fun? I was taught a lot of lessons growing up in Hatteras, going to public schools, and at the university. Choosing even more fun over the welfare of my fellow citizens was not one of them.
How have we come to this point, this place, where it has become public policy to prevent our professional fishermen from providing a product to the American consumer? What is driving politicians to approve policy and regulations that eliminate a significant part of our coastal heritage and that eliminate independent businessmen from taking care of themselves and their families? Have we, as a nation, come to believe that all seafood must be imported, unless you are one of the approximately 3 percent of American citizens who personally fish in saltwater? How elitist is a national policy that bars all but 3 percent of our citizens from acquiring an abundant, nationally controlled, natural resource??
If you are as outraged as many of us here on Hatteras and Ocracoke are about this bill, write your North Carolina representatives, and please do it now. You can find their contact information at www.ncleg.gov.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION
Article on gamefish bill from January 2012:
http://islandfreepress.org/2012Archives/01.11.2012-BillToReserveThreeSpeciesIncludingRedDrumForRecreationalAnglersIsBack.html
Killing fish for fun instead of for food, Part II from March 18, 2011:
http://islandfreepress.org/PivotBlog/?e=135
Why recreational anglers think they deserve gamefish status for red drum and speckled trout from May 11, 2009:
http://islandfreepress.org/PivotBlog/?e=24
Killing fish for fun instead of food from April 8, 2009:
http://islandfreepress.org/PivotBlog/index.php?e=10
Politicians and the end of fishing: Is choosing fun over food the new American Dream?
Oct. 26, 2007
http://islandfreepress.org/Archives/2007.10.26-GuestColumnErnieFoster.html
