If you comm. fish in NC, SC, or Ga, this is disturbing

[capt.CR]

A friend of mine called me this morning to inform me of this mess the feds are trying to pull on our Grouper. I copied this from another site he posted on. Please do what you can to help us out on this. If this needs to be moved to other threads please do so. This may have been brought up before on here, if so, maybe it is worth addressing again.

I, just went to a meeting of the South Atlantic federal marine fisheries in Wilmington last night. There is a new snapper grouper amendment 15a &15b. In order to reduce the catch the amendment will deny commercial fisherman the ability to sell there bag limit caught fish. In other words if you don't buy a federal permit which in NC is 20k, you will no longer be able to sell grouper or snapper. They also said they would do the same thing with KING MACKEREAL next. This will in effect make your state commercial license worthless. In NC federally permitted fisherman catch 93 to 95% of the grouper snapper, 5 to 8% are caught by commercial fisherman under bag limit rules. There 900 federal permits in VA NC SC GA & FL. In NC alone there are 7,000 commercially licensed fisherman. Which means they are going to put 7,000 small guys in NC alone out of business for 900 large companies and will only reduce the catch by 5 to 8%. The other kicker is we didn't even get notified of this meeting, they only notified the federally permitted fisherman. The last straw is some of the 13 members of the council who will decide our fate have federal permits, or there spouses do. If this effects you please get on the marine fisheries web get informed . YOU CAN EMAIL OPPOSITION TO THESE AMENDMENTS TO richard.devictor@safmc.net . They will stop accepting comments on DEC 3.

[SeaBiscuit]

Hey captain Clint,
thanks for the information.
Please don't get me wrong, but I think that this is appropriate regulation. I am not aware of a single commercial fisherman (a person who makes their living catching and selling fish) who would be impacted by this regulation.
In my experience the only folks who sell limits of groupers are recreationals with endorsement to sell. They do not rely on this income to put food on their table, rather they use it to finance their fishing habit.
Putting five folks on a boat without commercial plackards & numbers, commercial safety gear & federal grouper snapper permit and selling 25 groupers is unethical and should be illegal, IMO.
SeaBiscuit

[bwhitaker]

I understand there may be another meeting coming up in Atlantic Beach? Was there any mention of that? If so, please post the details. Notification on this last one was poor.

SeaBiscuit has the right idea in my opinion. Although, some commercial fisherman who fish full time on fully legal boats will be impacted. For example, when we do a 2-3 day king trip we bottom fish at night for a couple hours. Sometimes that makes a diference, especially on a slow trip. Even if we are only talking the 2 day bag limits.

Was there any mention of the king mackerel tournaments selling fish?

Thanks,

Barry

[SeaBiscuit]

I understand there may be another meeting coming up in Atlantic Beach? Was there any mention of that? If so, please post the details. Notification on this last one was poor.

SeaBiscuit has the right idea in my opinion. Although, some commercial fisherman who fish full time on fully legal boats will be impacted. For example, when we do a 2-3 day king trip we bottom fish at night for a couple hours. Sometimes that makes a diference, especially on a slow trip. Even if we are only talking the 2 day bag limits.

Was there any mention of the king mackerel tournaments selling fish?

Thanks,

Barry

Barry,
good point. I assume you are talking about commercial folks who have king mack permits, but not grouper snapper, correct? I don't doubt that there may be some such folks out there, but could anyone make a living king mackerel fishing year round? I consider that a highly seasonal cool month of the year fishery primarily.
I agree that a properly documented professional commercial fisherman ought to be able to sell their legal limit of any species for which such a limit exists
All the full time commercial fishermen that I know, maintain all federal permits and participate in multiple fisheries seasonally.
SeaBiscuit

[bwhitaker]

SeaBiscuit - You are correct! Hopefully we'll be adding the grouper permit to ours very soon. If we don't go broke bft and king fishing first!

[SeaBiscuit]

SeaBiscuit - You are correct! Hopefully we'll be adding the grouper permit to ours very soon. If we don't go broke bft and king fishing first!

I hear ya Barry. The life of a commercial fisherman sure isn't easy! Good luck on the tuners and kings. I hope you have your grouper ticket soon!
SeaBiscuit

[Stormtrooper]

I was at the meeting and everything the South Atlantic Council is proposing is based on extremly flawed data.They plan on getting rid of "Professional" commercial Grouper/Snapper permits also because they say that there are 900 at the moment and the fishery cannot support that many.The number they would like to see is as low as 50!They have a Gag grouper ammendment on the table that would drop commercial harvest by 37% from 1.1 million pounds (gutted weight) to 694,000lbs.The recreational bag limit will be dropped to 1 per person.So i guess this will create over fishing of Reds and Scamps because the commercial guy has to compensate somewhere.They plan on dropping Beeliner harvest by 61%.They propose nothing to viablely increase biomass in the complex only to back the commercial guy and all businesses that make money off the fishery into a corner.So it's not only the Recreational right to sell guy on the ropes here,even though they make up less than 10%.Instead of creating a black market they could easily seperate the federal quota from the Rec/state quota and not step on anyones toes.They get rid of the Rec guy and they loose the only data collection avenue they have for Recs and do nothing for the fishery.This goes to vote by March and then to Congress.Oh SeaBass fisherman you might want to look for new ways to use your pots because Amendment 15a is a doozy.

[capt.CR]

SeaBiscuit,

I'm not taking you the wrong way, but you missed my point. I should have explained better. I agree with you on the fact that guys shouldn't be able to load up umpteen people and go whack grouper and get paid. Most of the guys selling, as bwhitaker stated are those of us trying to suplement the crappy (except for lately) price we get on the mackerel. We can't have more than three people on board anyway. So no more than 15 can get killed a trip, assuming we can get on the Gags. With the price of fishing these days, having those fish make a huge difference for us day boats. This is why this sucks. I have no problem with regulation just make it fair. You are also right that you can't really make a living catching mackerel year round. Most of us in this situation charter fish or do something else during the warmer months. This just gets us by during the winter. (Barely)

There is another meeting coming up next week I believe in Morehead. I will post when and where as soon as I get the info.

[swell rider]

This is a topic that I jumped on ,on another site. I've made my living as a fisherman both sport and commercial since 1984. I spent 22 yrs commercial fishing in Alaska. I know how hard it is to make a living fishing, I belive that if a guy makes his living as a King fisherman he should be able to sell his Bag limit of other species. The problem I have is the Rec guy with the state license selling his catch, if you don't make your living fishing leave it for the guys who do. It's like with the BFT $28 and your a commercial fisherman, file taxes as a fisherman keep your license, can't prove you fish for a living, your out bottom line. A full time charter fisherman in my eye's is a commercial fisherman as well, if anybody should be able to suppliment there income it should be them.. I lived thru the IFQ program up in AK. It knocks alot of really good fisherman out of the box , my suggestion is when they impliment the IFQ system and the will, buy as much quota up as you can when it becomes avalible. I watched Halibut go from $3 a share=1lb to over $20 in 3 or 4 yrs. made alot of guy rich.It's coming boys get ready.

[squirtis]

Thanks for bringing this up Clint...

I would like to offer an opinion.

When you cut something out of the pie, somebody loses out obviously. The question here is who loses out.

IMO by cutting out the recreational catch guy at 5-7% of the catch will do a couple of things.

1. Not effect the amount of grouper being taken (if they claim that its bs)

2. Cause the commercial guys to petition a "raised" limit on grouper the next year

note: I have several friends who commercial fish, one of them is VERY COMMERCIAL ONLY...and having worked for him from time to time for the experience, I have seen first hand how hard it can be to make money in the business and would not like to see any regulation get harder for him or those like him.

That being said, for every action there is a reaction.....

There are a lot of rec boaters who will sell there catch to offset the costs of fishing. In my opinion, stopping them will not stop the catch....

Also, taking the ability for them to add those fish to the market will not help commercial fisherman in price, c'mon 5% less supply??

The recreational guy who is a hardcore fisherman and sells some of his catch or goes mackarel fishing in the winter is goinig to be hampered on how much fishing he can do a year now because he cannot supplement the cost by selling some of his catch, guess what, that gets passed on to the next guy....the fuel dock, the tackle shop, the mechanic, and eventually the already sickly new/used boat sales industry will take yet another hit.

All I am saying is they need to make sure they look at the reaction of there action passed the initial affect.


just my long winded opinion

Curtis