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OUR MISSION STATEMENT
The stated
purpose of CCA is to advise and educate the public on
conservation of marine resources. The objective of CCA is
to conserve, promote and enhance the present and future
availability of these coastal resources for the benefit and
enjoyment of the general public.
| Coalition seeks to avoid fisheries management "train wreck" |
Overwhelmed agency incapable of properly implementing law
Passage of the 2006 Magnuson-Stevens Act, the overarching law that manages America's marine fisheries, revealed crippling deficiencies within the agency charged with implementing the law. Recently, a coalition of marine angling and industry groups launched an effort to improve the National Marine Fisheries Service's efforts to manage the nation's marine resources and the 13 million saltwater anglers who depend on healthy fisheries.
"We have the most conservation-oriented law we have ever had governing our marine resources, and the agency does not have the data, assessments, science or, frankly, the attitude, to adequately implement it," said Chester Brewer, chairman of CCA's National Government Relations Committee. "The result is that the agency has been reduced to managing fisheries by closure which was not the intent of the law when it was passed by Congress."
In addition to requiring an end to all overfishing by 2011, the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) have a determination on the overfished status of every species under management, and have annual catch limits and accountability measures in place for them by a time certain as well.
"For far too many species, there is not any science at all to do that and to develop it will take one to three years for every single species," said Brewer. "With its startling lack of data, there is no way NMFS can catch up on decades of work and the agency will be crushed by its lack of science. The entire federal management system will be forced to ignore real conservation and management issues, and simply manage by closure. The coalition is seeking a way to fulfill the conservation tenets of the law without driving the entire process into a train wreck."
Current efforts to revise the Magnuson-Stevens Act, including the so-called "flexibility" legislation (H.R.1584 and S.1171) do not address the shortcomings of NMFS that are negatively impacting anglers and, in fact, jeopardize a number of the true conservation gains in the Act.
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| 1 Mar 2010 - 11:33 by CCA North Carolina |
XNews
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| CCA North Carolina Condemns Marine Fisheries Commission's Proclamation on Gill Net Restrictions |
On February 18, 2010 the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC) held a special meeting in New Bern devoted to addressing measures intended to govern the interaction of sea turtles with large mesh monofilament gill nets, nets which are primarily designed and used in North Carolina to catch estuarine Southern flounder.
This past July, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) put the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) on notice that illegal taking of sea turtles had been documented in our state coastal waters, and that the DMF must address this problem in all North Carolina coastal fisheries. To protect sea turtles, temporary rules were implemented last summer. These rules included closing the use of gill nets in several estuarine bodies where high numbers of turtles are found.
Backgound
All sea turtles, found in state coastal waters, are designated as either threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). That designation means that except under a very narrowly defined exception to the law, any take (interaction or other harm) of sea turtles is unlawful. That exception, found in Section 10 of the ESA, provides that the federal agency has discretion to issue an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) allowing for the taking of a limited, specified number of individuals of a species incidental to an ongoing, otherwise lawful, human activity, such as fishing. An ITP may only be issued if doing so will not further threaten the protected species.
In a November 30, 2009 letter NMFS informed DMF that in order for some commercial fisheries to continue, additional closures would be necessary. NMFS instructed DMF to come up with an interim plan to reduce the illegal take of sea turtles while a statewide ITP for all coastal waters was sought. The DMF, together with input from their biologists and NMFS crafted a plan (hereinafter, "Plan A"), which was outlined in a January 11, 2010 letter from DMF to Dr. Roy Crabtree, Regional Southeast Administrator for NMFS.
Inadequate Response
The purpose of the February 18, 2010 meeting of the MFC was to review and approve DMF's proposed measures for protecting sea turtles while traditional fisheries were allowed to continue. However, at that meeting the MFC rejected DMF's Plan A out of hand. Instead, the MFC acted to draft its own measures intended - in the Commission's view - to "protect" sea turtles while allowing traditional fisheries to continue. The measures the MFC adopted will virtually guarantee that many more protected sea turtles are harmed or killed in 2010, thereby violating the ESA. For that reason, this plan (hereinafter, "Plan B") will not be acceptable to NMFS and may result in NMFS closing the entire large mesh gill net fishery.
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| 24 Feb 2010 - 11:39 by CCA North Carolina |
XNews
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| ASMFC Takes Wrong Turn on Striped Bass |
Signs pointing to cause for grave concern met with proposal to up commercial harvest
After hearing a litany of significant concerns about the health of the striped bass population presented by its own Technical Committee and by law enforcement personnel, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board did the last thing anyone expected at its meeting last week - directing staff to draft an addendum to the management plan which would increase the coastal commercial striped bass harvest.
The stunning turn of events left conservationists shocked at the Board's apparent disregard for strong evidence pointing to numerous problems with the Atlantic striped bass population. Unlike the 1970s when rampant overfishing was the primary cause of the stock's crash, the current picture painted by scientists and officers is all the more bleak because of the wide variety of factors that are negatively impacting striped bass.
"This is just the latest indication that the ASMFC has lost its way as an agency committed to proper resource management," said Charles Witek, chairman of CCA's Atlantic Fisheries Committee. "As bad off as the stock was in the late '70s, the fix was rather straight-forward. What we are looking at today could be much more difficult to reverse. The very last thing anyone needs to discuss during this time of uncertainty is increasing commercial harvest."
Among the information presented to managers was a report on the declining trend in the striped bass Juvenile Abundance Index, a report from law enforcement personnel on suspected "significant and unreported" poaching in the Exclusive Economic Zone, and a report on the potentially devastating impact of Mycobacteriosis in Chesapeake Bay, the primary striped bass spawning ground for the entire Atlantic Coast, where 70 percent of the fish sampled had lesions associated with the disease. In aquaculture, Mycobacteriosis infections are virtually always fatal, and since infected striped bass that are tagged and subsequently recovered never show any signs of recovery, the disease has dire implications for striped bass everywhere on the coast.
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| 11 Feb 2010 - 11:40 by CCA North Carolina |
XNews
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