CCA North Carolina is requesting the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission to completely eliminate trawling as permissible fishing gear for striped bass, the organization has announced.Giving striped bass gamefish status is another possibility that could help protect the resource, and the Coastal Fisheries Reform Group might submit red drum and speckled trout for gamefish status, too.
“Whether it’s 100 dead stripers that were floating after the latest commercial trawl incident, or 1,000, it’s too many and it needs to stop,” said Stephen Ammons, Executive Director of the North Carolina Coastal Conservation Association. “You can’t mismanage the resource like this and expect for there to be striped bass available in the future.”
“Right now the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission gives the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries an allocation for striped bass harvest, which gets divided between three methods of harvest including trawling, drop-netting and beach seining,” he explained. “The trawlers did not meet their quota after the first season in January, and that is why they were granted a second trawl season on Feb. 3.”
In response to the first documented striper kills in January, the DMF modified their regulations in hopes of stopping future “regulatory dead discard” events. However, the subsequent trawl season resulted in another massive striped bass kill, and recreational anglers have been appalled at the continued carnage.
“You can’t allow the use of deadly, indiscriminate and highly destructive trawl nets among large schools of striped bass,” CCA North Carolina State Chairman Jay Dial said. “It shows how antiquated our management system is, and we should be looking at more selective gear for any future harvest.”
The group’s president agreed.
“We can’t keep abusing striped bass like this or we’ll end up right back in the darkest days of the 1980s when the entire fishery was closed down,” Jim Hardin said. “It is time to chart a new course.”
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