My 90-year-old father and 88-year-old mother require around-the-clock assisted care. Even with their retirement funds and Social Security, the family has been stunned at the pace their nest egg is dissolving. Now imagine such funds as North Carolina saltwater fisheries and commercial netting as the agent eating away those public-trust resources. So here we go.
Saltwater fishermen often wonder why red drum remain at the “recovering” level after years of abundance indexes that would have classed any species as “viable” in N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ stock-status reports.
The N.C. Fisheries Association, commercial fishing’s lobby, wanted to “get in front” of a problem created by last fall’s huge overkill of reds, when netters sold 263,000 in 84 days, when they were supposed to net and sell only 250,000 for the entire 2013-14 season. That led the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries to close commercial sale of reds until Sept. 1.
In May, Jerry Schill, head of the NCFA, proposed that large-mesh gill nets anchored to the bottom be prohibited until Aug. 1, leaving open the season for drift nets and run-around gill nets. He asked the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission to re-open netting for reds in the western Pamlico Sound on June 1 with a 4-fish daily limit that jumps to seven on Aug. 1.
But Schill wasn’t so much concerned about reds as he was about flounder and reds. Reds are connected to flounder because large-mesh gill nets targeting flounder “inadvertently” catch reds. To reduce waste, the agency has rules governing how many reds may be kept and sold in this “non-directed” fishery. The daily limit started at five, rose to seven and then 10 fish before the Sept. 1 ban. Netters must land an equivalent or larger poundage of targeted species as the reds they sell, but there’s no way to tell how many reds a net will kill.
In May, Schill proposed some changes, including a halt of anchored large-mesh nets until Aug. 1, but leaving open drift nets and run-around gill nets). He also asked to reopen netting June 1 at the western Pamlico with a four-reds limit, then jump to seven reds statewide Aug. 1.
The Commission voted 5-4 at its late-May meeting to allow anchored nets in areas of western Albemarle Sound, Currituck Sound and areas of the Pamlico, Pungo, and Neuse river areas exempt from restrictions imposed by the sea-turtle incidental-take permit, and it reopened the New River to anchored nets above the closed shrimp-trawl line. Not only that, large-mesh run-around gill nets and strike nets were approved, but reds must be “released” until at least Sept. 1 in some areas — most areas won’t open until Oct. 1 or 14 — and allowed statewide in coastal waters where they were allowed before to the closure.
An agency source asked why, if other nets land as many flounder while the large-mess gill are closed, why are they needed at all? We already know the answer.
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