The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission is completely broken, always has been broken, and has been willingly corrupted and co-opted by the influence of a small but powerful group of special interests.
Pogo used to say: “We have met the enemy and they is us.” Well, meet the commission, which is supposed to represent recreational and commercial fishing interests but in its majority opinions unfailingly sides with netters because most of its members have family or professional ties to them.
The commission might as well hang out a sign at its public meetings: “Forget the resource when it’s time to fish or cut bait.”
Speaking of discards, it shouldn’t have been surprising the commission tossed recreational interests over the side at its latest meeting like so many dead, culled, trawled striped bass.
Here’s the situation. In January, cold weather killed enough spotted sea trout along North Carolina’s coastline for the second-straight winter that Louis Daniel, director of the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, was forced to close the season for everyone.
Who applauded? Recreational anglers, who begged the commission to keep the season closed until at least June for hook-and-liners and commercial netters so surviving specks could spawn at least once.
In January and early February, witnesses said trawl netters killed thousands of stripers in hauls outside Oregon Inlet. Recreational anglers across the country were outraged, not to mention fishermen on 100 or so fishing boats who witnessed the carnage, along with a helicopter crew that flew above the second striper massacre and took photographs of an ocean littered with floating rockfish corpses.
Lots of fishing groups (CCA-NC, Coastal Fisheries Reform Group, Recreational Fishing Alliance, Stripers Forever) asked Daniel and the commission to close the trawling season to prevent future waste.
So now we come to the commission’s Feb. 10-11 meeting at Pine Knoll Shores to decide, among other topics, how to handle speckled trout and striper trawling. Do you think the commission decided to protect either resource against profiteers? If you do, you probably think the Carolina Panthers won the Super Bowl.
The commission directed Daniel to reopen the trawl season for stripers. More interestingly, Mikey Daniels, one of the commissioners who voted to reopen the season, owns a Wanchese seafood processing company that sells stripers and has a son who is a trawl-boat captain. Daniels also voted to keep the recreational speckled trout season closed until June 15, but voted to allow commercial netting to resume, albeit with a 50-pound daily trip limit.
How is it that commissioners with vested economic interests in saltwater resources are allowed to vote upon how many fish can be taken by netters and when? In Chicago, this used to be called “Al Capone politics,” where the fox was left guarding the hen house.
Obviously, no public official with financial interests in a wildlife population should be allowed to vote on harvests. That North Carolina has set up a governing body with appointed commissioners who have such ties is a travesty and needs to be changed.
There are two ways to get this changed — a merger of the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission and N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission or gamefish status for saltwater species. Hopefully, changes will be coming soon.
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