JUNE 2001 - REVISED LIST OF AREAS TO CLOSE
JULY SAFMC NEWSLETTER - BONUS STORY OF THE LAWLESS,
: read this !
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HELP
We all want to save the rainforest, but here in Florida we have a more pressing local issue. The profiteers who mow down the rainforest are the same types who are mowing down a local natural resource. I'm going to stop them. I need your help. My name is Eric. My friends call me Moose . I have been scuba diving the reefs off Daytona since 1993 when I first became keenly aware of the trouble we were in. The reefs were alive with fish of all kinds. I saw grouper, snapper, eels, trigger fish, amberjack and many others on every dive. I couldn't believe the fish, they were everywhere. Unbelievable to me, my mentors would come up from a dive and talk about how it used to be. They said the fish were gone, the huge schools of grouper and snapper were gone. As I listened, I could sense the way things used to be. I have a hard time creating an image in my mind of the schools of fish they talk about. Grouper swarming the reef so plentiful that everything around you is grouper. Circling around and swarming like bumble bees. Those days are long gone. The fish are scarce. The depletion of the offshore fisheries has been happening for a long time without proper management due to the fact that commercial fishing runs the management process. Do you think that they would protect the fish if they thought it would cost them money. It's a nasty web and the sole reason I am fighting for a crumb today. "Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it" -George Santayana. Of particular interest to me is the self proclaimed commercial diver. These renegades have totally wiped the reefs clean off Daytona in the 60' to 100' range. I hear the same stories from the divers off Jacksonville where they have the same problem. Reports from St. Augustine are similar. If you sit down with some of my friends from Cape Canaveral, you will soon be brought to tears when you hear what's going on down there all the way to St. Lucie. There will never be a replenishment of reef fish on the nearshore reefs as long as these guys are out doing what they are doing. I have heard all the arguments these guys have for doing what they are doing. None of them hold water when the fish populations are in trouble. Right now they are in trouble. In fact, the fish are so troubled that the government is preparing to close hundreds of miles of area to fishing in a feeble attempt to seem as if they are doing something. The fishing pressure will be squeezed into a tighter area. The commercial guys will not take less, they will take everything they can sell for a dollar. "50 cent a pound" is something I'll never forget hearing from one of those commercial fishermen as he bragged of his box of 'cudas. They kill everything. Nothing is safe. Now, once the commercial harvest of a species is eliminated, history has proved that the species will regain strength in numbers. The first step is to eliminate the commercial harvest. There are four fish that need to be protected from commercial harvest at a minimum. Cobia, Gag Grouper, Gray Snapper, Red Snapper. I would close all recreational harvest for one year. I would reduce the recreational limit to one of each fish, and watch the population levels for many years keeping the fish stocks growing. Right now they are declining. The government requirement is to be at a level called sustained. That means teetering on a thin line between barely surviving and total collapse. Hello up there in your government office, we want our fish stocks growing.
What can I do? Well, you can sit on your behind and watch the fish disappear. Or you can do something to help. We need to make a firm stand, and let the managers of the resource know how unhappy we are at the state of the grouper and snapper population. Click Here and fill out the form letting me know I have your support. Send an eMail to Moose@seahunters.com View some of the current research
"Great spirits have always
encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." |
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JUNE 2001 - REVISED LIST OF AREAS TO CLOSE
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