and election of the 2010 officers took place. Donald Swanson assumed the office of President; Michael Watosky, Vice President, and Gordon Thompson and Michael Reeve continued as Secretary and Treasurer respectively. Outgoing President, Jeffrey Barnum, will remain an active board member, focusing his efforts on the CCA NH Oyster Shell Recycling Program.
Coastal Cleanup Events
In August, volunteers from CCA NH participated in the Goat Island kayak clean up. The morning was spent cleaning up around Goat Island and the other islands of the back chan- nel in New Castle. CCA NH members Bob Ferri, Bob Bode, David Bryan, Jim Timmins, Mike Watosky, as well Uni- versity of New Hampshire (UNH) Docents Lola Chiang, her husband Jim and son Will, came to lend a hand. Perhaps as a happy effect from last year’s cleanup there was a wonderful lack of garbage.
health of New York’s citizens and the well-being of the state’s natural re- sources. From Patterson’s view, the last straw came when Grannis failed to mark such memo as “confidential,” and it was leaked to the press, allowing the public to learn of the threats posed by the Governor’s actions. Conservation groups unanimously condemned Grannis’ firing. From tak- ing a go-slow approach to upstate gas drilling to opposing an underwater electric transmission line that, he feared, could have threatened winter flounder spawning grounds in Long Island Sound, Grannis was a good steward for New York’s natural re- sources, and an anomaly in an admin- istration that has proven the most hos- tile to conservation issues in decades. 2011 will see a new person assume the Governor’s mantle. It can only be hoped that his administration will be more sensitive to conservation issues, and to those who have made a career out of protecting the resources and environment of the State of New York.
Seagrass bill vetoed After two years of continuous work
In September, CCA NH members, employees from the Portsmouth Home Depot Store, and six UNH students, including parents Margaret and Peter Trolio who had driven from Burnthills, New York to visit with their son Ben, pitched in as part of the Blue Ocean Society’s Fall Coastal Cleanup. The group gathered at Wallis Sands Beach and collected about 500 pounds of trash. Commendations to all on a great effort!
NEW YORK
DEC Commission Grannis fired
In October, DEC Commissioner Alexander “Pete” Grannis was fired by Gov. David Patterson. The apparent reason was that Grannis wrote a memo to his boss which suggested that paring another 200 employees from the DEC staff, which has already suffered severe cutbacks and was subject to a long- term hiring freeze, would probably have severe and harmful effects on the
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by New York’s Seagrass Task Force, the state’s legislature, for the first time in its history, passed a bill that would have given the Department of En- vironmental Conservation the express authority to protect the submerged aquatic vegetation of New York’s coast. Such vegetation, and more particularly eelgrass, is vitally important to a num- ber of New York’s most iconic finfish and shellfish species, including winter flounder, weakfish, blue crabs and bay scallops.
Unfortunately, New York Gov. David Patterson did not view the bill as worthwhile. In his veto message, he criticized the bill’s broad grant of authority to the DEC, which would have been able to regulate any coastal or marine activity that threatened seagrass beds or seagrass restoration efforts, as well as bill provisions that would have placed greater restrictions on the use of fertilizers on Long Island than those in effect elsewhere in the state. While the Governor’s veto message only dedicated a single sentence to his concern that implementing the provi- sions of the seagrass bill would have caused the DEC to incur additional costs, there is good reason to suspect that such costs were the primary moti- vation behind the veto. The DEC has been one of his favorite targets for cost-
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cutting, and discussions between the Governor’s office and the DEC with respect to the bill concentrated on the cost issue and not on the issues that comprised the bulk of the veto message. For the Seagrass Task Force, it is a case of “back to the drawing board.” With a new Governor taking office in the new year, there is hope that a mod- est rewrite of the original legislation might gain approval. At any rate, when the rewrite takes place, CCANew York will be at the table, advising on provi- sions that will best benefit the marine resources of the State of New York.
Fluke catch falls far below quota For the second year in a row, New
York’s 2010 recreational fluke harvest will fall far below the allocation given the state by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. As of Aug. 31, New York’s anglers landed slightly less than 250,000 of the summer flounder, and with the season extending only until Sept. 6, it is unlikely that those estimated landings increased signifi- cantly. It is thus reasonable to assume that the harvest will fall roughly 200,000 fish below quota. That is prob- ably no surprise to local anglers, as legal fluke were fairly difficult to find in most places for most of the year, probably due to relatively poor year classes in 2005, 2006 and 2007, which should have just started to grow into the 21-inch minimum size late in 2009. That means that New York’s regula- tions should again relax a bit next sea- son. We will almost certainly see a reduction in the minimum size, and perhaps also see an increase in the bag limit and/or season length. However, we can also be sure that managers are going to be cautious in relaxing the rules, because the small 2007 year class is going to be followed by the domi- nant class of 2008, which was once esti- mated as the largest in 26 years, after that comes the 2009, which may be the biggest year class on record. Relaxing the regulations too much now, in response to the relatively low harvest rates that the poor year classes cause could well lead to overfishing and the need to tighten when the dominant year classes become available. Tightening rules after the popula- tion has completely recovered would be a difficult thing to explain to fisher- men, so anglers shouldn’t be surprised if regulators take what might seem to be an overly conservative approach for the next year or two.
TIDE
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