ner where Flip again took the stage to entertain us all with the fishing stories that have highlighted his storied career.
Massive striped bass kills continue
In a mistake that was entirely pre- dictable, the state’s Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC) has allowed the use of large trawl nets among large schools of striped bass. And, for the third time in less than three weeks, a massive striped bass kill has occurred. The latest example of “regulatory dead discards” was photographed from a helicopter off Oregon Inlet this week and was again evidenced by a long trail of dead striped bass in the vicinity of commercial trawlers. The latest kill was four miles long and a half-mile wide, and consisted of thousands of dead stripers, many of which were of the minimum legal size of 28 inches, that were dumped at sea after being snared and culled by commercial boats. In response to the first two docu- mented striper kills that occurred in mid-January, the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) recently only slightly modified ocean trawl regulations in a belated effort to avoid another tragic slaughter. On Jan. 21, the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries implemented regu- latory changes to address discards of striped bass in the commercial trawl fishery. The division replaced the pre- vious 50-fish-per-day commercial trip limit with a 2,000-pound-per-day trip limit to reduce high-grading, but the results were the same. To avoid regulatory discards, the
new regulations allow commercial trawl fishermen to transfer trip limits to other fishing vessels that hold a striped bass ocean fishing permit for the commercial trawl fishery. This way, all the fish will be landed and count against the commercial quota. The intent was to avoid excessive discards of dead striped bass and eliminate the wanton waste of a public resource. This strategy failed miserably as the trawl fishery reopened on February 3rd and another massive fish kill occurred. “You can’t allow the use of deadly, indiscriminate and highly destructive trawl nets among large schools of striped bass,” said Jay Dail, CCANorth Carolina chairman. “The MFC knows this will happen, yet continues to allow this gear among these schools of valu- able fish. It shows how antiquated our management system is — at the very least they should be requiring more selective gear that doesn’t generate tons of wanton waste.”
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CCA North Carolina is considering asking the NC Marine Fisheries Com- mission to completely eliminate trawl- ing as a permissible fishing gear for striped bass. If they do not accept that, anglers will have no choice but to ask that these valuable fish be designated a gamefish and removed from the market entirely.
“This is what happens when you
allow this destructive gear in this area — the results are never going to change. What’s driving this slaughter is placing a bounty on the head of every fish out there, creating a gold rush atmosphere,” said Stephen Ammons, CCANorth Carolina executive director. “If you take away the dollar incentive, the fish might stand a chance.” The past six months have been filled
with bad news for striped bass. In addition to the slaughters off North Carolina, Maryland state officials pulled the plug last week on the state’s gillnet season after thousands of pounds of dead bass were pulled from illegal nets in the Chesapeake Bay. The NC MFC should have followed suit and closed the trawl fishery at the first sign of wanton waste. Also, earlier this year, anglers and conservationists all along the East Coast narrowly beat back plans to increase the commercial harvest of striped bass, citing problems with the stock related to rampant poaching and disease in the species pri- mary nursery ground, Chesapeake Bay. “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,” said Jim Hardin, President of CCA North Carolina. “It is time to chart a new course for this fishery.”
NEW YORK Court finds against license
Immediately after New York adopt- ed a saltwater license in 2009, the Town of Southampton, eventually joined by six other Long Island towns, brought suit against the Department of En- vironmental Conservation (DEC). The suit claimed that the provisions of var- ious royal patents which created the towns during the early 17th century, and granted the trustees and freeholders of such towns the exclusive authority to manage fisheries (and other natural resources) within town borders, trump- ed any state requirements that town res- idents obtain a saltwater fishing license before angling in town waters.
www.joincca.org
Although it is difficult to believe that any court would allow a procla- mation of King Charles II to trump a recent action of the New York State Legislature, that is exactly what hap- pened, for on Dec. 14, the judge hear- ing the matter found for the towns and against the DEC.
The decision was premised on the court’s belief that “The State’s rationale for the saltwater fishing license was simply to collect statistical data for the Federal government.” The court found that, “While the State has the right to regulate fishing, this statute has noth- ing to do with the regulation of fishing per se or anything which would be paramount to deprive the rights of the Towns to control fishing within their jurisdiction…in this case the State is not attempting to regulate fishing but is seeking only to collect statistical data…the rationale advanced by the State in this action that it may issue a saltwater fishing license to apparently save the taxpayers from a Federal Registry fee which may be higher than the State would charge is not a suffi- cient reason to interfere with the juris- diction of the respective Towns.” The state is appealing the trial court’s decision and expects to prevail. Ultimately, the success of the appeal may depend on whether the DEC can convince the appellate court that the license is directly related to the agency’s responsibility to manage migratory fish. Courts have upheld the validity of the royal patents before, but such cases have dealt with sedentary shellfish, or with freshwater fish caught in bodies of water that “are, in effect, very large fish- bowls, from which fish in the wild…can neither enter nor escape.” A 1975 appellate court decision, dealing with the management of men- haden, explicitly distinguished that matter from the shellfish cases, and found that
the state had exclusive
management authority over migratory species, despite any provision that the royal patents might contain. Since the trial court’s decision in the salt water license case provided no analysis of that issue, the decision appears vulner- able upon appeal — provided, of course, that the DEC raised the issue in the course of the trial. If, however, the decision of the trial court is ultimately upheld on appeal, New York anglers, and the DEC, will be in a very uncomfortable position. A license will still be required for anglers who do not live within the seven plain- tiff towns and, very likely, even for
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