completed this summer. Slated to begin in June of this year, the Mansfield reef project received $50,000 in funding from HTFT, as well as additional fund- ing from the TPWD Artificial Reef Program. The overall cost of the project is in excess of $450,000. The location for the reef is a 160-acre site in state waters roughly nine nauti- cal miles out of the Mansfield jetties. The site will be filled with more than 4,000 concrete culverts of different sizes generously donated by Alamo Con- crete out of San Antonio. “These kinds of near-shore reefs are
very popular with many anglers because they create good fishing oppor- tunities that do not force anglers to run a long distance offshore,” said John Blaha, director of CCA Texas’s HTFT program. “It’s a win-win for marine resources and for Texas anglers. With the great partnerships we are develop- ing with TPWD and with good corpo- rate citizens like Alamo Concrete, HTFT is in great shape to keep the underwater building boom going strong.” Since its inception in 2008, CCA
Texas’s HTFT Program has set in motion a number of habitat projects which will continue to be very beneficial to our state’s coastal resources. HTFT has fund-
ed more than $350,000 in artificial reef- ing projects, marsh restoration and shoreline stabilizations since 2008, and will continue to focus on the restoration and enhancement of our coastal marine resources for years to come.
WASHINGTON CCA volunteers clean up the beach
Volunteers from the North Olympic Peninsula Chapter of CCA Washington participated in a cleanup of the Straits of Juan De Fuca organized by Klallam Earthday Challenge. Beaches were cleaned, from Pillar Point to Dungeness Spit. Local CCA volunteers cleaned the west end of Freshwater Bay near the boat launch, covering two miles of beach. Freshwater Bay is a popular spot for fishermen, crabbers, kayakers and beachcombers and the group picked up four tires, pieces of an old washing machine, and eight bags of mostly plas- tic and styrofoam debris.
Freshwater
Bay is critical habitat for forage fish, so it was rewarding to see it returned to a near pristine condition.
Judge rejects crabbers’ request
In the fall of 2010, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to bring more fairness to the Puget Sound Dungeness crab fishery by reallocating the state’s share. The reallocation shift- ed a portion of what had been com- mercial crab quota to recreational anglers and the new policy was subse- quently adopted into law. Although the new allocation is expected to leave the commercial fleet with more than half of the state’s share of Dungeness crab in Puget Sound in 2011 (and approximately 90 percent of the state’s share of crab harvested state-wide), the commercial crabbers were completely unwilling to accept any reduction in their quota and filed a lawsuit attempt- ing to block the new law.
As part of their suit, the Puget Sound
Crab Association (PSCA) and a group of six individual commercial crab fisher- men filed a Motion for a Preliminary Injunction asking the court to stay the implementation of the new law claiming the reallocation was “arbitrary and capricious.” If successful, this legal action would have temporarily prevent- ed implementation of the new law and effectively reversed the quota realloca- tion adopted by the Commission. Judge McPhee heard arguments
from both sides and ruled from the bench that the Commission followed proper procedure and was not “arbi-
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