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Fish Management Report 1/8/10
Sea Bass Reopened?
A Step Forward

My sincerest thanks to all in the fisheries community that risked perhaps even their careers to help make this day possible.

Hi All,
The Science & Statistical and Joint Monitoring Committees met today via 'webinar'.
After several hours of evidence from the Joint Monitoring Committee and several more hours of debate by the Science and Statistical Committee, it was decided to recommend a large black sea bass quota increase to NOAA's Regional Administrator, Pat Kurkel.
It is possible that we will regain some of our sea bass season - pending action by Ms. Kurkel.
The exact quota recommended is unknown at this time. Further off still are any adjustments to our season.
My thanks to all who lobbied on fishers behalf, who wrote letters crying injustice, who would not let data-poor fisheries science destroy the last vestiges of saltwater recreational fishing's partyboat roots. My sincerest thanks to all in the fisheries community that risked perhaps even their careers to help make this day possible.

Last year's sea bass season was stolen - first by the size limit increase, then by 'emergency shutdown' when a discredited & now discontinued catch estimating system, MRFSS, calculated northern states had caught the whole coast's quota.. Perhaps I now know what a prisoner feels like on hearing that he has been exonerated by DNA evidence - but hasn't yet heard the judge's decision.
My sense is we'll still be under house arrest - that we won't get all our sea bass season back.

Perhaps if we had the "Flexibility in Rebuilding America's Fisheries Act" it would have never come to this.
I hope to be able to open my cbass season reservation book soon - will the moment the dust settles.

One thought I can not escape: I just spent all day listening to brilliant people, people that can do fantastically complex math or understand the intricacies of decades of fisheries law and regulation: They don't think, they cogitate.
In those 6+ hours of discussion about sea bass, a reef fish, the word reef was never spoken.. No mention of habitat's role..

I'm telling you, Alabama has no natural coral reef system and the shortest coastline in the Gulf, yet has a lion's share of the red snapper quota due only to catch history over artificial reef.
That's not fishery restoration; its inarguably fishery manufacture.

We do some of that here too.

The future fishery I envision surely employs catch restriction management: But has at its core habitat; our remnant & to-be-restored natural reefs, plus an artificial reef complex that can stand on it's own.. Fishery restoration and fishery manufacture resulting in bending rods, smiling faces & a day's fishing that doesn't end until the dishes are washed.

Thanks To All,

Monty

Capt. Monty Hawkins
mhawkins@siteone.net
Party Boat "Morning Star"
Reservation Line 410 520 2076
http://www.morningstarfishing.com/