2/3 meeting with Crabtree

Sea Bass. Joined: Apr 09, 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Florida

Read this on 2coolfishing today

2-3-2010 Sidebar with Crabtree

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After driving 3 plus hours to the Mobile meeting, it was disturbing to find that our comments were going to be limited to 3 minutes. I guess next time I will have to fill out multiple cards and bring my 3 year old so she can give me her time and maybe I will bring the dog too since he really likes to fish, maybe he can give me his time.

At any rate the comments that I wanted to make were cut short and I butchered some of them prompting Crabtree to offer to talk to me privately to explain things....

After we cleared the air on the butchered comments, the talk turned to better data from the entire recreational sector. I will summerize some of his responses and will quote what I feel comfortable with.

As a charter captain and a part of the recreational sector he chastised us all in that they are trying to give us a plan to include catch shares, etc. but every plan that they put forward, we shoot down but yet the masses get in front of the council and ***** and moan when there is nothing they can do about it until and unless there is a policy change or a change in the statue. I argued that the shoe fit both sides and until they got their house in order and had proper sceince and streemlined the process so that population changes are realized quicker, there would be little trust in the system.

Next Dr. Crabtree, really inflamed me and at the same time deflated me somewhat in that I wonder if I have the emotion and the stamina to remain in this fight. He told me that under the current management plan, he "did not care what information we gave the system, we (recreational) would never again see a 6 month snapper season and he doubted that the season would ever make it back to a 4 month season"

His reasoning behind this was that as the stock recovers the fish get larger and easier to catch. As this happens it brings more people to the waters edge who are catching more large fish, thus we meet and overrun our quota that much quicker so it is an endless cycle.

I realize that this is their rhetoric to push for a LAPP but I am really starting to wonder what punitive measures we would face in the years ahead if we all just boycotted any effort they put forward to obtain fishery dependant data, boycott the dockside surveys, the telephone calls, etc. If under their current management plan, the information that we are giving them is going to lead to our own demise. If larger fish being caught is going to cut days from our season why would we want to allow them to weigh any fish we have over 3 pounds?

Posted: Sat Feb 06, 2010 10:09 am Post subject:

id like to kick crabtree right in the nuts.


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