Below is a letter:
It ask that congress to force NMFS to get back to the business of performing stock assessments and stop trying to commodity our fisheries.
I also believe someone has a screen print of EDF's claim to be the crafters of the RMSA, this could be helpful as an attachment to this letter.
I am also asking that these letters be physically mailed or faxed....not emailed....
Send it to your congressmen and state senators and I will find the names of the committee members that should get this....
This needs to be an all out blitz...so post it on Face book...tweet about it, call your mom any body who will take the time to do this....
We all are talking about data....but in reality until timely stock assessment are back....our data means nothing...have good sales data without proper inventory data is a recipe for disaster.
If you find any grammar issues or poor context please make suggestions...I want the letter to be less than 2 pages, but I want it to make sense before we start sending it out.
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Honorable [Insert Name Here]
[Address]
[City]. [ST] [Zip]
[Your Name]
[Address]
[City]. [ST] [Zip]
[Contact Phone]
[Date]
Dear Honorable [Insert Name];
I am writing you today to express my concern regarding the management of our nation’s marine fisheries and the social and economic damage being done to our fishing communities. Fishermen; both commercial and recreational are a hardy bunch. Able to survive storms, red tides and bad economic times, but; what we cannot survive is bad management by regulators and draconian rule making based on inadequate, outdated and/or nonexistent data.
The National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) has taken a path that is not strengthening our fisheries, but weakening our fishermen. The commoditization of our commercial fisheries has destroyed small fishing operators and their families. The stories are many of lost businesses, divorce and even suicide.
The 2006 Re-authorization of the Magnuson/Stevens Act (R-MSA) was a hijacking by overzealous non-governmental organizations (NGO) to push through an anti-fishing agenda, an agenda that NMFS was all too willing to take up. The Environmental Defense Fund even bragged about how they were instrumental in crafting this legislation on their website soon after the passage of the R-MSA, until they realized that making this claim also revealed their illegal influence by a 501(c3) organization in the legislative process.
NMFS has turned their back on their charter of managing our nation’s fisheries and taken up the mission of managing the nation’s fishermen. A task I will admit is seemingly much easier, but is having tremendous negative impacts on our nation and our fishing communities.
The last Red Snapper stock assessment in the Gulf of Mexico is going on a decade old, yet is being used to shorten seasons; to the point that this year we will get 40 days; the shortest of any season, even though out allowable catch was increased. I am still scratching my head over that one.
It is time that NMFS be re-tasked to their original intent; which is the management of fisheries and fisheries data. We ask this congress to craft legislation, forcing NMFS to make no rules regarding a fishery without a recent stock assessment (within the last 3 years).
We also ask that congress pass a law that forbids the study or implementation of any limited access or catch share regimen in any recreational fisheries and that management tools for all recreation fisheries must revolve around size and bag limits and seasonal closures.
Lastly we ask that NMFS must stop the use of any funds either allocated or diverted used to study any type of Sector Seperation of the private and for hire recreational fishermen, or limited access and catch share programs. In addition NMFS diverted approximately $54 million from data collection to study catch shares, we ask that you compel NMFS to return that money back to its appropriated purpose, which was data collection.
In closing; our nation’s fisheries are a vital source of economic activity, recreation and part of our social fabric, too vital to be allowed to be hijacked by agenda driven NGO(s), with no thought for the people and communities affected by their overzealous attempt to end fishing in this country.
Proper fishery management is possible; if NMFS will take seriously the congressional mandate to improve recreational fishery data and stock assessments. The collection of data from fishermen, while important is only a piece of the puzzle. NMFS has been woefully inadequate with producing timely and accurate stock assessments. How can NMFS manage a fishery, without data to determine what condition a stock is in?
We would ask that congress force NMFS to suspend all regulation making activity and focus on creating stock assessments across all species that are managed by NMFS, in addition we would ask for legislation that would prevent rule making based on any stock assessment older than 3 years. Only until NMFS has some measure of any species abundance, can they then make any judgment as to the health of a fishery or a need for its management
Respectfully
[Your Signature]
[Your Name]
[Address]
[City]. [ST] [Zip]
[Contact Phone]
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Originally Posted by ChumSlick
