| 20 August 2011
Standing up for better science is a strategy that will help save Florida fishing related jobs. The call for better science in fisheries management has long been supported by the Florida Guides Association. One member in particular, Capt. Bob Zales, FGA regional director, president of the National Association of Charterboat Operators and Executive Director of Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen has taken his advocacy for sound science in fisheries management beyond state lines to the national level.
Recently a CCA National News Feed came out in opposition to the PEW Environment Group’s support of annual catch limits without the benefit of science-based assessments. The piece referred to the PEW support as “a veritable campaign of misinformation.” The feed went on to say that Pew is revising history to make its points.
Capt. Zales referred to the CCA position as good news and wrote the following commentary on fisheries management.
*************************As I have reported previously, more and more people are coming out against the wacko environmentalists such as PEW and Environmental Defense Fund and standing up for better science. We must have the science before we can move on to ACLS, AMS, Catch Shares, and other overly restrictive requirements that are causing JOBs to be lost.
We must have the science and the data before, not after, programs are created and implemented. The devil is in the details, and whenever details are not known, you do not know where the devil lives. In the past, those of us who supported programs created by the NOAA/NMFS with the promise that details would be worked out, quickly discovered they never are and that the devil thrives against us.
NOAA/NMFS knows the missing details work to their advantage to eliminate JOBS and move us off the water. It is past time to stop this style of management based on regulations which are based on arbitrary and missing science just to comply with an artificial mandate that was conceived and pushed by the enviro wackos.
The 06 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act must be relaxed and the funding provided to the NOAA/NMFS must be concentrated on improved science, independent and cooperative science, and more frequent stock assessments not Catch Shares or other programs that need data to determine how they will work. Once this is accomplished the current tools can be used to manage. And if they are not enough, then let's begin to look at other tools. You don't use a standard socket to ratchet down a metric bolt.
Bob Zales
