Proud to have Bradley as my Representative, fitting the federal powers that be! ~Wes Allday “You have $900 million and you can’t give us any better count of the fish stock than what you’ve told us today?” Byrne asked, to which Rauch responded that they do the best they can. According to local South Alabama fisherman, the “best they can” isn’t cutting it — not by a long shot. For instance, the federal system estimated that 1,000,041 pounds of red snapper were landed this year, while the Alabama system estimated that just 418,000 pounds were landed. As a result, the thousands of private recreational fisherman who fish for red snapper off the Alabama Gulf Coast were only allowed to do so for nine days out of the entire year. If the local numbers are more accurate, which they are according to expert testimony before Congress on Thursday, the red snapper season should have been roughly twice as long as it was. Additionally, Byrne pointed out that NOAA excludes Alabama’s artificial reef zones when measuring the red snapper stock. That’s particularly troublesome because red snapper are reef fish, meaning the NOAA sample is very likely to drastically underestimate the number of red snapper in the Gulf waters.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 05:19:03 +0000
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