NC commercial striped bass fishermen can keep 50biggest bass/day, high grading ok!!!

[DarkSkies]

Sent in by G, thanks.
Feel free to comment, or send the letter they have included below to Dr Daniels

Originally circulated by Stripers Forever.

Stripers Forever members - on Jan. 15th the North Carolina, ocean commercial striped bass season opened. In this trawl fishery, individual boats can keep the 50 largest fish that they catch in a day. This practice allows and encourages the culling or high grading of the catch. This means that the boat will keep the 50 largest fish in possession but may continue trawling all day and may replace these fish with larger ones caught later. Replacing means they will throw the dead or dying fish over the side, substituting them with the freshly caught larger bass. It is nearly beyond belief that such a system could be in place, but it is.

Here is the link http://www.examiner.com/fish-and-wil...he-outer-banks to a newspaper story about the debacle. The story itself contains a link to a YouTube video that shows pictures of the dead floating stripers. The trawlers committing this atrocity tow their nets right through fleets of recreational and charter boats that are fishing on the schools. Is it any wonder this resource is becoming scarcer every year?

****************************

SF has sent a letter to Louis Daniels Ph.D. the Director of Marine Fisheries in NC. We hope that you will send the note below or something like it in your own words to Dr. Daniels and let him know that this is a barbaric and unacceptable practice. Here is an e-mail link to his office


louis.daniel@ncmail.net

*************************

Louis Daniels PhD

NC DMF

3441 Arendell Street

PO BOX 769

Morehead City, NC 28557-0769

Dear Dr. Daniels – The world is now aware of the terrible misuse of the striped bass resource caused by the commercial ocean trawl fishery off the North Carolina Outer Banks. These fish are worth considerably more per pound if allocated to the recreational fishery in North Carolina than when taken by commercial harvest. But if the practice of commercial fishing for striped bass must continue in NC, certainly the participants should never be allowed to cull and high grade these fish. It is already too late to save the thousands of large striped bass wasted by this fishery during the 2011 winter season, but we hope that you will use the power of your office to keep this from happening in the future.

Sincerely;

My name here

[voyager35]

Dark I went to the link and watched the video. It absolutely disgusted me!
Here is the video, I just copied the letter and will be e-mailing it to Daniels today.

[surfstix1963]

This makes me want to puke all these fish will never breed I cannot believe the fisheries management is ok with this here comes the 80's or something worse on top of that they have the idiots illegally fishing the EZ.

[gjb1969]

WHEN I SAW THIS I GOT SO PO IT MAKES NO SENCE TO ME U KILL ALL THE FISH FOR 50 OF THE BIGGEST AND U CAN KEEP CULLING TO SEE IF U GET EVEAN BIGGER FISH THAT IS A D## SHAME

[crosseyedbass]

disgustiing! They are greedy pigs!

[clamchucker]

I commend the folks who took this video. A lot more awareness needs to be raised. This video is just the thing to show people what is happening down there. I emailed that letter to Dr Daniels, and urge other fishermen to do the same.

[nitestrikes]

Appalling, such a waste it is a crime.

[basshunter]

There have to be hundreds of dead fish here.

[gjb1969]

money and stupidty

[lostatsea]

I can't believe that, what a waste of the resource.
I am sending that e-mail this morning. I hope Dr Daniels is listening.

[paco33]

Even with every recreational fisherman obeying the limits, when you see something like this, it doesn't matter what we do. The commercial fishermen kill far more than they catch. They should just let them get their limits, and then they are done. No high grading, that is an absolute tragedy that all those bass become crab food. I just sent that e-mail too, please let us know if there is anything else we can do.

[rockhopper]

Sickening!