THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 14, 1994 TAG: 9406140346
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940614 LENGTH: Long
``From an economic standpoint, it's going to have a substantial impact,'' said Damon Tatem, owner of Tatem's Tackle Box in Nags Head. Tatem's business caters to recreational fishermen who face increased restrictions on the size and number of weakfish, or gray trout as they often are called.
{REST} The biggest complaint of most commercial fishermen is that they have had little opportunity to present their opinions to the Atlantic Coast fisheries regulators who will consider the plan Wednesday.
Fisheries Director William T. Hogarth is scheduled to present a series of recommendations for reducing the state's weakfish catch to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a compact of 15 Atlantic Coast states that regulates fish that migrate along the coast, when it meets in Plainview, N.Y.
``Up to this point it doesn't appear that the ASMFC is taking fishermen's opinions into consideration,'' said Jerry Schill, executive director of the N.C. Fisheries Association, a commercial fishing trade group based in New Bern.
Weakfish, so named because their mouths are fragile and easily torn when hooked, range along the East Coast from southern Florida to the Gulf of Maine but are most abundant from North Carolina to Delaware. They spawn near the inlets and in the sounds from March through September and migrate out of the estuaries into the ocean when water temperatures drop in the fall.
Weakfish landings by both commercial and recreational fishermen along the Atlantic Coast have declined by about 76 percent in the last 30 years, from 80 million pounds landed in 1980 to 19.9 million pounds in 1990, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries.
As the coastal weakfish stock has declined, the sports fishery in northern waters, especially from Delaware Bay to southern New England, has virtually disappeared.
To combat this decline, the ASMFC developed a management plan that includes restrictions on commercial and recreational fishermen. Implementing the plan could lead to seasonal fishing closures, quotas and other stringent measures, according to state fisheries regulators.
Currently, ASMFC plans call for each state within the compact to reduce its weakfish catch by 25 percent using a combination of measures such as fishing quotas and season closures, and minimum size restrictions that would become effective July 31. Additional regulations may also be required by 1995.
North Carolina's plan most directly affects the state's fly net fishery, centered in Beaufort and Wanchese, which accounts for about 60 percent of the weakfish caught in the state, according to Linda Mercer, biologist with the Division of Marine Fisheries office in Morehead City.
The plan calls for a ban on fly net fishing south of Cape Hatteras, where juvenile fish are common.
``The closures south of Cape Hatteras were proposed to protect the large quantifies of young, smaller fish in the area,'' Mercer said. ``It would totally get that particular gear out of the water in an area where there are a lot of young fish.
``It's going to have a pretty severe impact on the fly net fishery because that's where most of the fishery goes on,'' she said.
Schill said these boats will be forced into northern waters where weakfish are less plentiful or will be forced out of business altogether.
The plan also includes options for other restrictions such as a Saturday prohibition on gill nets in the Atlantic Ocean during the winter, limits on the size and number of the weakfish catch and restrictions on the amount of net and the size of net mesh that can be used by commercial fishermen.
One area of dispute between the state and the ASMFC is likely to be the minimum of mesh sizes requested by the division, she said.
Some Hatteras Island commercial fishermen have said that stringent restrictions on net mesh size will affect the commercial fishing industry almost as severely as a moratorium would.
The plan also includes restrictions on the recreational weakfish catch. Sports anglers would be limited to four fish per day with a minimum size of 12 inches per fish, under one plan option.
An ASMFC committee, which tentatively approved most sections of the plan last week, approved options that would impose a 13 inch minimum size and a limit of six fish per day or a 14 inch minimum size and a limit of 14 fish per day. Implementation of these options would require a change in fisheries regulations, Mercer said.
Tatem said the area's sports fishermen would prefer that the plan increase the daily catch limit and increase the minimum size of fish that can be caught.
``Most recreational fishermen would prefer an option that would give them larger fish and more of them,'' he said.
by CNB