THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 13, 1996 TAG: 9606130373
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 56 lines
If a federal court upholds the U.S. Justice Department's request, fishermen will be able to continue catching weakfish in the Atlantic Ocean.
This week, an attorney for the Justice Department filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss an appeal in a lawsuit about weakfish rules.
The U.S. Court of Appeals has to approve that motion and issue an order for dismissal before the suit is settled. But a lawyer representing North Carolina and Virginia commercial fishermen said Wednesday he expects that ruling will come this week.
Fisheries lobbyists, who initiated the lawsuit in December after federal regulators shut down the entire East Coast to weakfish harvests, were elated with the outcome.
``This is great news,'' said North Carolina Fisheries Association Director Jerry Schill, whose organization represents more than 1,000 watermen throughout the Tar Heel State. ``It's just another indication that federal fisheries officials knew they were in the wrong in attempting to implement such a heinous plan.''
On Nov. 27, then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown closed federal waters between three and 200 miles offshore to commercial weakfish catches in what he said was an attempt to reverse a perceived decline of the weakfish fishery. Weakfish - also known as gray trout - are a profitable food fish landed along the East Coast. North Carolina watermen catch almost half of the weakfish sold along the Atlantic seaboard.
In December, the North Carolina Fisheries Association, East Coast Fisheries Association of Virginia Beach, Georges Seafood of Norfolk and three other North Carolina commercial fishing companies filed suit against the commerce secretary, saying that the ban was arbitrary and that the Atlantic was filled with weakfish. North Carolina officials signed on, in part, to that suit Jan. 3. Six weeks later, a federal judge re-opened the ocean to commercial weakfish catches, ruling that the commerce secretary``acted in excess of his statutory authority'' when he closed the federal waters to gray trout harvests.
``A review from another perspective suggests the fishery is recovering,'' U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar wrote in a 24-page opinion filed in Norfolk Federal Court. ``Certainly, there is enough here to suggest that skepticism is warranted about the prediction of impending doom.''
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service said federal officials decided to drop their plans to appeal that ruling because the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission adopted specific recommendations about new weakfish rules. Fisheries service members want the new commerce secretary to sign the rules, which reportedly contain larger minimum-size limits for weakfish, additional gear restrictions and continued closure of certain areas of the ocean to commercial harvests of the species.
``We're evaluating those recommendations right now,'' federal fisheries spokesman Gordon Helm said from his Silver Spring, Md. office. ``We're also looking at any new data about that fishery.''
North Carolina Fisheries Association biologist Rick Marks plans to address some of the new weakfish recommendations when he testifies before a federal fisheries board today. by CNB