THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 TAG: 9702110209
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY EMERY P. DALESIO, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RALEIGH LENGTH: 68 lines
A legislative commission on Monday discarded recommendations for new regulations on ocean fishing despite warnings that some fish species were declining because of heavy fishing.
The Joint Legislative Commission on Seafood and Aquaculture sided with the state's commercial fishing industry, represented by the hundreds of fishermen and their families who crowded into a hearing room.
``There's no way we're going to let a business or an industry die. We do support our commercial fishing industry and we're going to continue to do that,'' said committee co-chairwoman Rep. Jean Preston, R-Carteret.
New regulations should be postponed until after state fisheries administrators can complete a management reorganization, she said.
A spokesman for recreational fishing interests declared the management questions a smoke screen allowing politicians to protect a powerful industry.
``Some people want to protect the way things have been done a long time and that's what happened today, unfortunately,'' said Dick Brame, executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina.
The recommendations were adopted last year by a panel that examined a broad range of problems in the industry. The ideas included management plans for dozens of fish species and new fishing laws, such as recreational licenses for people fishing in the ocean from piers, charter boats and the shoreline.
Dozens of other fishermen circled the block outside the building carrying protest placards like ``Commercial Fishermen - An Endangered Species'' and ``Too Much Government Control in Too Many Lives.''
They insisted their livelihoods faced more threat from regulators than overfishing.
``There's more fish than the market can stand,'' Elbert Gaskill of Harker's Island said, complaining of dropping wholesale prices.
``There's plenty of fish out there,'' added fisherman David Ballou of Harker's Island.
A state fisheries biologist told commission members that North Carolina's coast is uniquely plentiful along the Eastern Seaboard. With the Outer Banks butting into the warm Gulf Stream, migrating ocean fish run into a natural bottleneck.
Fish cluster relatively close to shore, creating fertile fishing territory, said Louis Daniel of the state Division of Marine Fisheries.
``If we see a collapse off North Carolina, it's over. That species is gone,'' Daniel said.
And even there, researchers are finding too few mature fish showing up at the dock, Daniel said. It is rare to find weakfish and summer flounder, which live about 15 years, that are more than five years old, he said.
Declines to the north and south on the fish migration trek from Cape Cod to Cape Canaveral showed the need for action in North Carolina, Daniel said. Failure to impose new restrictions now could lead to plummeting fish catches and emergency action that would idle commercial boats, he said.
``When we react in a crisis situation, it puts these guys out of work,'' Daniel said.
His argument didn't hold water for commercial fisherman Marty Goodwin of Cedar Island.
``I think his information is inaccurate,'' said Goodwin, adding that about half of his annual take of summer flounder weigh a healthy five pounds or more. He said commercial fishermen believe the demand for regulations is pushed by recreational anglers and the coastal businesses that sell them supplies and lodging.
``Just because they're in one area and they don't catch a fish, they say there are no fish,'' Goodwin said.
KEYWORDS: FISHING INDUSTRY