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by Tom Siciliano
(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association April 2003 Newsletter)
The New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council met last Thursday, March 6, in Absecon, NJ. The crowd was large with over 100 people in the room and an overflow in the hall. However, not a lot of people were there from North Jersey or even Central Jersey. Absecon is not exactly the center of the state so most of the audience was from the Cape May area. The other aspect is that the meeting starts at 4:00 pm. Therefore, in order to attend from any distance you have to take at least a half a day off from work. I’m retired so it doesn’t matter but it is still a 130-mile round trip and I live in “Central” Jersey. From Bergen County it would be a 260 mile round trip. In addition, there was a snowstorm in the northern part of the state, which prevented even more people from attending.
The point of this is, that the voices of all the anglers in the state are not being heard. These are public meetings and decisions are made that impact every angler in the state.
What happened with the weakfish regulations is a prime example of this inequity. The council has a group of advisors who go out and get input from all over the state and then prepare a comprehensive report of their findings. These are the experts and they recommended 9 weakfish at 14”. This was the best option to serve most of the people of the state and would lessen the confusion that the average fisherman has when faced with constantly changing size and bag limits. This option kept the size the same as it had been for years so there would have been some consistency.
So what happened at the meeting? I was the first to speak and I supported the work of the advisory board for the 9 fish at 14”. The room was full of South Jersey anglers, many of them Charter and Party Boat Captains, and they want to keep smaller fish for their customers. So they started to line up at the microphone to state their case for smaller fish. It became apparent very quickly that the meeting would drag on for a long time if all of these fishermen got up to give their reasons to drop the size to 13”. The Council Chairman saw what was happening and called for a show of hands of those who were in favor of 13”. He then called for a vote and it went 8 in favor and 2 opposed. We will have an 8 weakfish bag limit at a 13” size limit for 2003.
What did we learn from this? First, the meeting is held at the wrong place and at the wrong time. The audience did not have a good cross section of the anglers of the state. Second, if you get enough people at the meeting you can force the council to disregard the recommendation of their own advisory board.
The summer flounder rules were adopted as recommended by the advisory board. The season will be from May 3 to October 13 with a 16 ˝” size limit and an 8 fish bag limit. This is considered a conservative approach to try to avoid going over the quota this year. According to the tables, we could have had a no closed season, but the council wanted to minimize the chances that the quota would be exceeded. If the quota were to be over fished, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has adopted a payback rule, which could severely impact fishing the following year. The big problem with that scenario is that no one knows for sure how many fluke are out there nor how many fish are really caught by the recreational anglers of New Jersey. The data is suspect at best. What is needed is more accurate information on the overall biomass of fluke and a better number what is caught.
I spoke on behalf of the shore-based fishermen and requested that they allow for a shore fishery of one fish from October 13th until the end of the year. This would not have impacted the quota very much and would have made a lot of surf fishermen very happy with the thought they could take a fish home for dinner if they were lucky enough to catch a fluke late in the season. If there had been a large number of surf fishermen in attendance, could they have swayed the council? We don’t know for sure, but if you don’t try you will never know.
The regulations for Sea Bass will be changed to a 12” size limit and a season from 1/1 – 9/1 and 9/16 – 11/30. The bag limit remains at 25 fish.
Porgies or Scup remain at 10” and 50 fish with a season from 7/1 – 12/31 in state waters. The EEZ closes on 11/30. So if a boat goes offshore the season is effectively closed on 11/30.
The Tautog season is very confusing. The size remains at 14”, but from 1/1 – 5/31 you can only keep 4 fish and then it goes to 1 fish from 6/1 – 11/14 to accommodate divers and an incidental catch for rod and reel. On 11/15 it goes to 8 fish until the end of the year. That’s fine for the party boats but doesn’t help the small boater who puts his boat away when the weather starts to get bad.
All the fish regulations were voted on by 6:30 pm but then the fun really started. A lot of people left but there were still over 75 people remaining to tackle the Horseshoe Crab issue. The NJ Audubon Society and a few other environmental groups such as the American Littoral Society and Clean Ocean Action have called for a complete ban on the harvesting of horseshoe crabs to protect the red knot and other shore birds that feed heavily on the crab eggs during their annual migration during the month of May. The red knot is in danger of extinction according to the Audubon Society because they are not getting enough to eat during their stopover in Cape May. The most interesting fact presented was that the eggs themselves have less density than they used to. A scientist or anyone else with a little common sense would ask why has that happened and maybe that’s the reason for the decline and not sheer numbers of crabs. If you eat a lot of something that is not as nutritious you get full without gaining weight. That’s the whole point of weight loss programs. Eat a lot of things that fill you up but don’t put on weight. What other environmental factor has caused the eggs to be different than they were?
Marty McHugh the new Director of NJ Fish and Wildlife presented a compromise which had been worked out with the State of Delaware that would allow for a 50% reduction in the harvest, down to 150,000 crabs. Neither the Audubon Society nor the crabbers were happy and in the end the council was unable to reach a consensus. The final vote was split right down the middle when the meeting finally broke up close to 10:00 pm. It was not a fun night.
This is the last month to push the Hi Roller Raffle tickets. The drawing will be at the April meeting so make sure you bring in all your tickets. This is an important fundraiser and the prizes are great so they should be easy to sell.
It’s not too early to put November 14 from 4:30 – 8:30 on your calendar. The JCAA Awards Dinner Dance is all scheduled for the Crystal Point Yacht Club and tickets will be available shortly. If each club sent their President and Vice President along with their wives we could fill the hall. A few clubs usually buy a whole table and save $10 on each ticket. So start talking the Dinner Dance up and let’s fill the hall.
The JCAA Board and some committee members held a retreat on March 1 at Island Beach State Park to review where we are as an organization and set the stage for the future. A lot of great stuff came out of the meeting, but also a lot of work will be necessary to fully implement the suggestions. I’ll be calling on all of you to help as we move forward.
The subway car issue is still not resolved. We cannot subvert the whole artificial reef program just to obtain a few subway cars. What was a win-win for the state, the fisherman, and the environment, and should have been a no-brainer, has turned into a political nightmare. At stake now is not just the subway cars but also the future of the artificial reef program in the State of New Jersey. If the JCAA, as your representative, had acquiesced to the demands of Clean Ocean Action, the artificial reef program would be under their control and any materials of opportunity in the future would have been found to be unacceptable to the strict and entirely unreasonable standards proposed. We could not let that happen. I urge you and every member of your club to write the Governor to protect the future of the artificial reef program and not let it become the political domain of a self-proclaimed expert. Here is a sample letter for you to send under your letterhead.
Governor James McGreevey
P.O. Box 001
State House, Trenton, NJ 086250001
PH 609-292-6000
FAX 609-292-3454
http://www.state.nj.us/governor/govmail.html
Dear Governor McGreevey:
I am a member of the Fishing Club. We are a group of dedicated anglers, conversationalists and environmentalists. Last April 23 a public hearing was held to discuss the issue of using old subway cars as artificial reef material. Cindy Zipf of Clean Ocean Action raised a few issues at the beginning of the meeting. All of her concerns were addressed and answered to the satisfaction of everyone in the room except Cindy. She did not want to believe that she could be wrong on this issue. Well, she is wrong and what is left of the original 650 subway cars (250 at last count) should be used by New Jersey to enhance our artificial reefs immediately.
These cars should be used with NO STRINGS attached. The questions being raised now have already been answered to the satisfaction of the states of Delaware, South Carolina and to the vast majority of the people of New Jersey. Please listen to the experts with the Division of Fish and Wildlife and support the plan they developed with the best scientific information available. New Jersey has one of the best artificial reef programs on the entire coast and has the experts within the Division to properly oversee the program. They are the experts and we don’t need an oversight committee of self-proclaimed experts to watch over the artificial reef program. If it’s not broken – don’t fix it!
Sincerely,