Guest column: Follow the Will of the Voters – Keep the Net Limitation

May 25, 2014 Gulf of Mexico

On May 15, the First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee heard yet another legal challenge to the net limitation placed into the state Constitution in 1994 by 72 percent of Florida’s voters. This critical conservation issue was placed on the ballot 20 years ago after many years of short-sighted management of public marine resources that allowed huge nets to be used in our state’s salt waters. These nets, which catch fish by entangling them by their gills,,, Read more here 10:02

Florida Wildlife Federation, gill net ban, Manley K. Fuller President, Preston T. Robertson General Counsel

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The New England groundfish debacle (Part III): who or what is at fault? Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet

It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries.

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

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