Tag Archives: fisheries monitoring
North Carolina Fisheries Association Weekly Update 01/09/2023 – Fisheries Monitoring and Data Collection/Legislative Update
The number of commercial fishermen in North Carolina has definitely been on a downward trend for some time. We have gone from 4,588 active commercial licenses in 2001 down to 2,170 active licenses in 2021 according to DMF’s most recent statistics. Although numbers of participants in our state have decreased by almost half in the last 20 years commercial fishing monitoring and data collection has not and NC commercial fishermen continue to provide a wealth of useful data that has created a permanent record showing where we came from and how we got there. The first commercial fishing data collection system I will talk about is the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) fish house trip ticket program. This program started in 1994 and since then it has grown into one of the leading fisheries data collection programs in the country. >click to read the update< 12:20
Fishing Bycatch Regulations Pass Judge’s Sniff Test
Federal regulators ducked a conservation-minded challenge Thursday concerning rules meant to minimize fishing bycatch. The National Marine Fisheries Service adopted the rules in question two years ago, with approval from the D.C. Circuit. Though the rules requires fishing vessels to occasionally have a biologist document the amount of fish caught and discarded, the group Oceana complained in a federal complaint that the infrequency of such observation undermines its efficacy as a serious check on fishing abuses. U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle sided with the agency Thursday at summary judgment, saying the issue comes down to how the Fisheries Service allocates its funding for NMFS, short for standardized bycatch reporting methodology. click here to read the story 09:02
