Their proposal would hurt North Carolinians – Jerry Schill, President, North Carolina Fisheries Association
In response to a letter to the editor, “Thoughts on marine fisheries,” Wednesday, March 16, I offer the following comments. It should be noted that the Kinston authors sent the letter to several media outlets. On the subject of shrimp trawling, the writers fail to acknowledge the many studies done by researchers over the years that have documented bycatch associated with this fishery and that despite decades of trawling, overall benthic productivity is dramatically increased. They also ignore the efforts by commercial fishermen to work proactively to reduce bycatch. Those studies began in the late 1980s and resulted with bycatch reduction devices in shrimp trawls. Currently, even though North Carolina is ahead of federal requirements to reduce bycatch, there is cooperative research ongoing to reduce it even further. Read the rest here 10:11
Leave a Reply