In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, local fishermen must see the irony in the federal government very aggressively regulating fishing while doing very little to oversee oil drilling. The federal government has its priorities out of whack: It should aggressively regulate deepwater oil drilling and give fishermen a break.
There's no doubt that the millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico will have an adverse impact on marine life, but there still is considerable debate about whether overfishing threatens species such as red snapper. Yet the government has concluded that it must impose strict regulations, including a ban on red snapper fishing in a large area in the South Atlantic, in order to keep recreational and commercial fishermen from wiping out certain species of fish.
After a much-debated stock assessment showed that the red snapper population had been overfished, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council imposed an interim ban on fishing for red snapper in an area stretching from North Carolina to the Florida Keys. Earlier this month, the council voted to extend the ban and to add a new area where fishing for the snapper-grouper species will be prohibited. The new ban will put more than 70 species off-limits to fishermen.
Read the complete editorial from The Daytona Beach News Journal.