“Now, the hard work begins.”
That was the assessment of Lynn Fegley, a Maryland fisheries biologist just moments after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted overwhelmingly last night to send a suite of options to protect menhaden and rebuild the population out for public comment.
Not to say it was a walk in the park to get from the tentative steps in 2005 to cap commercial menhaden fishing in the Chesapeake Bay to admitting menhaden are in trouble to actually doing something to protect the resource.
The decisive action was greeted with grins and applause from audience members, many of whom had sat through years of hearings, hoping for the best but always going home empty handed.
“We got what we wanted. Now the public will have a chance to do something for menhaden,” said Ken Hinman of the National Coalition for Marine Conservation. “They’ve given us the opportunity to put a lot more menhaden back into the water.”
Read the complete opinion piece at The Baltimore Sun.