July 27, 2012 – New York State doggedly held on to an additional at-large seat on the influential Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, after New Jersey fishermen did not agree to support charter fishing captain Paul Eidman’s nomination to the position.
Tony Dilernia, a New York charter captain with long experience on the council, will return to take the at-large seat, the Department of Commerce stated Monday in announcing final choices for the quasi-government panel that sets fishing limits in federal waters.
Eidman had been nominated by Gov. Chris Christie as a candidate for the at-large seat — a post in addition to the obligatory seats filled by state representatives. One of New Jersey’s members, Chris Zeman, was reappointed.
But the Garden State Seafood Association, a commercial fishing industry group, and the New Jersey-based Recreational Fishing Alliance lobbied members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation not to support Eidman.
Eidman aroused the alliance’s ire by his criticism of efforts to change federal fisheries law, while commercial groups focused on his outspoken support for new limits on menhaden and herring commercial fisheries.
Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press.