About 50 recreational fishermen attended a public hearing Tuesday night to ask questions and speak out against a proposed federal regulation that could ban fishing for black sea bass, scup (porgies) and summer flounder after Sept. 1, a measure that would halt fishing on Labor Day weekend.
The hearing, held at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, is the last of four held by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, signed into law in 2007, calls for setting limits on the number of fish of each species that can be caught each year to prevent overfishing, Jessica Coakley of the MFMC told the fishermen during a two-hour presentation on the proposed rules. Catch limits will be based on scientific estimates of the population of each species of fish and the degree of certainty of those estimates.
Read the complete story at The Press of Atlantic City.