The Recreational Fishing Alliance wasted no time in mounting a legal challenge to an interim red snapper closure, announced Thursday by the federal government and entered into the Federal Registry on Friday, Dec. 4th.
RFA attorney Dave Heil said from his Orlando office that the complaint “is sitting in the clerk’s office” in the U.S. District Court’s Jacksonville Division.
“We had the paperwork ready,” Heil said.
The RFA had anticipated an earlier closure.
Heil said that the interim closure “took everybody by surprise.” He said that the RFA believed that the secretary of commerce would forgo the interim rule because a more sweeping closure proposal — Amendment 17A — is going to a public hearing this month. The hearing takes place in Charleston, SC., this week.