BATON ROUGE — August 13, 2012 — A congressional caucus and a recreational fishing lobby are raising new concerns over the federal management of catch share programs and sector separation.
The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is considering dividing offshore recreational anglers into two different sections: one for those who own their own boats and another for those who charter or captain their own for-hire boats.
Conceptually, the charter industry would receive its own portion of the fish that are set aside for all offshore recreational fishermen.
The leadership of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus has sent a letter to the Gulf council stating that “we have serious concerns about the current proposal to further subdivide the recreational fishing allocation by awarding the charter boats with their own guaranteed allocation.”
While the letter is signed by the co-chairmen of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, Reps. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican, and Mike Ross, an Arkansas Democrat, most of the Louisiana delegation are members, including local U.S. Reps. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, and Steve Scalise, R-Metairie.
The caucus goes on to question the process the Gulf council is using to develop and implement sector separation and catch share programs, and further points out the council first needs better scientific data, additional economic evaluations and demographic studies to assess how mixed-used fisheries would best be reallocated.
Read the letter from the Congressmen to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council