Although local fishermen have battled with regulators for almost two years about the coming regulations, fishermen expressed satisfaction Wednesday with the measure as adopted.
“We fought — the St. Thomas Fishermen’s Association and the St. Croix Commercial Fishermen’s Association — fought hard for two years to get our voice heard,” said Julien Magras, chairman of the St. Thomas Fishermen’s Association. “We ended up on the better side of this document. It wasn’t an easy process, though.”
Magras and Edward Schuster, chairman of the St. Croix Commercial Fisherman’s Association, still contend that the fisheries around the islands are sustainable as they have been managed.
The council ultimately went with recommendations from the associations, backing off from an option that may have reduced the catch of those species by 25 percent.
The Caribbean Fisheries Management Council, meeting on St. Croix, took a final vote Tuesday on proposed new commercial fishing regulations that would set catch limits on certain targeted species in federal waters.
The proposed regulations — which would cover snappers, groupers, parrotfish and queen conch, species that are considered over-fished in federal Caribbean waters — will be put into final draft form and forwarded to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke for final action.
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