Laid back attitude of the Governor Jon Corzine and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has jeopardized a vital moratorium on the horseshoe crab harvest. It is said that if the authority has filled two long-standing public member vacancies on the state’s Marine Fisheries Council, the five commercial fishermen on the council likely could not have mustered enough votes last week to deep-six an extension of the state’s two-year-old crab ban.
Now the DEP is going to concoct a legal strategy to block a harvest during this year’s horseshoe crab season, which runs from April through June or so. As the continuing moratorium is crucial to rebuilding the crab population, which was heavily harvested in the 1990s, the DEP is keen to act immediately.
It is said that a booming crab population is essential to the survival of the red knot, a small bird that migrates from Chile to the Arctic each spring. Declining population of crabs hit the numbers of red knot badly. But the fishermen are not ready to buy this reason because they think that there are plenty of crabs and the bird’s decline must be from other cause. So they want more crabs permit for the industry.
According to state officials the legal technicalities block the governor from simply issuing an emergency order to block the crab harvest. Therefore it is expected that the DEP should come up with another legal avenue to reinstate the moratorium and if needed the department should seek emergency legislation to furnish the job.
