Federal plan to develop a comprehensive method for allocating fishery resources between commercial and recreational fishermen is moving forward. This allocation used to be in the amendments to fishery management plans. Gregg Waugh, deputy director of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC), said the council is working hard to meet new management directives in the 2006 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act.
Under the 2006 reauthorization act all regional federal fisheries management councils need to adopt annual catch limits set by scientists to prevent overfishing. As per Waugh the council will have to figure out how to divide that total poundage between recre4ational and commercial fishermen. He informed that the catch limits must be in place by 2010 for species where overfishing is taking place, and by 2011 for all other federally-managed species.
The council is working on to develop measures to ensure that allocations are not exceeded by either sector. Waugh said that the council has had accountability mechanisms to limit the commercial sector for a long time. Now to meet the new requirements, the council will have to do the same for the recreational fishery, opined Waugh.
Jeff Oden, an Outer Banks commercial fisherman, believes that the council is set on a course to reallocate the resource largely to the recreational sector, no matter which allocation method is used. According to him the snowy grouper fishery has been a traditional commercial fishery with more than 90 percent of landings by commercial fishermen. He said the council all of sudden saying the fishery is now 40 percent recreational.
