Hello all,
Thank you again to those of you who made the effort to attend the meeting. I appologize for running out of there so fast, but our schedule was very compressed. We ended up with over 1500 miles on the rental in 3 1/2 days, 16 meetings between Portland and Everett, Wa.
I hope you all got the information you need, even if it was not good news.
There is not much of an update because its only Tuesday.
Jim Donofrio called one of our California reps and will testify that the PMFC needs to look at putting controls in place for the commercial live fishery because of the problem with this fishery landing fish to the black market and unaccounted for. The Council does not usually take up issues with near shore fisheries but this time it might.
Since Jim has obtained 100 navy ships to sink, I will try to find out where they are and if we can get some of them for Oregon to create near-shore reefs in locations without them. Getting Oregon to allow them to be sunk is the real challenge, but it should be attempted. Of course we would not see any real benefit until years after they were sunk.
Janice green is at the PMFC meetings in California and won't be back until its over. Phil Leshowitz is going to be another key contact (opposite end of the table from Jim). His e-mail is:
phillrfarep@hotmail.com
Phil lives full time in Nasselle Washington but has a home in Portland as well. Phil is not good with the online stuff though, so I will help distribute info that way.
What I recommend doing for right now is passing along what was learned in the meeting to everyone you can find and especially some key points.
-Make sure that they know that commercial over-harvest on rockfish has virtually eliminated any chance at a recreational halibut fishery for the duration of the rebuilding plan (over 100 years) unless we can start to find halibut in shallow water or federal law changes the requirements of a building plan.
-They should know that the majority of the usual rockfish and lingcod fishing spots (anything in deeper than about 150 feet) will also be closed.
-The commercial fisheries will be pushed into shallow or really deep water.
-The live fish commercial fishery continues to move into Oregon.
-Oregon has done nothing in shallow water areas to protect recreational fishing from commercial over-harvest.
-Without deepwater bottom fish, Oregon coastal communities must support themselves on near shore bottom fish (which are likely to get wiped out by commercials), Salmon (very up and down, future closures are inevitable), and Tuna (we have concerns that the commercials will concentrate more effort on tuna, possibly including the Pelagic Drift Longlines, one of the most destructive fishing practices ever developed). If coastal communities were to loose one or more of these remaining fisheries would the charter boat industries and all the support industries survive? If they don't survive we will see a loss of angler hours, loss of tourism, hotels, restaurants, tackle shops, gas stations, boating facilities, and boat dealers will likely close. The state will collect less money in license sales and taxes to pay for things like hatcheries.
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