These are the facts, does not necessarily mean that I agree with them or support them.
There have been three crises in the Federal fishing regulation world. One is that their data sucks. Two is that there is no way to control or know how many purely recreational anglers there are and three - we are all seeing an explosion in fish but the federal law says that they fish are not rebuild until you have a healthy stock of all year classes. Red Snapper live about 30 years.
Because the stock is not considered rebuild yet by law (year classes of fish) we are still under strict management.
Because NMFS data SUCKS they have no way of knowing how many people fish on any day or how many fish are caught so they use a huge (20%) error rate to the good of the fish to shorten the season. Their survey methods are horrible but it is what they use.
For years NMFS has been preaching that they need better data and in todays political climate that almost always comes down to some form of limited access. IE: you would need tags or some other form of stricter management. The purely recreational politico groups and the purely recreational angler as a group has resisted all attempts to this point to have stricter management so the Feds have responded by shortening the seasons to make sure that too many fish are not harvested. I can't blame you, I don't want to be told that I have to run to Walmart to buy a tag before I go fishing. I do fish recreationally when I'm not working.
The Charter boats are currently lumped by law with the recreational folks because we do not sell our catch. We bring "recreational" anglers fishing. The charter boats are a finite group because our licenses are under moratorium. A large group of the charter boats have said that they would agree to stricter management if they could get more days fishing. (get rid of the error rate and provide better data)
Sector Separation looks at the PERCENTAGE of the recreational quota that the charter boats have historically caught and gives that PERCENTAGE in the form of pounds to the finite number of charter boats remaining. The remaining PERCENTAGE would remain with the purely recreational group. The charter boats would harvest out of their PERCENTAGE until it is gone and would have to do things such as submit to fish counts, inspections and daily trip reports so that each fish caught could be counted. So what it does has the possibility of being good for the charter boats, especially since we have been locked out of the fishery since the states have gone inconsistent with the federal regulations. In Louisiana the Charter boats and ONLY the charter boats were restricted to 9 days of fishing. The purely recreational crowd has been able to fish 365.
The remaining percentage (purely recreational) would be out there waiting for a better management plan to be offered. Currently it is predicted that you would have a federal season of about a week. Should it not go through you would not be able to harvest any more fish form the federal point of view because the charter boats would be fishing the same days and harvesting the same percentage of the single quota.
This is not something that the Louisiana Charter Boats wanted as a whole. We stood with WLF when they went inconsistent knowing that we would be the only group that suffered, however Louisiana's actions were designed to get our senators involved to change the law so that all of this would go away. They did not listen, they are too worried about running campaigns. So for the last couple of years it has been the charter boats and ONLY the charter boats that have been locked out of the fishery. This would get us back in while they are still fighting on other things like Regional Management. Louisiana says they have a better data system but to date the feds have not allowed the states to split and manage their own fishery.
Long but hope it answers some questions.
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