Florida weather report
From last weeks NOAA's Fishnews:
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, and its advisory panels and committees, will meet June 7-12, 2009, in Stuart, FL. A detailed agenda is provided in the Federal Register notice.
I got home last night after meeting for 2.5 days in the SSC conference room while the Hutchinson Island beach taunted me only a quarter mile away with half-way decent weather most of the time.
The news sounds really, really bad for snapper-grouper fisherman as catch limits, etc are getting more and more stringent in response to overfished stocks. I did my share of adding pressure to the fishery by ordering grouper at least once, but mostly I got the dolphin (i.e., mahi-mahi).
There is some good news, however, as various groups of fishermen are interested in LAPPs (i.e., individual transferable quotas) which is one way to rebuild stocks, reduce effort and allow fishermen to make more money. Socioeconomic analysis also got a boost with the near-establishment of a socioeconomic technical review panel to the SSC (the final vote is Friday).
And, this is really cool, you can watch the rest of the meetings (scheduled through noon on Friday) here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/safmctv.





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