I'm getting ready to go to the Renaissance Orlando Hotel Airport (what happened to Key West?) for the June 2008 meeting of the SAFMC Scientific and Statistical Committee.
The highlight of the meeting will be learning more about what the Limited Access Privilege Program Workgroup is up to (here is their 71 page report). Also, allocation issues (dividing the catch between recreational and commercial sectors) are heating up but I don't see it on the SSC agenda.
Update (1:45 pm): I read the SSC roadmap on the plane [PDF]. A comprehensive allocation amendment is scheduled for the December SSC meeting in December. And the LAP Program (ITQs) for snapper-grouper in the south Atlantic appears to be dead:
The LAP Workgroup met eight times since April, 2007 to assess the appropriateness of a limited access privilege program for the snapper-grouper commercial fishery. They delivered a final report to the Council in March, 2008. The report contains discussion of possible benefits and drawbacks to the fishery in terms of economic, conservation and social issues.
A decision was reached not to proceed with a LAP for the snapper-grouper fishery at this time.
I'm reading the report (77 pages ... gulp). I'll post on that later this week.
End update.
In reviewing the December 2007 minutes I found a couple of gems that remind me of what I dork I am. Here's one:
Ms. Belcher (SSC Chair): Okay, let’s get started. We have a decision to make. We have to reconsider where we’re at now or do we want to go forward with Amendment 15A at this point. The first item that comes up is a motion to reconsider our previous rejection because of the lack of economic and social information. Do we still have that rejection or do we feel that it’s been adequately covered so we can move on to the next stage?
Dr. Whitehead: If the economic analysis has been adequately addressed.
Ms. Belcher: Would you care to make that as a motion?
Dr. Whitehead: Yes, I’ll make that as a motion.
Ms. Belcher: Okay, could you state the motion for the record?
Dr. Whitehead: State it differently than I just did?
Ms. Belcher: We just have to recognize it as a motion.
Dr. Whitehead: I move that we recommend that the economic analysis has been adequately
addressed.
And later:
Dr. Whitehead: When it comes time to talk about stuff like allocation issues where we might want to get into more geeky stuff that you all really don’t want to hear and we think you don’t want to hear, sometimes I think we hesitate in saying that – since there’s only three or four of us here I think the last two meetings – so in those cases I think it would be great if we could break out. Otherwise, if there’s just three or four of us and we’re talking about issues that are mostly biological, we might as well sit in here and hang out.
Is that how I talk? Yikes. Am I, like, totally incoherent?
