Well well well, the financial pressure from business owners has finally reached Raleigh regarding the loss of tourism dollars from recreational fishing along our coast.
Business owners have been screaming at the top of their lungs to their representatives that many tourists are avoiding North Carolina for fishing destinations in Virginia and South Carolina over Flounder. And now our fearless leaders are trying to imitate South Carolina law makers decisions regarding American Red Snapper regulations.
I was given permission to say what I wanted to say … so here goes. I’m going to rip the Band-Aid off this and just tell the truth to anyone in the public that may read this article.
Fisheries management at a federal level, and especially North Carolina fisheries management, has a long-standing crooked reputation to uphold, and it’s corrupt to the core.
My opinion of both agencies is…
“Hey look, I’m trying to put out the fire I started.”
I will say that North Carolina has shown some signs of improvement over the years but is still deeply flawed and needs a complete overhaul. Period.
Federal fisheries management is owned and operated by (agenda driven) non-elected bureaucrats that intentionally ignore accurate information given to them and refuse to take the correct measures to obtain accurate information to manage our fisheries properly. For example, why not spend just a fraction of your multi-billion-dollar budgets on underwater film studies of these areas that are in question to take accurate fish counts? Instead, they rely on phone and boat ramp surveys from people that couldn’t catch a cold, much less Grouper or American Red Snapper, and make huge extrapolations based off poor information that will in turn, affect our bank accounts. No, that would make way too much common sense.
Just keep this in the back of your mind regarding federal fisheries management… The Chevron Act. It will take time to overcome many decades of corrupt fisheries management for money, but the Supreme Court reversed the ruling on the Chevron Act, and we will slowly but surely start to get rid of these unelected bureaucrats (3 and 4 letter agencies) that are intentionally trying to put commercial fisherman, charter fisherman and recreational fisherman out of the picture. Let that statement simmer.
HB 442 regarding American Red Snapper:
North Carolina has no federal jurisdiction on this federally regulated species. The only thing we can do is regulate our state waters like South Carolina did. My applause.
HB 442 regarding Southern Flounder:
There’s not enough room in this entire magazine, much less this article to explain my feelings towards Southern Flounder
We’ve held the Flat Bottom Girls Flounder Tournament for 15 years here in Wilmington to provide (male and female) brood stock to UNCW and North Carolina State University under the direction of Wade Watenabe and Harry Daniels, respectively. These two literally wrote the book on how to grow Southern Flounder. I became interested in Wade’s work in 2001 and started the Flounder tournament in 2003. We pleaded with NCDMF for permission to start a series of Flounder hatcheries to overcome where we are at this very moment in time. I have video footage of UNCW research associates growing Southern Flounder fry by the hundreds of thousands and only limited by space. They proved the fingerlings could be grown by the millions with the correct square footage of tanks and budget to support the staff.
I have to stop here because I’m out of room in this article and I could go on and on, but I will not. I am done with corrupt fisheries management. I’m sure they will have to do several million dollar’s worth of “research” to solve this problem. This is where the tire meets the pavement. If we would’ve had at least one hatchery in place for the last 20 years, we wouldn’t be in the position we are now. Contact your representatives and find out where they stand on these issues.
I’ll close with this statement… I’ve been fishing offshore for over 40 years, catching Red Snapper and Grouper. There has never been as many American Red Snapper as there are right now on the East Coast, and Southern Flounder populations are not in dire straits. FACT.
Captain Tim Barefoot
barefootcatsandtackle.com