State to impose emergency restrictions
on commercial Spanish mackerel catch
By Chip Drago
Mobile Bay Times
Alabama officials “shortly” will issue an emergency regulation to ease commercial fishing pressure on Spanish mackerel in state waters, according to Barnett Lawley, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
In recent years, commercial fishermen have caught a far greater percentage of Spanish mackerel than have recreational fishermen. The National Marine Fisheries Service advises as healthy a harvest ratio of 57 percent commercial to 43 percent recreational.
Preliminary figures indicate that the catch has become “highly skewed toward commercial,” with the ratio in 2006 at 83 percent commercial to 17 percent recreational, Lawley noted.
Lawley expects within a week to 10 days to impose a quota on Spanish mackerel as well as a possible restriction on fishing times, he said Friday morning. The commissioner offered no further specifics or details on the regulations.
“Whether it (the disparity) is from lack of effort on the recreational side or lack of fish, we have no way of knowing,” he said. “But the harvest is highly skewed toward commercial.”
Lawley said it was not ADCNR’s intention to take sides in any disagreements between commercial and recreational fishing interests.
“We try to stay in the middle,” he said. “Regardless, it’s my responsibility to manage the resource. There will have to be some changes on commercial fishing to get this back to reality so that there are more Spanish out there for people to share in the resource. That’s my job and I intend to do it.”
Lawley said he was given authorization at the last board meeting to issue an emergency regulation if he deemed it necessary.
The Spanish mackerel season opened earlier this month but the spring run hasn’t yet begun in earnest as the fish migrate along the coast.
In Alabama in 2001, the ratio was 56-44 commercial to recreational catch, but the ratio has been consistently out-of-whack from the ideal since then.
“We have to look at where we’re supposed to be and where we are and our responsibility to balance the resource,” he said.
More than half of the two million pounds of Spanish mackerel caught in 2006 were harvested from the waters of Alabama which has only four percent of the Gulf of Mexico shoreline.
Commercial fishermen use gill nets to catch Spanish mackerel. Commercial monofilament gill nets have been outlawed elsewhere along the Gulf Coast in recent years, although Louisiana still has a short fall season during which commercial gill netting of spawning mullet is permitted.
The Spanish mackerel harvest in Alabama waters was about 1.11 million pounds in 2006, up from less than 150,000 pounds 15 years ago. With commercial gill netting eliminated in Florida, the commercial take of Spanish mackerel in Florida waters fell from more than 3.5 million pounds in 1992 to 231,786 pounds in 2004.
Commercial and recreational fishermen in Alabama are presently at odds over proposed legislation that would ban the use of commercial gill nets. The CCA contends that gill netting is wasteful, ensnaring all manner of fish in pursuit of a single species. Commercial interests counter that there is no scientific evidence that gill netting is harmful to fish stocks.
State Rep. Spencer Collier, R-Bayou La Batre, has championed the commercial fishermen’s cause.
He said the seafood industry is open to negotiations, including an increased mesh size and/or quotas. But an outright ban that “puts us out of business” is not acceptable, he said.
“Our argument is that we are already heavily regulated,” said Collier. “I have confidence in the Department of Conservation. But we can’t be in a two-front war where the CCA (Coastal Conservation Association) is trying to put us out of business and the conservation department is regulating us out of business.”
“A quota might be okay in return for withdrawing a bill that would make several hundred people unemployed,” Collier said. “Doing both is unfair. If the department of conservation supports both, I would be disappointed.”
If gill nets are so harmful, said Collier, why don’t their critics also call for a ban on recreational gill nets? Recreational nets can be up to 300 feet and there are about 400 of them, said Collier.
“The bill only outlaws commercial nets,” Collier said. “Why aren’t we talking about recreational nets, too? I think they contradict themselves … how evil the invisible, monofilament nets are. Why then are recreational nets so good? I’m not for banning either one of them. But I cannot stand by and let them pass anything mandatory that puts these hardworking people out of business. If I have to burn legislative days (filibustering), that’s what I’ll do.”
Legislators and representatives of commercial and recreational fishing interests are expected to open talks next week in Montgomery on specific terms of a compromise in their battle over gill nets, including a potential buy out of Alabama's 110-120 commercial gill netters.
The CCA has agreed to a two-year $5 increase in the fee for an annual saltwater fishing license to generate revenue toward a buyout of the commercial gill net fishery. The measure would generate about $800,000 over two years.
Framing the discussion as warfare between classes unnecessarily complicates the issue, said Dr. John J. Dindo, a marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.
“This is not a class battle,” said Dindo. “It is a battle over a resource that should be here today, tomorrow and into the future (for both commercial and recreational fishermen). To portray it as a class battle is wrong.”
A hearing in the House agriculture committee on the gill net legislation attracted passionate advocates on both sides of the issue, at times careening toward a cultural clash between the haves and have-nots.
“It’s about a resource and that’s what everybody should focus on,” said Dindo. “The worst possibility is if nothing is done and in five years we wake up and the mullet population doesn’t exist and there are no Spanish mackerel off the coast. We slap our heads and point fingers, saying this guy didn’t do his job. Sitting back and doing nothing is just not the answer. You have to manage the resource (for the sake of both recreational and commercial fishermen. Otherwise) … one day they wake up and they won’t have anything to fish for. And that is where the focus should be. I hate it; I really do that it can be boiled down to make it look like a class struggle when the focus definitely should be on the resource.”
