CCA’s Greedy Grouper Grab Attempt
The Coastal Conservation Association has a fairly lofty “Mission Statement” posted on their own front page. There seems to be nothing in their real agenda, however, that corresponds to that self-satisfied description of themselves.
Their latest effort revolves around the use of unsupported (and unsupportable) assumptions made in the guise of exact science that “shows” that the State of Florida and her people would benefit economically from giving the full grouper allocation to the recreational sector and taking it away from the commercial sector completely. Interesting position. Totally unfounded and ridiculous, but interesting.
“Let ‘em eat tilapia”
Their position revolves around a study they disingenuously characterize as a “newly released economic study” made (and paid handsomely for) at their behest by a hired gun consulting firm run by a former employee of the NMFS who decided that he could make more money “consulting” for the private sector and special interest groups and publicized solely by the CCA. This bought and paid for paper “concludes” that the public would best be served by denying that same public access to freshly caught wild Florida grouper and giving all access to that resource to the minority of Florida citizens, Florida visitors, and seafood consuming public who are in the extremely small percentage of those groups who not only have the willingness and desire, but can afford both the equipment and the time to go catch fish for their own consumption. They would put a commercial fishery out of business in order to allow full access to the fishery to a very small percentage of citizens while telling the rest of the citizens that farm raised imported talapia is good enough for them.
A large portion of the Florida tourist industry relies on the abundance of fresh caught Florida seafood and Fresh Florida Seafood Restaurants in our state to attract tourists. If a tourist sitting at Dockside Dave’s in Madeira Beach can only order the same farm raised tilapia or North Atlantic pollock that he can order back home from Captain Salty’s Fast Fish Food or MIcky D’s, what is the incentive to be on the dock in the first place?
The study, which the CCA incorrectly (and perhaps dishonestly) states “used economics to analyze grouper allocations” is a masterpiece of manipulating statistics and ignoring many important points in order to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion, the conclusion that the people paying for the “study” wanted the “study” to arrive at.
The study makes the false assumption (and insinuation) that the entire charter boat industry, the recreational boating industry, and all other peripheral industries are singularly relying on either gag grouper or red grouper ans somehow pretends to be able to quantify seperately the value of the red and gag grouper recreational fisheries. This just isn’t true and is, in fact, absurd. If grouper season is closed, the charter boats fish for other species and the tourists on board are for the most part just as happy. In the purely recreational sector, I don’t know of a single person who climbs on board their 20 foot center console boat and runs offshore in pursuit of one specific fish. They go “bottom fishing” and bring in the legal bag limits if they catch them (while killing and discarding many other fish). To quantify that fishery as if the gag grouper effort were a distinct value different from the red grouper effort is ridiculous to the point of absurdity and should immediately raise a huge red flag as to the attempt in this “study” to manipulate whatever statistics can be found to conform to their pre-determined conclusion.
Hopefully the regulatory agencies that have the power to either accept this “study” as reasonable or discard it as complete junk are intelligent and ethical enough to see through this transparently greedy attempt to grab the public resource for a very small and limited special interest group. There may be far less commercial grouper fishermen than recreational ones, but every grouper the commercial sector catches is made available to the public without regard to whether or not they can afford to or desire to spend a day offshore fishing for the grouper themselves.
(Editor: The poster of the preceding is a commercial fisherman, a boat owner and a reef fish permit holder who is expressing his own opinion.)
