The Way You See It

Bob Jones, of SFA, recently sent these interesting observations and figures to SOFA’s Bob Spaeth. He’s given us permission to reprint the email here, we think it bears some thought.

Greetings,

I was thinking about all the draconian cuts in fishing throughout the United States, so I thought I would look at what regulators have already done to the seafood industry in the southeast. These are the numbers that leapt out at me from my part of the world. We had a robust seafood industry in the southeast before the Magnuson Act was enacted and re-interpreted. As I’m writing this note, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is preparing to deal a death blow to the snapper/grouper industry as ordered by NMFS based on their interpretation of a selected portion of Congressional action. All numbers are taken directly from two NMFS publications: FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES, 1984 (page 4) and FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES 2006 (page 6).

The government numbers indicate what regulations have done to a once proud food producing segment of the US economy. If I have copied these numbers down correctly, it appears our industry has almost been managed out of existence for no good purpose. Why do the Councils keep taking the fish?

Bob Jones

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