Below is a link to the report given to the Dept. of Commerce. Written by the Minority of voters who voted against Amendment 40, Sector Separation. I highly recommend taking a few minutes of your time to read the report.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.clie...inal_with_signatures_-_17dec14.pdf?1418842935
This was attachment 1 in the Report:
Attachment 1 – This was reported as a response from Mr. Chris Blankenship to an email by a poster on the message board, The Hull Truth on October 24th.
Mark,
Amendment 40 (Sector Separation) was approved by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council on October 23, 2014. In conversations with members and judging from procedural votes it was clear that the votes on this issue were 8 for passage and 8 against with NOAA Fisheries Regional Administrator Roy Crabtree being the deciding vote. All five State Fishery representatives were united in opposition to Amendment 40. Feeling that the amendment would pass, the goal of the states was to implement a sunset provision to give us time to work out regional management. Crabtree indicated that he was voting for passage but that if one state would change their vote the he would break from the block of Council members that were voting together railroading implementation of Sector Separation to vote for the sunset provision. In order to secure the sunset provision we reluctantly agreed to support Amendment 40 resulting in a 10-7 vote with the three year sunset provision included. The options for the states were to either watch this amendment pass with no sunset and have to live with the separated sector forever, like we are doing now with the commercial fishery, or work out a compromise to place a sunset provision to give us the opportunity to implement regional management for all recreational sectors in the future. The State of Alabama feels that the best option to repair this broken federal management system is for the states to have regional control of the fishery in waters adjacent to their state, both in state and federal waters, for both charter and private recreational fishermen. Like all the issues concerning red snapper and the federal government, there are no easy solutions. The State of Alabama, through the Marine Resources Division will continue to work diligently to fix this broken system. The Red Snapper Reporting System worked very well last year. We are in deep negotiations with NOAA Fisheries to use this data to improve and calibrate their data collection system. Alabama spearheaded an effort at this meeting to have the Science and Statistical Committee provide quota recommendations using a less conservative analysis of spawning potential ratio since this fishery is rebuilding faster than they projected. This will allow us to catch more pounds now, while still meeting the goals to rebuild by 2032. We continue with our fishery independent research work in our artificial reef zones that we feel will be instrumental in the new stock assessment. Now that Amendment 40 has passed, Amendment 28 concerning reallocation of portions of the quota from the commercial sector to the recreational sector is back on the table for discussion and action. All of these items will increase the amount of pounds available for the private recreational fishermen and hopefully get us a longer season while we work to make real changes through regional management and through changes to the Magnusson-Stevens Act in Congress in 2015.
Chris Blankenship, Director
Alabama Marine Resources Division
Dauphin Island Office 251-861-2882
Gulf Shores Office 251-968-7576
Chris.blankenship@dcnr.alabama.gov
If you haven't done so already, go back and click on the link above!
http://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.clie...inal_with_signatures_-_17dec14.pdf?1418842935
This was attachment 1 in the Report:
Attachment 1 – This was reported as a response from Mr. Chris Blankenship to an email by a poster on the message board, The Hull Truth on October 24th.
Mark,
Amendment 40 (Sector Separation) was approved by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council on October 23, 2014. In conversations with members and judging from procedural votes it was clear that the votes on this issue were 8 for passage and 8 against with NOAA Fisheries Regional Administrator Roy Crabtree being the deciding vote. All five State Fishery representatives were united in opposition to Amendment 40. Feeling that the amendment would pass, the goal of the states was to implement a sunset provision to give us time to work out regional management. Crabtree indicated that he was voting for passage but that if one state would change their vote the he would break from the block of Council members that were voting together railroading implementation of Sector Separation to vote for the sunset provision. In order to secure the sunset provision we reluctantly agreed to support Amendment 40 resulting in a 10-7 vote with the three year sunset provision included. The options for the states were to either watch this amendment pass with no sunset and have to live with the separated sector forever, like we are doing now with the commercial fishery, or work out a compromise to place a sunset provision to give us the opportunity to implement regional management for all recreational sectors in the future. The State of Alabama feels that the best option to repair this broken federal management system is for the states to have regional control of the fishery in waters adjacent to their state, both in state and federal waters, for both charter and private recreational fishermen. Like all the issues concerning red snapper and the federal government, there are no easy solutions. The State of Alabama, through the Marine Resources Division will continue to work diligently to fix this broken system. The Red Snapper Reporting System worked very well last year. We are in deep negotiations with NOAA Fisheries to use this data to improve and calibrate their data collection system. Alabama spearheaded an effort at this meeting to have the Science and Statistical Committee provide quota recommendations using a less conservative analysis of spawning potential ratio since this fishery is rebuilding faster than they projected. This will allow us to catch more pounds now, while still meeting the goals to rebuild by 2032. We continue with our fishery independent research work in our artificial reef zones that we feel will be instrumental in the new stock assessment. Now that Amendment 40 has passed, Amendment 28 concerning reallocation of portions of the quota from the commercial sector to the recreational sector is back on the table for discussion and action. All of these items will increase the amount of pounds available for the private recreational fishermen and hopefully get us a longer season while we work to make real changes through regional management and through changes to the Magnusson-Stevens Act in Congress in 2015.
Chris Blankenship, Director
Alabama Marine Resources Division
Dauphin Island Office 251-861-2882
Gulf Shores Office 251-968-7576
Chris.blankenship@dcnr.alabama.gov
If you haven't done so already, go back and click on the link above!