The PFMC has voted to close rockfish season from Pidgeon Pt. North to the Oregon border on October first due to Sport fishermen in Shelter Cove and Crescent City killing too many Yelloweye rockfish.

Here's the kicker... They also factor in the "Estimated" kill numbers by interpreting the anecdotal numbers given to the fish counters.

Ie if the counter was told that 6 Yellow eye were caught and released the factor would be that only 42% of them survived so the kill of Yelloweye in this case would be 3 fish.

You know, I believe once regulators get a taste of power, they become seduced by it. I hope that there are term limits for the people on that commission.

Perhaps regulation will soon hit the commercial long-liners:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/is-it-the-end-of...5/1189277050406.html

But, once they start regulating commercial and sport, politician wannabies are gonna start a feeding frenzy...

many of these laws were put into place or at least started during Grey Davis' reign of terror. They do include commercials. If Grey had been allowed to stay in office, he would have made all of Socal a preserve. It takes rockfish a zillion years to reproduce, and they were literally being fished out by their simplicity to catch. Give them a break, and they will be around for generations. The laws are based on Alaska's, and they work!

Certainly I agree, regulation consistent with a common objective is a good thing. For example, in a province in India, the locals depended for economic health upon foreign hunters going after tigers. Too many tigers and villagers get eaten. To few tigers and their population is unsustainable. So, systems engineers (applied mathematicians--not the TV or telephone repairman so-called system engineers), constructed a mathematical model that found the correct number of hunters to allow, which met all objectives (sustained tiger population, economic health, villagers not being eaten). None of this type of scientific analysis is discussed in what the media reports, which makes me believe this is all guesswork--political BS.

And, I *know* that it is all about the money.

As stated in the article to which a link was provided: "There are a recorded 2 billion longline hooks being trawled around the globe. But because of illegal fishing, under-quoting by commercial fisheries and other factors, estimates of up 10 billion hooks "have real credibility".

This is just the long-liners. Commercials are sterilizing the oceans. To me it is logical that regulation should begin with/focus on those doing greatest damage. This is a global problem.

Again, though, local fisheries deserve a systems analysis approach too. I doubt whether a systems analysis approach was used in the case JanZ reports.

Too many commercial fisheries are over fished with little or no oversight. When the fish populations crash sportfish harvest gets cut and those that caused the problem move on to destroy other fisheries.
Oregon sopotrtfishing opportunities are currently severly restricted due to the false perception, they have no real data, that yelloweye and canary rockfish populations have been overfished (by comfish). The ODF&G has done some tests but their gear was set randomly, like in not on rockfish habitat, to "prove" there is a problem and justifying the closing down of large sections of our BEST fish habitat to ALL sportfishing.
When you can't keep the yelloweye and canaries off your hooks and the ODF&G is saying they are "endangered" something is WRONG!

Thanks, Keta. That has been my impression: guesswork (at best) or intentional misinformation (apparently the new SOP) by politician wannabies.

I doubt that is entirely attributable to ignorance (they are unaware that scientific management exists), sloth (they are too impassionate to do the correct analysis) and lust for power. Certainly, someone is making money off of this: and that is where the problem was hatched, and what fuels the fire.

The same people that "gave" California the MPZ's are now "advising" Oregon's governor. Their ultimate goal is a no fishing zone from the Mexican border to Alaska.

I wonder how many commercially-sold fish products these same people eat. Man, what a headache I am getting, it is becoming chronic.

Did a little long multiplication to ascertain exactly how much impact commercial long-lining for tuna has, and the sport-fishing equivalent.

1) Assume a sport boat for tuna has 25 fisherman, each with a hook in the water at all times.

a) based on the lower-bound estimate of 2 billion commercial long-line hooks, this would mean that

EIGHTY MILLION long-range boats would have to be prowling the fisheries at all times.

b) based on the upper-bound estimate of 10 billion commerical long-line hooks, this would mean that

FOUR-HUNDRED MILLION long-range boats would have to be out fishing at all times.

400,000,000 long-range boats.

400 fleets each consisting of a million boats!

Doooooohhhhhhhhh!!!

Here is a cool movie plot synopsis... Maybe if a Hollywood movie is made, public opinion could change things?

Commercial fishermen kill so many game fish at the top of the food chain that most schools become sub-threshold for self-sustainment: they are headed for extinction. The bait fish multiply like bacteria in a petri dish to unsustainable levels. Local supply of dissolved oxygen and food stuffs are exhausted among the huge schools of bait, leading to the death of trillions of little fish. The decay reduces oxygen levels further and produce huge blooms of fish-flesh-devouring bacteria that lead to sudden death of most water-born species. The oceans become toxic, stinking cesspools that harbor untold numbers and species of new, evolving bacterial life forms that are hungry, and begin to target land creatures.

Hey hon, let's take the kids to the beach!

Eyah!

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OK-let's go the other way. an "endangered species" as descriped by the environmental terrorists. THE SEA LION!! He sleeps on your boat, eats all of the winter run salmon and steelhead, and pollutes all of the harbors with the sheer number of his feces. He is, however, a success story by environmentalists. Farmers from Monterey to San Fran have had water cutbacks to provide for endangered steelhead, and the sea lions eat them! We are eating foreign fruit with banned DDT on it so our sea lions can get fat! That's why we can't let environmentalists run amok!

Quick question-Are you in California, Planet?

found this online-enjoy reading it
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/InNews/longlineoct2002.htm

Hey, Agate D!

Nope.

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