Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg  yahoo!  Comments  Feed

Subscribe to Ted Williams : Ted Williams Blog

Hudson Shad

Here is the letter that Stripers Forever sent to both NY Governor David Paterson and Commissioner Pete Grannis of the NYDEC.

3/18/2008 

Governor David A. Paterson

State Capitol

Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Paterson:

Stripers Forever, a national recreational fishing advocacy group with more than 1,200 members in New York State, is compelled to write you regarding a pending New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) decision that would set a very imprudent precedent. 

In response to a precipitous decline in the population of American shad native to the Hudson River, the DEC is promulgating a regulation that will make it illegal to harvest even one shad for personal consumption while still allowing gill nets to be set in the Hudson River to catch shad in commercial quantities. 

The truly tragic destruction of this country’s marine resources by commercial fishing practices is well known to many people today, but less considered is that this destruction has already greatly reduced fishing opportunities of all kinds for anglers who are far less culpable than is the commercial fishing industry.  This has happened because our regulatory departments are heavily influenced by political forces financed by the very destruction of the fish that the regulators are charged with conserving.  The current Hudson shad stock collapse is just one such example.

The membership of Stripers Forever is 100 percent in favor of conservation.  It is unfortunately clear that all directed fishing for shad should be stopped in the Hudson River, and we know that recreational anglers will willingly support this measure.  But the very idea that a citizen of this country should not be able to take home even one shad per season so that a handful of part-time commercial fishermen can set gill nets to catch enough to sell is counter to the very foundations of our free society.  Essentially, the DEC is privatizing this resource; a citizen who wants a shad for a meal is forced, by law, to buy that fish from one of a select group that has essentially been given the right to the entire harvest.  If we apply that logic to other fish and game management we would never have ended market gunning, but would instead have made anyone who wanted a duck or deer buy it from a market hunter. 

The appalling lack of social fairness in this proposed regulation is bad enough, but we are just as disturbed with the DEC’s decision to continue to allow gill netting.  A gill net is made of thin fibers joined into a series of diamond shapes or meshes into which a fish – or bird or mammal – inserts its head and then cannot get it back out.  Gill nets have been banned along large areas of America’s coastline, and many of us feel they should be banned everywhere.  Certainly gill nets should be banned forever from delicate nursery areas like the Hudson River where they are known to kill indiscriminately a variety of fish and wildlife. Allowing their continued use - even on a somewhat reduced basis - while asking  the public to refrain from keeping even a single fish, is clear testimony of the destructive influence that commercial fishing wields with the DEC. 

As Governor of New York, we ask that you personally intervene and reverse this decision. We do not ask for a recreational bag limit of shad with the situation so dire, but we strongly believe that the correct and fair action is to first end commercial fishing for shad in general and the use of gill nets in particular.  The end of all gill netting in the Hudson River would be the beginning of a positive conservation legacy for your administration. 

Sincerely;  

Brad Burns President Stripers Forever  

CC: Commissioner Pete Grannis

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation

625 Broadway

Albany, New York 12233-0001

Here's what you can do to help correct this travesty:

1.      Copy and send the above letter that we have written to the governor – modified as you may wish – by both postal mail and e-mail to the governor email Gov Paterson  and to the head of DEC   email Commissioner Grannis .  (note that both postal mailing addresses are on the letter above).  Residents of all states can do this since shad and stripers caught as bycatch in these gill nets are coastal migrants and what happens in NY waters affects us all.

2.      If you are a NY resident, send a note to your state assembly person or senator – go to this link for your senator and this one for the your assembly person – and tell them that you want them to personally contact the DEC and demand that this unfair regulation be rescinded immediately.

3.      Bring this issue to the attention of your fishing friends and to the officers of any clubs that you may belong to.  Ask them to join with SF in an effort to repeal this regulation.

4.      Ask your fishing friends to join SF – as you know, it is free – so that they may join us in other upcoming efforts to make striped bass a game fish in NY and elsewhere.

Brad Burns, President of Stripers Forever

Posted at 08:59 AM | Permalink