From Our Executive Director-Glenn Skinner
At the September 30th NCFA Board Meeting our Board voted to oppose any further action on the Amendment to the Blue Crab FMP until the stock assessment had been updated with data from 2017-2019.
This position comes from concerns with the current stock assessment which is based on data through 2016. While it is not uncommon for a stock assessment to be several years behind, by the time an Amendment is completed, this situation is unusual in the fact that the last measures adopted to deal with concerns in the Blue Crab fishery were adopted in 2016 and implemented in 2017.
This is troubling because any positive impacts those measures may have had are not reflected in the current assessment. To add to our concern’s crabbers, dealers’ processors are seeing more crabs than they have seen in the last 20 years.
When you combine these concerns with the fact that the Blue Crab fishery is the most valuable commercial fishery in NC. We believe it would be irresponsible to adopt any further restrictions without first quantifying the impacts of the last measures adopted.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
NC SENATE REPLACEMENT NAMED: Former NC Senator Dan Bishop recently won the special 9th District Congressional race and was sworn in the same week as newly elected Congressman Greg Murphy. Greg’s replacement in the NC House, Perrin Jones, was sworn in this week. The new Senator to replace Bishop will be Rob Bryan from Mecklenburg County. An attorney, he served previously in the NC House. He has not been sworn in yet.
WHEN WILL SESSION END? The light at the end of the tunnel is now the end of October. Halloween might be appropriate.