Director Anderson Steps Up for Recreational Anglers 2

"It's so nice to have a fish and wildlife director that actually fishes and understands the issues from a recreational anglers perspective" was Nelly's reaction when I told him about the WDFW recreational albacore meeting Tuesday in Olympia.  In 2009 there was a request that WDFW consider a bag limit for all food fish that didn't already have a limit.  WDFW decided at that time to set the limit at 2 for all food fish except albacore but it committed itself to a public process to discuss a recreational limit.  Fast forward to summer of 2010 and WDFW announced that public process and gave us the opportunity to either write in or show up at the meeting and provide public comment.  WDFW would then give their recommendation to PFMC which ultimately has final say with regards to albacore tuna management.

For us tuna loving recreational fisherman the idea of a bag limit was and is out of the question.  Albacore is the one fishery that we have in the NW that appears to be healthy and we are already limited by boat, weather, money, and short seasons.  Besides that, we are maybe 1% of the catch in Washington waters.  With that small a part of the total catch, what would a limit on us do if you didn't limit the commercial catch?  In addition, the last stock assessment for albacore was 2006 and showed that at the time albacore were healthy.  Where was the science to support a bag limit?  The next stock assessment was scheduled for 2011, why can't we wait for the best available science to determine what, if anything, should be done?  Doing something just for the sake of doing something usually leads to doing the wrong thing.

 Well, you'll be happy to know that the department and Director Anderson listened and recognized that recommending a bag limit at this time would be the wrong thing to do.  After the announcment was made and the sighs and applause died down we were cautioned that this would be revisited after the stock assessment in 2011.  We were relieved to hear however that any reduction, if needed, for rec anglers would be met with reductions for the commercial fleet as well.  I can live with that for now.

A special thanks goes out to all those that were proactive and wrote in or showed up at the meeting.  Mark Cedargreen from the Westport Charterboat Assoc. was key in organizing but also cautioned that this still has to go through the PFMC council process.  They meet in November and we all need to send letters to them by October 26 letting them know that we do not want to see limits in Washington for recreational albacore at this time.  All letters should be emailed to pfmc.comments@noaa.gov and reference "November PFMC HMS agenda item J-2".