Action Alert! passed senate 47-1 sign for House now

[Fishnut]

Great news! Thank you to all that helped in sending in your emails to the Senate yesterday and we were heard.
SB 5661 passed the Senate with a vote of 47-1. We want to recognize the efforts of Senators Sharon Nelson (D – Maury Island) – the bill’s primary sponsor, Senator Kevin Ranker (D-Friday Harbor) – who pushed for a floor vote, and Senator Val Stevens (R-Arlington) – who pulled it from the Senate Rules Committee.

The bill now goes to the House where it will be referred to the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. We urge you to contact your House Members supporting SB 5661. With the strong vote in the Senate the bill now moves onto the House, where it may receive a hearing as soon as this week.

PSA, Fish NW, NSIA, and CCA have been working since the 2011 session to pass SB 5661, that requires mandatory reporting of lost or abandoned commercial fishing gear. Current state law merely “encourages” reporting of these “ghost nets” and the system clearly hasn’t worked with only 2 reports of lost nets since 2002. Annually this deadly gear kills 850,000 fish (including endangered salmon and rockfish), birds, mammals, and crustaceans and harms important underwater habitat.

There are an average of 11-20 nets lost per year that restarts the repetative killing cycle of our marine life. Letting these "killers" constantly wipe out our marine life can be minimized by immediate reporting, so they can be removed quickly before catastrophic damage occurs. There has been a massive clean up of this gear to date so we need to keep it cleaned up.

Please contact the House Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee now and urge them to help pass SB 5661 and lets help conserve our Puget Sound.
Scheduled for public hearing in the House Committee on Agriculture & Natural Resources at 8:00 AM, Feb 17
PSA: http://www.votervoice.net/Groups/PSA/Ad ... &SiteID=-1
CCA: http://www.votervoice.net/core.aspx?AID ... C&type=gac

[Dan Carney]

Done. I live in Senator Ranker's district.
He should be involved with this effort anyway.
L8R
Dan