SavingSeaFood - Florida Sen. LeMieux Spars with NOAA Chief Over ‘Sustainable’ Fish Limits

Florida Sen. LeMieux Spars with NOAA Chief Over ‘Sustainable’ Fish Limits – and the Size of Red Snapper

Florida’s newest U.S. senator told the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Wednesday that the NOAA is wrong about the declining size and number of red snapper fish in Florida.

Sen. George LeMieux (R-Fla.) told NOAA chief Dr. Jane Lubchenco that her agency’s statistics do not match fishermen reports regarding the size and number of red snapper fish.

“If the science is bad, and we’re making draconian decisions based upon bad science, or science that we can’t believe in, that’s affecting people’s lives -- that’s wrong,” LeMieux said Wednesday at a Senate Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard subcommittee hearing on NOAA's FY2011 budget request for fisheries enforcement programs and operations.

Lubchenco challenged the claim that red snapper are prospering and numerous, insisting that the data on this matter is solid.

“I think with the challenge with something like red snapper is that the calculations about what is a sustainable level of fishing, take into account how -- what size the fish are," she said. "And what many of the fishermen are seeing are lots and lots of younger fish and are assuming that that means that they are recovered and that there are plenty out there. And, in fact, it’s important for those younger fish to get larger and reproduce for the future health of the fishery."

But LeMieux again invited the administrator to come to Florida to take stock of the red snapper population.

“I want to renew in closing my offer to you to come down to Florida and let’s go on a fishing boat and see these red snapper because what my fishermen are telling me is not only are there many red snapper, but there are big red snapper, not just the juvenile fish,” he said.

Read the complete story at CNS News.

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