New England-based environmental activist Lee Crockett stumped on your Opinion website on behalf of a preservationist agenda to end "overfishing'' in America (Sept. 14 column, Saving coastal jobs.)
I dare say there's not a fisherman who supports the biological overfishing of any stock. This is not what fishing communities are bound by in federal law.
In statutory terms, overfishing occurs “when a fish stock is being fished at a fishing mortality rate that exceeds the overfishing threshold set by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).'' The threshold defined as a species' “maximum sustainable yield'' is a static number that NMFS assigns for each rebuilding fishery, and it's what many field experts and scientists claim poorly reflects the randomness of nature.
Read the complete opinion piece from The Miami Herald.