By Jim Sutton
If you'd like a front-row seat for what may be the last gasp of the First Coast's historic marine community, mark Jan. 31 on you calendar.
That's when the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council meets in Jacksonville to discuss a few new "management tools" for Atlantic waters.
Fresh off major closures of 90 percent of the bottom fishery, they're taking aim at pelagic fish. But this time, to save us all a lot of argument and research, the council isn't pretending that populations of wahoo, dolphin and cobia are being overfished or are even in the process of being overfished. It's a lot cheaper that way, eliminating pesky research (although repackaging decade-old data from the Gulf of Mexico waters for the red snapper closure was a very cost-effective way of doing things).
The council is going to discuss setting Annual Catch Limits for striking-fish species. Council members will try to set ACLs on nomadic fish populations that every lucid scientific mind agrees can't be counted, studied or measured in any meaningful way. What the council intends to do is conjure up a number of total pounds caught and assign stricter limits based on that guess. Rock-paper-scissors might be as good a method as any data-starved assumption. Remember that the council has no data to indicate these populations are in decline.
Read the complete opinion piece from The Florida Times-Union.