Organizers are planning to mount a Feb. 24 protest demonstration by several thousand fishermen in Washington, D.C., with busloads coming from New Jersey ports to meet up with their couterparts from the Gulf of Mexico and remote Alaskan islands.
Their goal is to win changes to the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act — especially lifting the law's demand for a 10-year rebuilding schedule for bringing back overfished stocks. Key speakers may include Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., prime sponsors of bills to insert a "flexibility" provision into the law.
"We're hoping for anything between 3,000 and 5,000" in the crowd, said James Donofrio of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, one of the rally organizers. "I tell people it's worth taking a vacation day from work to come, because otherwise the way things are going with Magnuson and NMFS (the National Marine Fisheries Service), we're all going out of business. There will be no angling, no commercial fishing."