High increases in licensing fees, idle oyster bottom and voracious striped bass were among the issues that confronted Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary Joseph Gill when he came here Tuesday, Nov. 5, to speak with the Dorchester County Council and local watermen.
Some watermen told Gill the fees doubled this year for their commercial harvesting license, explaining it wasn’t the cost of the license itself that had increased so much as the various surcharges paid to participate in various fisheries.
One waterman said he paid $3,200 this year to work on the water, and another said his fees totaled $2,800.
Yeah? Well I paid over $50, and I didn't get to keep a proportional number of fish.
Gill said watermen were consulted about how to meet the new law’s requirements but Dorchester waterman Larry Powley said the form asking watermen their opinion was “unbelievably complicated,” not just for watermen but also for employees of the DNR’s Salisbury office.
“It was shoved down our throat,” Powley said, explaining that DNR officials suggested that if the difference in funds were not reached, there might not be an oyster season this year.
Works for me. I've long advocated a 5-10 year moratorium on wild oyster harvesting. If it happens because watermen are too illiterate, ignorant or lazy to fill out the paperwork, I could live with that.
Dorchester Seafood Harvesters Association President Scott Todd said one idea was for everyone — commercial watermen and recreational sport fishermen — to each pay an additional $5 per license, which would have covered the cost, with more than 300,000 sport fishing licenses sold each year for Chesapeake Bay. In contrast, there are about 5,500 people with commercial fishing licenses in Maryland, Todd said, with around 3,000 active watermen.
Gill said the $5 increase per license was not considered fair, since the study by the DNR determined recreational fishing license fees are covering the cost of fishery management.
So they save hundreds of dollars a piece, and we get a 10% (or more) increase and pay the difference, even though we're already paying the majority of the freight?
Sen. Richard Colburn, R-37-Mid-Shore, asked, “Do you think you are over-monitoring the watermen?”
There is no such thing as over-monitoring the regions watermen. The level of outlawry among them is simply astonishing. Until fines become more than an incidental cost of doing business the commercial fishing regulations will be thought of a guidelines at best.
Gill is considering the request made by Todd and Cambridge seafood processor Jack Brooks, to extend crab season, which is set to end this weekend, noting that Virginia has extended its crab season to Dec. 15.
“Those crabs are going to be caught anyway,” Todd said.
“We’ll look into,” Gill said.
Nothing wrong with a white lie to get you out of an unpleasant conversation, right?
Brooks also raised the issue of striped bass preying on young crabs in Chesapeake Bay waters, suggesting this species is overly protected, to the detriment of crabs. “We all know that rockfish eat a lot of crabs,” Brooks said, showing pictures of dozens of small crabs found recently inside a 21-inch striped bass. Brooks said fellow seafood industry member Andrew Tolley has calculated the average rockfish could be eating as many as 2,300 small crabs during the 90-day period when there are small crabs in the Bay and striped bass are here to eat them, suggesting the potential loss of 1 billion small crabs this way each year.
He suggested rockfish predation was responsible for the death of crabs this summer, which contradicted an optimistic forecast for the season from the DNR following its winter crab survey.
Yes, rockfish eat crabs, but they're not the reason for the lousy crab catch. The watermen just want an excuse for a higher rockfish quota.
The watermen and Sen. Colburn also argued about the politics of the Chesapeake Bay, suggesting that organizations like the Coastal Conservation Association and the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen’s Association are working against commercial watermen on these issues and others, such as the closure of oyster bottom above the Bay Bridge.
Todd said that if watermen were allowed to power dredge on those upper Bay waters, oyster bottom would be restored there as it has been in other areas such as Tangier Sound and the Honga River.
Ooooh, it's the old canard "oyster beds need to be dredged like fields need to be plowed" theory. They pull that out whenever they want to dredge more oysters.
“It’s an enormous area that is just sitting there doing nothing,” Todd said, suggesting that if power dredging was allowed in the waters above the bridge, oysters would come back there and watermen from upper Bay areas could stay closer to home and not have to work in places like the Honga River and Tangier Sound.
Not a bunch of heroes going out 300 miles into the Bering Sea for these fishermen.
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