Southern Offshore Fishing
            Association

President Obama,

As you may know, the American Commercial Fishing Industry is in deep trouble.  The biggest cause of our dismayingly bad situation is not ecological or environmental factors but overzealous and downright bad regulation.  We at S.O.F.A. believe that the fisheries should be regulated but we would ask that they be regulated fairly and with the economic and social considerations concerning the entire industry being given as much weight as anything else.  We don't want to see the fishery decline or collapse, but neither can we and our families survive the crushing effects of drastic cutbacks and even shutdowns of fishery segments based on poor science and figures intentionally manipulated by special interest groups and extremist conservation groups.

Our representatives are currently at a meeting of the NMFS Gulf Council trying desperately to head off yet another summary shut-down of another important segment of our fisheries that will be based not on proven science but questionable figures extrapolated from a very small sample of data from a very limited observed sector of the fishery.  This shut-down, like so many in the past, is being rushed through not because of any imminent and real danger to the environment or the fish stocks, but due to the threat of litigation from conservationist groups who have a history of overzealous litigation that both ties up our courts and completely ignores the drastic economic impact new regulation and shutdowns have on American fishermen and all the industries that depend on them.

American fishermen have been severely impacted by the economic situation in our country and world.  We fight the rising costs of fuel, bait, ice, groceries and all the other supplies needed to conduct our business on a daily basis.  We fight rising numbers of imported and farm raised fish of questionable quality but extremely low price.  We fight what seems to be a steadily declining weather situation, with hurricanes and winter storms taking away fishing days and putting into unnecessary danger  fishermen forced to rush into catching minimal total allowable catch limits before they are closed down.

Many of these things may be unavoidable but for the past few years the NMFS has been interpreting the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in a manner that has put them at odds with the commercial fisherman and the commercial fishing industry that they should be supporting and protecting.  The well being of the fishermen has been put on the back burner while shoddy or incomplete science has been used to over-regulate the fisheries and put many hard working Americans out of business completely.

In 1994, well meaning but misguided citizens of Florida approved a State Constitutional Amendment to ban gillnet and other net fishing in State waters.  This issue had been widely and heavily promoted by the same sort of well financed Conservation Groups that now target offshore fisherman.  The economic and social result of the net ban was disastrous to the previously healthy and thriving inshore fisheries of Florida.  The fallout extended to other fisheries that depended on the inshore fishers for bait fish as well as a population that enjoyed the relatively inexpensive food source that the industry provided.  The problems blamed on the netters, the collapse of the baitfish population in Tampa Bay and other inshore bodies of water, a perceived lack of mullet and other inshore species, have not diminished one bit since the inception of this ban.  In truth, these problems are, and always have been, more a result of over development and industrial pollution than over-fishing by commercial fishermen.  The population of mullet in the Florida panhandle has not shot up since the whole inshore fishery was summarily shut down.  The mullet face far more challenges from the series of dams built on the inland waterways that they move into at important stages of their life cycle than they have ever faced from some gill netters. 

The failure of the net ban is but one glaring example of a failure to protect the fish while eliminating the fishermen.  This elimination of American fisheries and fishermen is becoming more and more widely accepted even as it becomes more and more obvious to all but the most fanatical and narrow minded of conservationists that the current system of stop-gap regulation implemented hastily and often following the dictates of poor science is simply not working.  The NMFS is set on a course to repeat over and over again this same kind of mistake, putting segment after segment of the commercial fisheries completely out of business with no concern for the financial hardships put upon this group of hard working American citizens.

We would hope that your Administration could move to reverse this trend.  We need immediate help and relief from the current attempts to close the bottom longline fishery in the Gulf of Mexico based on incomplete and poor figures.  We need some sort of economic relief for the many commercial fishermen who have had large percentages, if not all, of their income taken away by summary closures of fisheries.  Closures like the net ban that put a whole fishery on bread lines.  Closures such as the Gulf of Mexico shark fishery which was virtually shut down with little notice less than a month before it was supposed to open in January of 2007 in a complete reversal of the NMFS' previously announced openings just two months earlier and shut down in the face of overwhelming anecdotal evidence that completely contradicts the poor data that NMFS used to justify their action.

We do not ask that fishermen be allowed to over fish or deplete any species.  We do not ask that the fisheries be spared reasonable regulation.  We simply ask that, in the true spirit of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and in the true spirit of America and American Justice, the commercial fishermen who have worked hard and have invested their lives in an industry which supplies important food products for American consumers be given the same amount of consideration that the extremist conservationist groups demand the fish and sea turtles be given.  We ask that the science that governs fishery regulation be solid science, based on extensive study, not the first set of numbers that can be generated or even manipulated to show the industry and the fisheries in the worst possible light.

American fisherman are American citizens and we share in the hope that your Administration is the beginning of a new and better path for our government, our country and our people.  Please do not let us down.

Michael Athorn
Commercial Fisherman
Owner/Operator F/V Margaritas
Webmaster southernoffshorefishing.org