PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THIS ALL THE WAY THROUGH!

Sev­eral mem­bers of LIDA attended the meet­ing of the Atlantic States Marine Fish­eries Com­mis­sion (ASFMC) this past Mon­day evening to gather infor­ma­tion about the new lob­ster reg­u­la­tion proposals.This was the “pub­lic com­ment” ses­sion for the reg­u­la­tions that are going to become part of gov­ern­ing of our waters regard­ing lob­ster­ing. We also dis­cussed the pro­pos­als in detail at the last LIDA meet­ing held April 19. The unan­i­mous con­sen­sus at the LIDA meet­ing was that there are 5 spe­cific mat­ters in the var­i­ous pro­pos­als that can affect recre­ational divers lob­ster­ing as will be indi­cated below.

There are MANY other mat­ter in the var­i­ous pro­pos­als, but they do not seem to directly impact on scuba divers tak­ing of lob­sters and are not addressed by LIDA.

For those who may not know, the ASMFC has been empow­ered by sev­eral states, includ­ing New York, to make BINDING rules con­cern­ing fish­eries on a region wide basis. The doc­u­ment in ques­tion is the“‘Draft Adden­dum XI Pub­lic Com­ment Document(sic) To Amend­ment 3 To The Amer­i­can Lob­ster Fish­ery Man­age­ment Plan”. It is clear that one of the 4 “Options” will be adopted and will have the full power of law. The meet­ing we attended was the required “Pub­lic Com­ment” phase of the reg­u­la­tory process.

In a nut­shell, there are 4 options or plans. “Option 1″ is essen­tially a “sta­tus quo” pro­posal and makes vir­tu­ally no changes in mat­ters that affect scuba divers. LIDA sug­gests that Option 1 is the best for divers.

Within the “Options”, and even to some extent “Option 1″, there are five mat­ters which LIDA feels may affect Scuba tak­ing of lob­sters. They are:

1) A pos­si­ble increase in min­i­mum cara­pace size. The LIDA con­sen­sus was to oppose this. There seems to be no solid sci­en­tific or sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence to jus­tify that change.
2) A pos­si­ble total ban on tak­ing of female lob­sters over a spe­cific cara­pace size. The LIDA con­sen­sus was to oppose this or in the alter­na­tive to encour­age imple­men­ta­tion of the cur­rent Fed­eral Rule which allows for one “over­sized” female to be taken. Note, there is no max­i­mum for male lob­sters even being pro­posed. The LIDA con­sen­sus was that sex­ing lob­sters under­wa­ter, or some­times even out of the water, can be a very dif­fi­cult task. So few “tro­phy” female lob­sters are taken on scuba that it was felt that the reg­u­la­tion would have no ben­e­fit what­so­ever and merely cre­ate areas of pos­si­ble “vio­la­tion” with­out gain to the lob­ster stock. Obvi­ously the total ban on tak­ing all “egg laden” females remains and has LIDA’s full sup­port.
3) The pos­si­bil­ity of “closed sea­sons”, per­haps as long as from August to Octo­ber, for tak­ing of lobsters.The LIDA con­sen­sus was to oppose this.
4) The pos­si­ble mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the already exist­ing strict “no take” rule for “V-Notched” lob­sters (LIDA does not oppose that already exist­ing rule) to include lob­sters with an “inden­ta­tion.” The LIDA con­sen­sus was to oppose this change. It was felt that iden­ti­fy­ing an “inden­ta­tion” is a very dif­fi­cult task, again with lit­tle or no gain to the lob­ster re-populating goals of the Com­mis­sion.
5) Pos­si­ble impo­si­tion of “Delayed Imple­men­ta­tion” penal­ties which would serve to ban any lob­ster­ing for an equiv­a­lent time period that the State might delay in actu­ally imple­ment­ing Rules adopted by the Com­mis­sion. The LIDA con­sen­sus was to oppose this. To pun­ish divers or other tak­ers of lob­sters for some slow­down in a polit­i­cal process seems unjustified.

Details on all pro­pos­als and “Options” etc. can be found at www.asmfc.org

The time for com­ment ENDS on MAY 4, 2007. 5:00 PM. We learned at the meet­ing that we attended that a “spread sheet” will be made, record­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who have com­ments on SPECIFIC issues. That will be pre­sented to the Com­mis­sion on May 5, 2007. E-mail is an accept­able way to make com­ments and to be counted in the totals.

If you agree with the con­sen­sus at the LIDA meet­ing, I have drafted ( with the help of those who attended the meet­ings) and repro­duced below a sam­ple e-mail that you may wish to sent to Toni Kerns ASMFC. Her e-mail is

tkerns@asmfc.org

Her land address is
Toni Kerns
Atlantic States Marine Fish­eries Com­mis­sion
1444 Eye Street North­west # 600
Wash­ing­ton, D.C. 20005

Phone (202) 289‑6400
Fax: (202) 289‑6051

A sim­ple “cut and paste” of the pro­posed e-mail below under your e-mail address would be ade­quate for you to be counted if you so choose. Let­ters, faxes etc will also get you “counted”. Nat­u­rally, your own e-mail or let­ter express­ing your posi­tion is of course sought by the Com­mis­sion as well. Again, the mat­ter is TIMES SENSITIVE and all com­ments must be received by ASMFC NO LATER THAN 5:00 PM, MAY 4, 2007.

Sam­ple e-mail is below.

Thank you
Steve Burke
Pres­i­dent LIDA

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As a recre­ational scuba diver, I wish to be heard con­cern­ing the pro­posed amend­ments to the ASMFC Amer­i­can Lob­ster Fish­ery Plan. Ini­tially, the Com­mis­sion should be aware that the tak­ing of lob­sters by hand on scuba has min­i­mal impact, if any impact at all, on the Commission’s goals of replen­ish­ment, preser­va­tion and growth of the lob­ster stock. Tak­ing of lob­sters by hand on scuba is how­ever one of the main recre­ational plea­sures in North­east scuba diving.

I sup­port “Option 1″, the sta­tus quo proposal.

Regard­less of which plan is adopted, I wish to “weigh in” on the fol­low­ing 5 spe­cific mat­ters addressed in var­i­ous Options as they may affect recre­ational tak­ing of lob­sters on scuba.

1) I believe that no increase in the cur­rent min­i­mum cara­pace size for lob­sters taken on scuba is war­ranted or appropriate.

2) I oppose set­ting of a max­i­mum cara­pace size for female lob­sters (none is pro­posed for male lob­sters), for lob­sters taken by hand on scuba. At a min­i­mum, I encour­age you to fol­low the cur­rent Fed­eral Guide­line which allows for the tak­ing of one female lob­ster over the “max­i­mum ” cara­pace size.

3) As to “V-Notching” of cer­tain lob­sters mark­ing a pro­hib­ited catch, the lan­guage which includes an “inden­ta­tion” as being included within the “V-Notch” def­i­n­i­tion and pro­hi­bi­tion is unjus­ti­fied and unwork­able. A dis­tinct “V Notch” is very dif­fer­ent from an “indentation.”

4) I oppose any Rule or Reg­u­la­tion which would imple­ment any “closed sea­son”. Any pro­posed clo­sure from August to Octo­ber as con­tained in some Options, or in fact any clo­sure for any part of that time would vir­tu­ally elim­i­nate the tak­ing of lob­sters on scuba by hand for the major part of our short North­east scuba season.

5) I oppose “Delayed Imple­men­ta­tion” Rules or Reg­u­la­tions . They are espe­cially oner­ous and totally unfair. To penal­ize a recre­ational scuba diver for a delay by some State agency or other body in imple­ment­ing a reg­u­la­tion “pun­ishes” the wrong source who has no con­trol over the imple­men­ta­tion of Rules or Regulations.

Please make my views known to the Com­mis­sion. Thank you for your time and attention

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