Letter from Bob Jones, Executive Director, Southeastern Fisheries Association, Inc. to Wayne Swingle, Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council March 29, 2002 Wayne,
My first two fights upon joining SFA in 1964 was to keep king mackerel from becoming a game fish and to set aside a large marine protected area as a nursery for pink shrimp. Both of these issues have been somewhat controversial since the 1960s and will remain that way at least for the rest my life.
Many negative things are being said about our historical shrimpers by those who wish to remove them from the Gulf of Mexico because of "environmental reasons."
From a positive aspect, I thought the members of the Council might like to know that the shrimpers of SFA have been trying to preserve an area over 3,000,000 acres in size as a no trawling zone long before anti-trawling was in vogue.
SFA got the Florida legislature to set aside these 3,000,000 acres. Not Pew Trust or Oceana or Audubon or whoever. Yet the domestic shrimping industry gets very little recognition for this monumental effort on behalf of our marine resources that still pays annual dividends.
I was thinking the other evening that many of the folks who are making the regulations and who are so adamant about shutting down shrimping and other commercial fishing activities were not even born when we were doing this environmental protection work. They might have still been nursing or in grade school. They were so young they would have no way of knowing what the shrimp industry did to preserve the pink shrimp resource for all future generations. These shrimpers were the original conservationists until tarred by the anti-shrimping groups.
And in today's political climate, my saying something about the shrimping industry's conservation efforts has absolutely no validity without some kind of quantification to show I am telling the truth.
So with that in mind, I attach a Resolution from the State of Florida signed by the men who were in charge during the time Claude Kirk was Governor.
The shrimpers are really the good guys in our part of the world and should be appreciated for producing a healthy, nutritious product instead of being vilified by those with a dishonest agenda.
Happy Easter.
Bob<:)////>< |
