Outdoors column: Conservation, fishing business need happy medium

Once again, the New Year’s Eve celebration for local fishermen will be bittersweet as 2012 arrives Saturday night.

Sure, it’s sweet to celebrate the arrival of another year, but for anglers who pursue reef – or bottom – fish in the Atlantic Ocean in the South Atlantic region the new year coincides with the bitter taste of another fishing closure.

For the third straight year, the last staple bottom fishing species for fishermen to target will be off-limits when the calendar turns to 2012 as shallow-water species of grouper go under an annual closure from Jan. 1 through April 30.

The grouper species to be closed include gag, red and scamp, the species most commonly caught locally, plus black grouper, rock hind, red hind, coney, graysby, yellowfin grouper, yellowmouth grouper and tiger grouper.

The seasonal closure is part of a suite of management measures contained in Amendment 16 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region, which became effective on July 29, 2009.

In addition, vermilion snapper (known locally as beeliners) are closed annually from November through March and the red snapper fishery remains closed indefinitely. The biggest closure for local anglers – the black sea bass fishery – has been closed during the majority of winter and spring the last two fishing seasons and won’t reopen until June 1.

As 2012 arrives, there will be simply no species for reef fishermen to catch and keep and they must wait until the late-spring arrival of Spanish and king mackerel to have a bona fide species to target and actually harvest in the Atlantic.

Some of the closures can be traced to specifications within the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006 that require fishery managers, such as the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, to implement measures to end overfishing within a one-year period after overfishing of a given species has been determined to be occurring. Those measures are often drastic in the form of closures or Annual Catch Limits (ACLs).

The move is on among frustrated fishermen and a growing number of members of the U.S. Congress to reform the Magnuson-Stevens Act in order to give fisheries managers more time to rebuild stocks of species that have been deemed to be undergoing overfishing.

A number of Congressmen, including Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. and Rep. Tim Scott R-S.C., either helped introduce or supported the Flexibility and Access in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2011, which in part calls for allowing regional fisheries councils a longer time period to rebuild overfished species and providing the Secretary of Commerce authority to suspend ACLs if a stock is rebuilt or deemed not overfished.

The legislation did not make it through Congress in 2011 but another year, and another chance, looms.

Anglers who love to fish and believe in their right to not only fish but harvest a reasonable amount of fish, should take heed.

The year 2012 will be critical in the fight to keep afloat the recreational fishing industry, which is such a key part of the heritage and economy of the coastal areas of the Carolinas.

Supporting the idea of reform of the Magnuson-Stevens Act to help limit closures and ACLs, and allow fishermen to stay on the water most of the year to harvest a reasonable number of fish should be the New Year’s resolution for recreational fishermen in the Carolinas and throughout the Southeast.

Having conservative management procedures and practices in place for our fisheries to ensure stocks are strong for the future is undeniably important.

But access to the resource to allow fishing-related businesses to thrive, or at least keep their head above water, is equally important.

There has to be a happy medium in there somewhere that balances the need for conservative fisheries management and access to the resource for the fishermen.