Police spokeswoman Candy Thomson said officers are on “high alert” this time of year. She said she remembered how busy nefarious watermen kept water patrol officers in 2014.
“This has season has been fairly active at this point,” Thomson said. “There are about 1,200 watermen out on oyster bars, coming on the last two months of the season. A lot of the bars are exhausted, fished out, the legal bars. So if you are going to continue to harvest oysters, the number of legal places is diminishing rapidly.
More
11 comments:
I love oysters but 1200 waterman out working the oyster beds is just plain stupid.Nobody has to have oysters, we'll all survive without them,cut the damn season in half cut it off completly, do something but for crying out loud the bay will never heal the way it is going. I know it's not a real popular idea but if the bay is to survive something has to give.
Start seizing boats plus hit the violators with $10,000 fines that BS will stop.
I'm a maryland tax payer and those oyster beds were built and payed for with my tax dollars. I do not appreciate anybody stealing my oysters.
Md. Natural Resources Police.
500 MILLION dollar yearly budget.
Here is a 480 million dollar expenditure that is completely self serving. I could catch 13 watermen for 20 million a year!
Hey Governor,
DISSOLVE THIS CORRUPT AGENCY OF MERCENARIES. FREE FISHING IN MARYLAND!
That's right. The prohibitive cost of a fishing license and boat registration in Maryland is costing our businesses hundreds of millions of dollars!
MD. Natural resources is solely in the business of supporting itself and needs to be reined in and stopped from continuing the robbery they commit against citizens of Md.
We were coming through Easton yesterday very early in the a.m. and were behind a work boat with no signals at all. The truck pulling it was flying. We commented that he may not know the boat was not connected and went about our way. Later that afternoon we were coming back through Easton going the other way when the same black pickup made a left at the airport light with the same unlit boat...only this time it had a red plastic basket full to the brim with the catch. I wondered what they had caught. This may be the answer.
7:01- A simple search would show you the budget for all of DNR was 320 million. The budget for NRP was 40 million. Your math/facts are a tad off but great idea. Let everyone do whatever they want....
It's not about do what you want, it's about freedom, free market commerce and the state FLEECING recreational fisher folk.
Why should anyone pay a ransom to the state to catch a few fish? Or crabs, or clams or oysters?
@8:35 same to ya! Idiot.
From the DNR/maryland gov. website:
"As Maryland’s top natural resources official, Griffin leads a State cabinet agency with a $500 million annual budget and 1,400 employees charged with the management, restoration and protection of Maryland’s vast natural resources..."
They are nothing but a FACADE of attempting to protect resources when in fact they are there to generate REVENUE. The few waterman still trying to eek out a living from the resources the Government has destroyed have nothing to do with destroying the bay.
Maybe 50 MILLION plus people living on the watershed have something to do with it? Maybe the Federal Government directly POISONING the bay for DECADES at Aberdeen proving grounds has something to do with it?
Fact is, if 90 % of DNR and NRP disappeared you'd NEVER notice.
That's a savings to tax payers of 400 million a year while generating at least that much in retail sales around the state from increased sales from those that will enjoy the resources since the OPPRESSIVE use fees, taxes and penalties would be abolished!
6:53
You been drinking the States. Cool aid. What makes you think that the state built all these oyster bids. How about the fact that owemally stole 2/3 of the productive natural oyster bids and declared them a "sanctuary" waterman have been forced to work in small areas instead of spreading out acroos the bay and working the same bars they worked for generations
Those "sanctuary" bars need to be rotated every couple of years to prevent the oysters dying of old age succumbing to and generating disease. Never harvesting a bar of oysters has to be detrimental to their overall health.
500 million dollar budget, and they can't afford a couple new boats? I bought a new boat last year and my budget is considerably smaller.
You all forget how expensive it is just to pay people's salaries, healthcare and pensions. That accounts for A LOT of that $500million.
That said, screw those awful watermen. Put them in real jail with real time. Terrible.
Post a Comment