With recent history confirming their worries are valid, members of the Ocean City fishing community have every reason to be alarmed about this week’s announcement of a plan to make an offshore fishing canyon a sanctuary.
The National Aquarium is currently seeking online support to nominate the Baltimore Canyon, a 28-mile long and five-mile wide submarine canyon three hours off Ocean City’s coast, as the country’s first Urban National Marine Sanctuary. A lot has to happen before this designation is received, including gauging public sentiment through the online petition drive, NOAA agreeing the canyon is worthy of designation, an environmental impact assessment and then a series of public hearings. This will likely take years to occur if it ever does.
However, the mere proposal of slapping a designation on the open water canyon sent fears through the fishing industry this week. The aquarium tried to get in front of those concerns by meeting with leading fishing industry representatives and elected officials before this week’s public announcement.
More
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
5 comments:
I don't understand what that sanctuary desisnation is supposed to do except keep both sport and commercial fishermen out.The fishing industry needs to fight this with everything they have.The fishing industry is already regulated to death by the National Marine Fisheries Service they don't need any more know nothing government agencys sticking their nose in their business.
not only a "sanctuary" but an URBAN "sanctuary"....
They always take small steps to regulation and money generation, just like surf fishermen had to get fin numbers as soon as they found out how many people were fishing , than they knew how much money they can generate by changing to fish. The same holds true here to they will regulate and fine anyone who spends any time in the Baltimore canyon, and returns with a fish ,or charge you to access the area.
They should worry about and regulating the amount of trash dumped in the ocean before creating a fish sanctuary. They would not need a sanctuary if the trash dumping would stop polluting the waters.
The gov't continually takes away our rights so they can rent them back to us in the form of fees, permits, and taxes. Silencers are illegal unless you pay for a $200.00 tax stamp then hey no problem.
Post a Comment