Something Fishy About DEP Spin on Saltwater Registry

[Update: 5/6/11 – Kirk Moore writes another fine story illustrating a severe lack of investment in fisheries management and marine research:  Fisheries council chairman signs off

And still, New Jersey does not invest enough in its ocean resources, which bring an estimated $2 billion to its economy, Ewing warned in his farewell at the council’s Thursday meeting.

“We’re going to continue to lose more fisheries because we don’t have the ability to get the data we need,” Ewing said before he rapped the gavel for the last time.

New Jersey follows closely with states like Massachusetts and Virginia among top East Coast states with revenue from fishing. But it has fallen to absolute dead last in what state government spends per fisherman on management and research.

DEP issued a press release today touting the pending launch of a “free web based saltwater fishing registry“ .

Economics 101: there’s no free lunch.

DEP is suffering from amnesia. How quickly DEP apparently forgets:

• just last summer, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) threatened to shut down NJ’s billion dollar commercial shellfish industry because DEP lacked adequate monitoring of water quality and the health of seafood (see: FDA THREATENS TO BAN NEW JERSEY SHELLFISH SALES — Human Waste Discharges and Disease Outbreaks Cited; State Must Increase Patrols

 

• just last month, Kirk Moore of the Asbury Park Press  wrote a story about how the shortsighted ideology and craven politics of Governor Christie are harming the science and management of coastal ecosystems and fisheries (see: Fisheries caught in budget’s tight net. Moore wrote:

Already there’s a plan to suspend fishing for river herring in 2012 because state biologists won’t be able to fulfill legal requirements under the coastwide herring management plan, said marine bureau chief Brandon Muffley. It’s just one of 22 plans for various species that must be kept updated under interstate and federal rules.

Beset by a crushing workload, decimated staff and years of inadequate funding, the state Bureau of Marine Fisheries is preparing a draft plan to identify what can be jettisoned from a program that serves a $2 billion industry in New Jersey … yet gets less than 1 percent of that from the state budget.

• On December 9, 2010, DEP testified to the Legislature in support of a $5 annual saltwater registration fee to fund fisheries management.

Christie’s DEP budget again fails to fund monitoring, science, and fisheries biologists required to properly manage NJ’s precious marine ecosystems and fisheries resources.

Governor Christie’s short sighted anti-tax and anti-government politics are blocking science based management of a billion dollar resource that is the economic engine of shore communities.

As a result, NJ marine ecosystems and fisheries continue to be neglected, NJ fishermen face even more restrictive catch limits, and NJ shore communities suffer economic harm. 

Legislators and conservation minded fisherment must step up to the plate and demand that adequate resources be provided to ecosystem based management and sustainable fisheries.

The DEP budget will be up before the Assembly  Budget Committee on Thursday May 5.

The whole shore is watching.