Catch shares are simple to understand, but before I tell you exactly what "catch shares" are, realize that the environmental movement is now more than 20 years old. The radical people among this movement feel that mankind -- in its rush for gold, oil and iPads -- is destroying the earth. It has gotten to the point where the United Nations recognizes mother earth as a being, with every right granted to the humans that live on her skin. Look; I am as kind to the environment as anybody I know. In fact, it's the anglers, hunters and outdoors people I know that are the true conservationists, not the people whose idea of the great outdoors is a channel on cable tvcalled the Animal Planet. The earth is our home. We need to keep it clean, but we are the dominant species. We do not belong controlled and wrapped in little dream cities. We belong outside benefiting from tribal politics. We protect our own. It's human nature, not dirt and rocks with human legal rights. There is no fairness except that provided by the law. But the law is not controlling our fisheries; regulations that are written by people who think we are less than intelligent for wanting to kill poor little fish are controlling our fisheries, and our sport. Why in science's name (their form of God) would a civilized person rip those innocent creatures from their homes and EAT THEM?????

Today we cannot catch gag and red grouper. American red snapper are so abundant that they are driving grouper off their natural reefs. It's little wonder the gag and red grouper counts are down. Goliath grouper eat ten percent of their weight a week. A four-hundred pound grouper eats forty pounds of gags and reds for lunch, but they are protected.

Regulations and the environmental left are, and have been, completely out of control. They do not fish, but regulate our fisheries. They believe in their form of science and silence other voices. They are destroying our angling way of life. You want proof? Ask the mayor of Madeira Beach, Florida, Travis Palladeno, as he watches his business and life fade away. Regulated away. Madeira Beach was the sports grouper-fishing capital of the world. Now they are dry docked.

Understanding Cap & Trade for Grouper

Here is our definition of catch shares. Catch shares are a set of regulations where the government and their globally-warmed scientists count the fish. Since they do not go on the water, they use computer models. Right now the computers tell them that the recreational angling community is killing all the grouper, so using what is called precautionary science, they shut us down. The grouper are there, but the computer models do not see them.

Once they count the fish, they, in their infinite wisdom, distribute them, or we should say redistribute them. Some go to the commercial guys, some to charter captains and head boats, and some to us regular Joe's with boats bought with money WE earned. We're the taxpayers who support the recreational fishing industry in all it's forms and reach. In Florida, that is $50 billion a year according to statistics.

Here is a question: what in God's name gives people who do not fish, scientists who are part of a collective "consensus" (that not all scientists hold sacred), the right to tell us what, when, and where to use our skills and chase our passions? We are a nation of laws - or at least we're supposed to be.

As recreational anglers, we have the rights to fish for whatever we want to. There is only ONE law on the books concerning fisherman, and it's written by PEW environmentalists. It's focused largely on commercial fishing, but it's destined to bring those fishing-haters (and that is exactly what they are) right into our marinas, our tackle shops, and onto our fishing grounds. It is that law that will quickly change your way of life. We see it with the red snapper moratorium; red and gag grouper cannot be kept now and the hammer is coming down on every aspect of our sport. Make no mistake fellow anglers, if we do not take the regulators seriously, and get them moving out of our sport, our sport is dead on the water that we love and cherish. The people who feel - and say publicly - that we are not capable of managing ourselves - want to count fish, and manage their distribution. Catch Shares, the brain child of global socialists "managing the Bering Sea" -- will allocate and distribute our fish. Our fish, that were -- prior to this insanity -- a natural and free resource. Let them put Catch Shares in place, and you have to pay somebody for the right to catch fish. Think of that one, ladies and gentleman; you will have to pay for the right to go fishing. First, pay for the license, which is fine and dandy, but then the individual fishing quota, good for that day and no longer. One grouper, one red snapper, and believe me, eventually one speckled sea trout and one redfish at a time per day.

Sector Separation: Part of the Globalist Recipe

To make this all work, the intellectuals behind the concept of sharing the fish that are caught need to count the fish. In the Magnuson/Stevens act, the fishing industry was split into two parts. One category (or sector) are commercial anglers; people who fish for a living and sell their catch to fish markets, restaurants, and other sources for people to eat, that our animals eat, and the fish that are ground up so our plants can eat them. They all fall into the commercial sector. The next sector is the recreational sector. That's us.

How do you divide a group of anglers? You split them into tighter sectors. Where there were two sectors -- one for recreational anglers and one for commercial anglers -- there are now to be three. Although it's claimed that Sector Separation has nothing to do with Catch Shares (the turning of a public resource into something you have to buy "permission tickets" for from Walmart!), it clearly does. Sector separation says that there are three sectors. One the commercial guys, one us, and one "for-hire" people. That includes all the Charter Captains and Head Boat owners, like local Mark Hubbard. Hubbard's business and that of many for-hire captains have been decimated by the grouper and American red snapper moratoriums. The fish are not endangered. To the contrary. They're thick on the reefs and structure. But turning them off forces the captains to support whatever legislation that will let them get on the water for as short a time as they might be allowed. They're desperate.

The divide and conquer strategy is simple to understand. Split the market into three sectors, give the commercial guys first dibs, the guides, second, and leave whatever is left over for us recreational fishermen to catch...and release, if the enviros get their way.

Walton (Walmart) putting fishermen on dry dock

While shutting down half of our national fleet with over-regulation, Walmart has been gobbling up the paperwork - called Individual Fishing Quotas- that will let them populate all the boats that all those independent fishing families lost as a result of the overwhelming number of new "environmental" regulations. They have given millions from their "foundation" to the people regulating us off the water. SO, it is going to be at Walmart you will have to go to buy your government-permission ticket before going out to catch those (now safe) grouper. If you buy a ticket and you don't catch any that day, or the weather stops you before you reach your fishy spot? Too bad. Next time you go, you will have to buy a new permission ticket at Walmart. And if you think there won't be flounder and redfish tickets at the same place in the same aisle soon after the grouper tickets, you're wrong. Let a camel into the tent, and their nose makes room for their humps.

Hold your nose and follow the money

One more thing on catch shares. There is only one protein food source you cannot yet buy on the Chicago Mercantile, where the values are determined for the future prices of the world's commodities. You can bet on the future price of everything from pig bellies to cows to natural gas. But there is one thing you cannot bet on. One thing still a public resource. Fish.

Think about it. The argument that catch shares are "an effective tool in the hand of scientists and other government officials responsible for managing our fisheries" nonsense. What it is is a thinly veiled strategy to move money and power. Catch shares can be made to sound perfectly sensible. Until you smell the stink of corruption. Some $70 million in money is being moved around between tax-exempt organizations, and the threat to our freedom is obvious. If you want something on the Mercantile, you have to first allocate it. Who better than people who think that having goldfish as pets should be illegal? Do not laugh. Check city law in San Francisco, California. Give it some time and you will be paying for those goldfish police.

Catch shares have drawn millions of dollars in support from groups like Walton (Walmart), Tyson foods, PEW, EDF and George Soros' Tides Foundation (among a dozen other like-minded and globally-sympathetic nongovernmental organizations. Why not follow the money? If we follow the money, we might find the truth. Is mankind killing the fish, or are they just another collection of victims? Causes needs a collection of victims.

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is at it again.

This time, it is paying saltwater recreational anglers in Massachusetts to not fish.

What could be sinister about that? If this were any other time and NOAA wasn't an agency bought and paid for by the preservationist wing of the environmental movement, maybe nothing would be sinister about it.

But under the Obama administration, a National Ocean Council now is going to decide where we can and can't fish. NOAA wants to implement Catch Shares, a scheme for limiting access by privatizing a public resource. This same agency is wielding the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act like a club, shutting down fisheries along the Atlantic and the Gulf.

So . . . do you think that something nefarious might be going on here?

I do.

So does one Massachusetts angler who received a $500 check to not fish, but has not yet cashed it.

"I have mixed feelings about the whole thing," Pat Judge told the Boston Globe. "I imagine if you were in tough economic straits you would take the money.

"It's not enough for me. It raised ethical questions on whether it's right for the government to be spending money to keep you from doing your hobby."

Meanwhile, government officials say their intent is not to reduce sport fishing, but to measure its worth among anglers. They argue that the results could be used in a variety of ways, including calculating the loss to anglers if an oil spill or some other environmental disaster forced a halt in marine recreational fishing.

Certainly the preservationist bureaucrats in NOAA wouldn't dream of using this information to manufacture another reason to justify limiting access to public fisheries? Would they? Of course not.

But keep this in mind: This "survey" is being conducted by an agency that clearly has an anti-fishing agenda based on an ideology instead of science, and it is part of an administration that fervently believes in Big Government controlling our lives and limiting our freedoms.

Read the Boston Globe's story here.

From: The Associated Press

A term of art essentially means one thing to you, another thing to me, with both definitions lawfully interchangeable depending on the situation at hand. For fisheries managers, there is probably no finer example of a term of art than the word overfishing. 

In 1996, the word was re-written into federal fisheries law to eschew obfuscation (baffle and bewilder), ultimately rendering the U.S. fishing community helpless in its ability to fight for reasonable access to our nation’s fisheries. In 2011, every time a fisherman defends his right to fish on sustainable resource, some preservationist with an ideological agenda simply has to cast an accusatory finger towards the offending party and charge him with overfishing under the Magnuson Stevens Act – it’s the 21^st Century version of the Salem witch hunt, and any attempt to defend overfishing is regarded as environmental heresy.