Topic: Petition request.

[CommercialFishin]

You Rock, Postman!!
Thanks so much! Feel free to forward to as many people as you like. The more the merrier!

[Just plain old Punisher]

I signed it. I'll see if any of my navy co-workers are interested.

[CommercialFishin]

I signed it. I'll see if any of my navy co-workers are interested.

Thanks Punisher! And thank you for your service in the navy!
BTW, I love that baby pic! That is so cute! LOL

[Just plain old Punisher]

Oh well I'm not actually in the navy, I'm a defense contractor who works in a naval installation. But I appreciate your thanks =)

[CommercialFishin]

Oh well I'm not actually in the navy, I'm a defense contractor who works in a naval installation. But I appreciate your thanks =)

LOL
That's cool too!

[Just plain old Punisher]

We have a sale on WMD if you're interested.

Price break at a dozen =)

[Mackie]

You Rock, Postman!!
Thanks so much! Feel free to forward to as many people as you like. The more the merrier!

i am forwarding the issue to all of my yankee friends that i have (includes the southern states)

[Sethan]

Commercial, not trying to be an ass about it, but 200 commercial fishing licenses can take an awful lot of fish.  Without knowing what percentage of that is groupers as by-catch, that doesn't tell us anything about the actual numbers being caught - 3 million recreational fishing vessels which might go out once a year, fish by hook and line, and might not catch any grouper at all even if they catch fish, do not necessarily mean much in terms of what might be caught "by accident" by large-scale commercial vessels.

I won't be signing anything based on numbers until I can see if the numbers make sense.  So far we haven't seen any relevant hard figures.

[CommercialFishin]

Commercial, not trying to be an ass about it, but 200 commercial fishing licenses can take an awful lot of fish.  Without knowing what percentage of that is groupers as by-catch, that doesn't tell us anything about the actual numbers being caught - 3 million recreational fishing vessels which might go out once a year, fish by hook and line, and might not catch any grouper at all even if they catch fish, do not necessarily mean much in terms of what might be caught "by accident" by large-scale commercial vessels.

I won't be signing anything based on numbers until I can see if the numbers make sense.  So far we haven't seen any relevant hard figures.

 Sethan,
 I can only suggest that you go to the NMFS website. The issue of bycatch is always being addressed by the commercial sector. Also if you want to get an idea of how much the recreational sector is taking, go to http://myfwc.com/law/Weekly/index.htm
 Florida is the fishing capitol of the U.S., I can tell you that those three million boats are going out more then once a year. It's more like once a week
 Having said all that, the petition that I am passing is to counter the petiton by "certain sportfishing access groups". The only reason they want to put commercial fishers out of business is to reallocate the resource to themselves. That in my opinion is morally wrong. If you disagree with my stance, I can agree to disagree. But thanks for letting me bend your ear 
 

[Jack Morris]

I'll wait and see what Sethan says about this matter, since he is far better with numbers and such than I am. I grew up along the gulf shores (Navy brat) and it was not nearly like this 30 years ago. I kind of have to agree with Bonk, the gulf is just crammed with people nowadays and our population is not getting smaller, neither is the population of the world for that matter. Something will have to give sooner or later as noone is as good at trashing the planet and it's resources than the human being.