Photo: Black sea bass caught off a wreck near Fire Island Last October, I was trolling east off New York’s Fire Island when I happened to glance out to sea. Off in the distance, perhaps two or three miles south of where I was fishing, I noticed a party boat anchored up over an inshore […]
How I Spent my Time During California’s 2015-16 Dungeness Crab Fishery Closure There’s a children’s book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day that I used to read to my kids. We just had about 155 such days here in California. November Right before the commercial Dungeness crab season was about […]
Photo by Patrick Paquette New England Anglers Wait for Pogies to Return to Boston I vaguely remember the adults talking about menhaden fishing when I was a boy. Around Boston where I grew up and learned to fish, we call them pogies (not to be confused with porgy, aka scup). In other places they are […]
Photo: Red Snapper I recently attended a media summit in Galveston, Texas, which was hosted by Trout Unlimited, the American Fly Fishing Trade Association and The Ocean Conservancy. Titled “The State of Our Fishing Waters: The Connection Between our Headwaters and the Ocean,” it had an ambitious agenda; presentations began promptly at 7:00 a.m. But […]
Photo: Keven Scribner on the Antigone in the 1970s I began commercially fishing in 1976, the year when the original Magnuson Act was signed into law. Chasing salmon, I fished in both Washington state and federal waters, and quickly became acquainted with circumscribed fishing seasons, specific opening times, gear-type restrictions and allowable catch limits. Regulation […]
This post continues Charles Witek’s two-part personal journey in U.S. fisheries management and conservation. Read Part One here. I had gotten more and more involved with fisheries conservation over the years. By 1996, I sat on the executive board of the Coastal Conservation Association (CCA), an organization that had worked hard to get SFA signed […]
The Magnuson-Stevens Act established a successful framework for sustainable science-based fishery management that is responsive to regional stakeholders while protecting national interests. Authors of the Act had a long-term, bi-partisan commitment to productive fisheries and healthy fishing communities. Our job is to uphold and build on that legacy for future generations. —Linda Behnken, Executive Director, […]
This post is the first in a two-part series about Charles’s personal journey with U.S. fisheries management and the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Read Part Two here. As a boy growing up in the southwest corner of the New England coast, I had no way of knowing that Congress would someday pass the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and […]
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