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Re: Resource Report - Abalone Continue the Struggle





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Posted by Eric S on May 25, 2011 at 10:03:00:

In Reply to: Resource Report - Abalone Continue the Struggle posted by Stephen Benavides on May 18, 2011 at 17:27:00:

Poaching is the real culprit.
Like you said, it's only getting worse as the value of black market abalone rises.

Reducing the annual take will reduce the overall take somewhat, but not all people fill their cards annually and some people don't even take 12 per year. Instead of the annual limit reduced I would rather see the daily bag limit reduced and possibly impose a rule that the two abalone taken could not be from the same location code. This would spread the take out to different areas.

As far as Fort Ross being over harvested, what did they expect?
Now with the MLPA's shutting down large areas of coastline of course people are going to hit areas that are still open. Combine this with the state shutting down access to many other state beaches due to budget cuts which are also diving access areas, people are forced to go to whatever places are open. Fort Ross (state) and Stillwater (county) remain open and as a result will be hit hard. Gerstle remains open but the restrooms are closed making it undesireable to go there.

As far as reduced punch card sales I have a theory on that too.
I personally know two people who were cited for infractions in the code. One posed absolutely no hazard to the fishery and one did. One person was cited for waiting too long to fill out the card and the other person was cited for upgrading a legal ab for a larger one.
In both cases the people were fined $1400 and lost their fishing licenses for 1 year. I'm sure there are many other cases like this so those people are banned from purchasing ab cards.
Some people I have talked to said it's not worth it to them to take part in ab diving because of the over the top zero tolerance policy and brutal fines.

I know the stae is hurting for money right now but they don't need to take it out on the regular joe who just wants to get a few abs to eat.



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