Thoughts on CCA meeting tonight on state of Calcasieu fishery

[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by T-TOP

So what your saying is, we are just screwed???

I am saying that we're not home free and we need to maintain polite but firm pressure on CCA, LDWF, and LWC regarding improving the quality of the science and resource management based on good science. LDWF has had good fishery independent sampling techniques in place for a number of years (trawls and net samplings). There is also a lot of data from various federal agencies and studies and from university research.

A good fishery-dependent survey would add to the base of data available, but over the past decade CCA and LWC has not demonstrated a commitment to data driven fisheries management, nor have they demonstrated a commitment to habitat conservation. LA Creel has some potential, but pressure is needed for the data collection and use efforts to live up to that potential.