vous. Literally, you can get a federal 

 citation for coming too close to a 

 whale with a boat." 



But commercial fishermen often 

 think that if they are careful not to 

 capture too many sea turtles, then 

 they have fulfilled the requirement of 

 the law. 



"So you tend to see a lot of 

 resistance, for example, in our trawl 

 flounder fishery in North Carolina 

 when turtles start showing up dead on 

 the beaches during flounder season," 

 says Orbach. "It may be that the trawl 

 fishery is not causing those deaths; we 

 really don't have a good system for 

 autopsying turtles and marine mam- 

 mals. Rather than trying to develop 

 gear that will allow the release of 

 turtles ... they say, 'We shouldn't have 

 to do this at all. We aren't the big 

 problem with turtles. It's coastal 

 development and RVs running over 

 turtle nests; that's the problem.' 



"The point is, no matter how small 

 a part of the problem you are with 

 marine mammals and endangered 

 species, you're a problem," Orbach 

 says. 



TEDs have been less than popular 

 among commercial fishermen. 

 Shrimpers claim that the device not 

 only releases turtles but a big percent- 

 age of their catch. And in the summer 

 flounder fishery, the gear clogs with 

 sea grasses, and the whole of their 

 catch gets lost. In some areas, limited 

 tow times have been approved by 

 NMFS as an alternative to TEDs, the 

 theory being that any captured turtle 

 could survive a brief entrapment in 

 the net. 



Despicable as they seem, require- 

 ments such as TEDs and limited tow 

 times are the very vehicle through 

 which fishermen are allowed to trawl 

 at all. And they are not an invention by 

 NMFS to torture fishermen, say 

 federal officials. The Endangered 

 Species Act takes precedence over the 

 Magnuson Act. 



"The law is doggone tough; we 

 don't really have a choice," says 

 Andrew Kemmerer, director of 

 NMFS's Southeast region. "There are 

 solutions like TEDs that prevent us 

 from having to close the fishery." 



But fishermen are perched perpetu- 

 ally on the defensive. 



"Fishermen get their backs up any 

 time NMFS even mentions anything," 

 says Shepard. "They will be put in an 

 adversarial relationship, and they know 

 in their minds that this federal regula- 

 tion is going to happen." 



Watermen often don't know about 

 a new regulation until it has been 

 implemented, and the appeal process is 

 painstaking, time-consuming and often 

 expensive. 



"The main problem that I see is that 

 there is a lack of communication 

 between fishermen and the various 

 agencies at the very early stages of 

 regulation," says Foster. 



A recent regulation spawned by 



Florida recreational fishermen is a 

 prime example, says Shepard. The 

 dispute among Florida fishing interests 

 over the use of pots in the snapper/ 

 grouper fishery resounded to Tar Heel 

 shores when a regulation prohibiting 

 the traps was adopted by the South 

 Atlantic Fishery Management Council 

 (SAFMC). The council governs the 

 region from Key West, Fla., to the 

 North Carolina/Virginia border. Based 

 on research conducted by NMFS, the 

 council develops management plans for 

 species that migrate between state 

 borders. 



"There had been a move over a 

 period of time to prohibit the use of fish 

 traps in federal waters offshore," says 

 SAFMC Executive Director Bob 

 Mahood, adding that the council voted 

 to prohibit the traps. "In doing so, the 

 council knew that there was an exten- 

 sive sea bass pot fishery off North 

 Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 5 



