Thousands of fishermen angle for change in D.C.

WASHINGTON

Jacob Hicks wore his green slicker rain gear and waved a sign denouncing fishery regulators. Skip Feller wore a new jacket with the name of his head boat on the chest. George Wagner waved a flag fastened to a beat-up old fishing rod.

A commercial fisherman, a charter captain and a recreational angler - all stood side by side Wednesday outside the Capitol in a show of force and unity.

They were joined by nearly 4,000 others, including four busloads from Hampton Roads, at a rally to push for changes in the way the nation's saltwater fisheries are regulated. They came from East Coast ports north and south, from the West Coast - even Alaska - to draw attention to rules they say are crippling their industry.

All of them want more flexibility in a law, originally passed in 1976, called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

"I love my job," said Hicks, a Cape Hatteras, N.C., commercial fisherman. "But they are taking everything away from us."

Feller, who runs a head boat service out of Rudee Inlet, said the closure of the black sea bass fishery is threatening his livelihood.

"Financially, it's been devastating," said Feller, who has ferried anglers offshore for winter sea bass for 26 years. "You don't realize how many people come to Virginia in the winter for sea bass. They stay in hotels and eat in restaurants and spend lots of money.

"This closure has cost me about $100,000 the last four months. I hate to think of what it's done to others."

Wagner, a recreational angler from Mechanicsville, said environmentalists and regulators are trying to take fishing away from him, Feller, Hicks and others like them.

"They're closing down our beaches and closing fisheries. And they're using the Magnuson-Stevens a ct as a way to do this," Wagner said. "We need more activism like this.

"This is the only way we're going to be heard."

Organized by the Recreational Fishing Alliance, the rally was part of an effort to get Congress to amend Magnuson-Stevens. The act was designed to help rebuild and sustain stocks of saltwater fish species considered to be overfished or in need of rebuilding.

The law has no flexibility and hinders the efforts of fishermen to work and recreate with healthy species, the protesters said Wednesday.

Bills known as the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009 have been introduced in the House and Senate and are gaining support. The bills would extend the authorized period of time for rebuilding certain depleted fisheries.

One of the lawmakers who spoke at the rally was U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-1st District, which includes much of the Peninsula, who supports the new legislation.

"We're all in favor of rebuilding fish stocks, but we have to look at different ways to manage them," Wittman said later. The congressman serves on the C ommittee on Natural Resources and grew up fishing commercially and recreationally.

The poster child of the movement is the black sea bass, a tasty bottom-dweller popular with both recreational and commercial fishers.

The species came to the forefront when the National Marine Fisheries Service issued an emergency closure of the fishery in October, despite the fact that the service already has determined sea bass stocks to be rebuilt and not overfished. The service admitted later that the information used to make that determination likely wasn't trustworthy.

Earlier this month, the service increased this year's quota by nearly 61 percent but did not reopen the fishery.

"They had no right and no science to close it," said Jim Hutchinson, the managing director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance. "... But they're not even considering it."

Hank Beasley of Wanchese, N.C., runs a charter boat during the summer and commercial fishes during the winter. He came to Washington on one of five buses that made the six-hour trip from the Outer Banks.

"We've had scientists on the boat with us and seen all the fish we could be catching," Beasley said. "... Simple thing is, there's more fish out there than they know and they won't listen to those of us out there every day seeing it."

Scott MacDonald understood Beasley's plight.

As the owner of Spots Fish Co. in Lynnhaven Inlet, he has had to stand by and watch those he buys fish from sit idle for the past eight weeks.

"These closures and regulations are pretty much putting us out of business," MacDonald said. "We had to finally stand up and we have to do it together to fix this."

Lee Tolliver, (757) 222-5844 or lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com