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Maryland DNR
Summer Meeting of the Sport Fisheries
Advisory Commission(SFAC)
Tuesday,
July 24, 2018
Held at the
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Tawes State Office Building
C-1 Conference Room
Annapolis, Maryland
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Maryland DNRSport Fisheries Advisory Commission Meeting
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
SFAC Members Present:
John Neely, Co-Chair
Micah DammeyerBeverly FlemingToby FreyJames GracieSteve LayPhil LangleyScott LennoxVal LynchDr. Ray Morgan, IICharles NemphosEd O’BrienDavid SikorskiDavid SutherlandRoger TrageserJames Wommack
Maryland DNR Fisheries Service:
Dave Blazer, Co-ChairPaul Genovese
Secretary Mark Belton
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Maryland DNRSport Fisheries Advisory Commission Meeting
I N D E X
July 24, 2018
PageWelcome and Opening Remarks:
by Chair John Neely and Dave Blazer, MD DNR 5
Welcome Remarksby Secretary Mark Belton 6
Introduction of New Commission Member Sewell (Toby) Frey:by John Neely 21
Bay Water Conditions: by Tom Parham, MD DNR 23
NRP Activity Report:by Lt. Brian Noon 30
Recreational Fishing License Sales:by Karen Knotts, MD DNR 35
Freshwater Fisheries:Quarterly Report - Tony Prochaska, MD DNR 56Black Bass - Joseph Love and John Mullican, MD DNR 57
Committee and Workshop Reporting:Black Bass Subcommittee - July Meeting Summaryby Roger Trageser, Commissioner 80See Handouts for: 85* Penalty Workgroup - June 7 Meeting* Oyster Advisory Commission - May Summary* Aquiculture Coordinating Council - May Summary and August Agenda* Blue Crab Industry Committee - June 13 Summary* MORE Commission - May Summary and July Agenda
Forage Fish Index:by Jim Uphoff, MD DNR 89
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Maryland DNRSport Fisheries Advisory Commission Meeting
I N D E X
July 24, 2018
PagePolicy Program :
by Sarah Widman, MD DNR: 113* Regulatory, Penalty and Scooping Updates* Penalty Review for Recreational Oyster Harvest Violations
Motion:by James Wommack 130* Motion Carried 141
Public Comments:by Kirkland Hall 134by Larry Jennings 136
Fishing Management:by Lynn Fegley 143
Final Comments:by Chairman Dave Blazer 160
KEYNOTE: "---" Indicates inaudible in transcript.
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1 A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N
2 (3:00 p.m.)
3 (Corridor noises interfered throughout the committee
4 meeting.)
5 Welcome and Opening Remarks
6 by Chair John Neely and Dave Blazer, MD DNR
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: It is three o’clock and welcome to
8 the 2918 Summer Sport Fisheries Advisory Commission Meeting.
9 Thank you all for coming.
10 We have, as always, a very full agenda. Please keep
11 your comments succinct. Some of the questions we may defer to
12 future meetings. But again, thank you all for attending
13 today.
14 Dave Blazer, who chairs our Fisheries Department is
15 going to introduce our very special guest, Mark Belton.
16 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Thank you, John. A lot of you
17 know our Secretary. He has been our Secretary of the
18 Department of Natural Resources for three years. Almost four.
19 Three and a half. And it is great to work with somebody who
20 is a great listener, a great leader and I enjoy working with
21 him so closely.
22 Although I think all the Fisheries issues, I know I
23 talk to Mark probably, almost every day, about something,
24 crab, fish, Striped Bass, Trout. There is always an issue
25 with Fisheries. So, I have gotten to know and work with Mark
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1 very well. And I enjoy my time with him and appreciate his
2 leadership, advice and counsel for Fisheries.
3 And we thought -- John and I talked and John thought
4 it would be a good idea if we invited the Secretary to come in
5 and make few brief remarks to us today and he is going to
6 talk, I think, about one of the issues that -- one of the
7 commissions that he is working with, as well.
8 But, Secretary, this is the Sport Fisheries Advisory
9 Committee, plus some extra guests in the back row. And these
10 folks are here to advise you and the Department on sport
11 fishing issues, which I know you have heard a lot about, at
12 least in the three plus years that I have been here.
13 So, without further ado, Secretary Mark Belton,
14 thank you.
15 Welcome Remarks
16 by Secretary Mark Belton
17 SECRETARY BELTON: Thank you, John. John and I had
18 the pleasure to have lunch together a couple of three weeks
19 ago, I do not remember exactly when.
20 MR. BELTON: Yes, sir.
21 SECRETARY BELTON: And John suggests that I come
22 down and say hello and talk for a few minutes with you all. I
23 do not get around enough to all the various boards and
24 commissions that DNR has, and lord knows there is a lot of
25 them. But it was a great suggestion. I thank you for it.
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1 I know a lot of you. Some of you I do not know.
2 But I thank all of you for participating on this very
3 important group.
4 I got to tell you of all the subjects and all the
5 wildlife and all of the issues that DNR deals with, Fisheries
6 is by far the most emotionally evocative -- people feel very
7 strongly --
8 (Laughter)
9 SECRETARY BELTON: -- and passionately about their
10 issues with Fisheries. That is why you all are on this
11 committee and that is why there are so many other folks in the
12 room, and that is why it is followed so closely by so many
13 people around the State.
14 Dave was being a little modest when he says, we talk
15 every day. It seems like some days we talk --
16 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: All day.
17 SECRETARY BELTON: All day.
18 (Laughter)
19 SECRETARY BELTON: It got to the point where, where
20 okay, we need to figure out our schedules a little bit here,
21 and so let us consolidate all of these issues. Some of them
22 are not so emergency that we have to talk every day about it.
23 Let us kind of sync them up every once in a while because Dave
24 developed this little meeting that we have once a month that
25 is called “Fish Guts”.
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1 And we talk about how the guts of the Department of
2 Fisheries works regarding Fisheries issues. And it is really
3 an informative and valuable forum for me. We schedule an
4 hour. We generally go over and I get to ask a lot of
5 questions and learn a lot about the ins and outs of Fisheries
6 issues. So, again, very valuable for me.
7 I have had the pleasure of going to several
8 in-person, the Atlantic States Fisheries Commissions and have
9 seen some of you there and seeing how those 17 or 18 or so
10 member groups work. And that has been a fascinating marine
11 experience for me.
12 I did want to mention one group that a couple of
13 folks have asked me about recently that is related to our
14 Sport Fisheries Advisory Commission work and that is something
15 called the MORE Commission. People heard about that? Some
16 yes, some no. It stands for the Maryland Outdoor Recreation
17 Economic Commission. The MORE Commission. And it stems from
18 an executive order that Governor Hogan signed last year. And
19 he put a two year time period on the Commission. He asked the
20 Secretary of Commerce, Mike Gill and myself to co-chair.
21 And it is kind of a parallel effort to what seven or
22 eight other states are currently doing around the Country
23 right now. And it is looking at ways to maximize the economic
24 benefits from our recreational, outdoor recreational
25 activities. It has five specific tenents that upon which we
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1 are supposed to make recommendations. One of them, I think,
2 is telling, it shows we are not trying to exploit our natural
3 resources and trying to preserve them and maximize our
4 people’s use of them. One deals with stewardship, which I am
5 really excited about.
6 But in any event this committee has 17 members,
7 specifically appointed by the Governor. We decided it is a
8 two year committee. We decided that the first year, to take
9 out time and get around the State and learn about the outdoor
10 economic activity that is inherent to all the regions of
11 Maryland, because we realized like Governor Schaefer used to
12 call Maryland “American Miniature”, our outdoors has different
13 attributes depending on where you are.
14 So, we had an organizational meeting. We had a
15 first regional meeting out in near Western Maryland which
16 would be Washington and Frederick Counties out there. We
17 visited some state parks. We talked with National Park
18 Service folks. We talked with a lot of folks who are involved
19 with the battlefields and the trails, C&O Canal, connecting
20 trails through Pennsylvania and that type of thing. The
21 Appalachian Trail. It was really informative. Our committee
22 got a lot out of it.
23 Our second meeting, our second regional meeting
24 tomorrow we are going to meet at North Point State Park,
25 actually can start the day -- the hardy souls that wish based
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1 on the weather, we are going to start it with a boat trip out
2 to Hart-Miller Island and focus the day on boating, the
3 boating industry, outdoor boating recreational industry, which
4 I think will be really interesting. We got a lot of folks
5 coming in to chat with us about that.
6 The next meeting after that will be in September, we
7 will do it on the Eastern Shore and focus on the outdoor
8 recreational activities that are Shore centered, including the
9 Ocean City area and our coastal ways.
10 And we will do that for every region in the State.
11 And in the second year we are going to break down into
12 committees and talk about the five specific areas that the
13 Governor asked us to make recommendations on. Our interim
14 report that is due December of this year. And then a final
15 report that is due December of 2019. And I suspect given the
16 eagerness of a lot of my work commission members we will have
17 several recommendations listed on the interim report, we will
18 not wait until the end to actually make recommendations, so
19 that if the Governor and the Legislature will like to take
20 some action on those, instead of waiting until the end they
21 can do so.
22 It is a very enthusiastic group. I am excited to be
23 part of it. I am certainly learning a lot as are the folks
24 that are on the Commission. So -- that is the MORE
25 Commission.
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1 And if you all, and John as the Chair I address this
2 to you, wanted to at some point address the group, the MORE
3 Commission or send some correspondence to the group after some
4 --
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I would love that.
6 SECRETARY BELTON: -- discussion.
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: That would be great.
8 SECRETARY BELTON: Making recommendations from the
9 Sport Fisheries Advisory Commission for the MORE Commission’s
10 consideration in their final report.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Sure.
12 SECRETARY BELTON: That would be terrific.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Great.
14 SECRETARY BELTON: The more input that we get the
15 better.
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: You got some good people on that
17 Commission.
18 SECRETARY BELTON: Yes, I do. It is a real exciting
19 group.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes.
21 SECRETARY BELTON: Starting -- it is starting to be
22 -- to lead that group with that much talent and enthusiasm.
23 Yes.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes.
25 SECRETARY BELTON: Yes. So, that is fine. And with
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1 that, again, I cannot say thank you enough to you guys. But I
2 would want to give you all the opportunity to ask questions of
3 me while I am here for a few minutes about anything that might
4 be related to the Sport Fisheries Advisory Commission Center.
5 What do you think?
6 I know John and I had a great lunch. We did not
7 stop talking the whole time. And we had a lot of things
8 talked -- actually he came with a quite a list and did a lot
9 of talking. And I responded once in a while.
10 (Laughter)
11 SECRETARY BELTON: But we talked about a lot of
12 stuff. You know, John, I guess that is probably how he
13 normally operates. He is usually very well prepared and has a
14 long list of things that he wants to accomplish.
15 What do you guys want to talk about? Anything?
16 Sikorski is over here going I do not know if I should bring
17 this up.
18 (Laughter)
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes, exactly.
20 (Laughter)
21 MR. SIKORSKI: You read my mind.
22 MR. GRACIE: Funding for fisheries.
23 SECRETARY BELTON: Funding for fisheries.
24 MR. GRACIE: We need more.
25 SECRETARY BELTON: We sure do. I agree. So, DNR is
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1 a special funded organization for the most part. Meaning that
2 we have a budget that is somewhere between two hundred and
3 fifty and three hundred million dollars. And more than 60
4 percent of our budget comes from special funds. These are
5 funds that are brought in not by tax dollars necessarily.
6 Things like buying a fishing license. And buying a hunting
7 license. Things like that that actually have a specific
8 purpose and have specific parameters that you can and cannot
9 spend that money on.
10 So, consequently we have -- I think -- I forget the
11 number of special funds, but it is you know, in the dozens.
12 And that makes it very challenging to manage a budget with all
13 those different parameters on them.
14 And what we have seen and Dave and I have talked a
15 little bit about this at our Fish Guts meetings and other
16 things, is a reduction in the revenue that are generated from
17 those sources that we historically get money from, from
18 Fisheries. So, we are trying to address that in various ways
19 in the future.
20 One discussion we had not long ago with the State
21 House regarding money for the public oyster fishery which is
22 necessarily a -- a SFAC issue, but it is directly on point to
23 your question. In that we have had over the past, what three
24 or four years I want to say, a declining trend in our bushels
25 harvested in the public fisher, there is a dollar a bushel tax
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1 on those bushels that goes into a special fund that is then
2 used to help replenish oysters in the public fishery. Usually
3 through the Seed and Shell Program.
4 Because we have had a lessening of that money there
5 has been less of that activity available to help, you know,
6 boast a lagging resource. So, the State House was able to put
7 a supplemental bill as part of the budget during the
8 Legislative Session and get some additional money for that
9 purpose. And so that is one example.
10 And so I just to say we do take action on things
11 when we see we really have to -- it gets to be, you know, a
12 problem where we cannot move forward. And I expect we will
13 see a lot more of that in the future.
14 I noticed when I first came in as Secretary, and Jim
15 you were part of those discussions, that we had during the
16 transition team, one of the things that was very noticeable
17 to me was over the previous decade and now it is approaching
18 15 years, there were reserve funds in all of these special
19 accounts.
20 Basically, you know, tax money, you cannot roll over
21 year to year. It just goes into the -- back into the general
22 fund. But special funds you can roll over year to year if you
23 do not use them. And our rate of using these fees has been
24 such that over the last 15 years they have been dwindling down
25 the saving account, dwindling down the saving account, et
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1 cetera. To the point where almost all of our reserve accounts
2 now do not have much, if any, reserve balances. So, it is a
3 really challenge for us through the organization.
4 MR. GRACIE: My question was, probably should have
5 been worded more specifically, I would like us to take --
6 SECRETARY BELTON: I do not like specific questions.
7
8 (Laughter)
9 MR. GRACIE: That is why I tried the general first.
10 What we can do to convince people that more general fund
11 contributions to fisheries makes sense because the benefits
12 are so wide and the economic returns are so high.
13 SECRETARY BELTON: Yes, I agree with you. We get -
14 - get through a better job of -- budget, powers that be,
15 including the Legislators and at the State House up at that
16 point.
17 Somebody mentioned to me recently, might have been
18 you John, I want to think maybe it was, a little story about
19 how when they came across a gentleman recently who had not
20 been fishing for a decade. But every year he bought a fishing
21 license because someone taught him once early in his adult
22 life that even if you do not fish it is important to buy a
23 fishing license because the money goes into managing the
24 fisher and promoting public fishers around the State, to take
25 care of that resource. So, that gentleman bought a fishing
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1 license to support the program even though he did not
2 participate in the fishing. I thought that was really
3 extraordinary.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes.
5 SECRETARY BELTON: The more we can communicate that
6 ethic out there, the better off, you know, our resource would
7 be. Great question, thank you.
8 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We will take one more. Yes, Phil.
9 MR. LANGLEY: Secretary, hi, how you doing?
10 SECRETARY BELTON: Good.
11 MR. LANGLEY: The only thing I would like to mention
12 and there are some people here today who probably have
13 concerns is we have seen in the Bay a dwindling stock.
14 Basically of all species. And, you know, we can only harvest
15 what gets to us in the State of Maryland. We are the last
16 state up in the Chesapeake Bay. And there are some thing that
17 may be happening on the ocean, on the coast, maybe our
18 neighboring state, I do not know, but we are certainly not
19 seeing the species here in Maryland, Trout, Grouper, Spot, all
20 the things that I grew up with. There is a lot of focus on
21 Striped Bass, which is a very -- it is our State fish. It is
22 a very important species.
23 SECRETARY BELTON: Right.
24 MR. LANGLEY: But unfortunately we are almost
25 limited to targeting Striped Bass now, even though --
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1 SECRETARY BELTON: There are a few other things --
2 yes.
3 MR. LANGLEY: Yes, the fresh --- this year. Even
4 Spanish Mackerel and Blue Fish that we normally even have, you
5 know, in the lower part of Maryland’s Bay, we really are not
6 seeing this year. And like I say it could be a weather
7 related fresh type of thing.
8 But, you know, the possibilities and actually had a
9 conversation with this earlier today about working maybe, you
10 know, more regionally. There are some thing that happen in
11 our neighboring state that in the early spring season for
12 Striped Bass that a lot of pre-spawned fish are harvested and
13 targeted commercially, a time of year these fish are hammered,
14 you know, 12 months out of the year.
15 And just possibly working with other states to do
16 something smarter. Whether it is to -- the shrimp trawls in
17 the Carolinas that bi-catch, while we are not seeing croaker
18 or Spot, whether it is strictly environmental conditions. But
19 there is, you know, there is a lot of concern about our
20 fisheries especially in the middle-lower part of Maryland’s
21 Chesapeake Bay where there is a lot of recreational anglers,
22 as well as commercial guys that are not seeing the species
23 that they once saw.
24 SECRETARY BELTON: Right. The diversity of species.
25 MR. LANGLEY: The diversity. Absolutely.
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1 SECRETARY BELTON: Bio-diversity, I guess.
2 MR. LANGLEY: Bio-diversity, right.
3 SECRETARY BELTON: That is a great question. And if
4 I had a magic wand I would --
5 (Laughter)
6 MR. LANGLEY: I would wave mine with you.
7 SECRETARY BELTON: But let me just say a few things
8 about it. So, first of all one key factor into bio-
9 diversity is to help the Chesapeake Bay, right. And that is
10 something that we spend just a tremendous amount of time,
11 effort and money on here in Maryland and the Department of
12 Natural Resources. Not only in my department but in the Bay
13 Cabinet, which includes the Department of Environment, the
14 Planning, the Agriculture, Energy Administration,
15 Environmental Service and the --- to Maryland Center for
16 Environmental Science. That group gets together constantly to
17 talk about Maryland’s efforts to clean up Chesapeake Bay.
18 And, you know, we are at the midpoint assessment now
19 of the Chesapeake Bay Program which is shooting towards 2025
20 to get to that effort where all the programs and policies are
21 in place that will clean up the Bay.
22 And we are making good progress. Not every state
23 has made the same amount of progress. Maryland is as good as
24 any other states’ effort, but we have to catch up a little
25 bit, we are a little behind in storm water, I want to say, in
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1 particular to focus our efforts. Other states like
2 Pennsylvania have a long way to go. And of course, they mean
3 so much to us because of the Susquehanna contributing about 50
4 percent of the fresh water to overall Bay.
5 But there are signs of progress. We all know them.
6 So, we had a record number of --- vegetation which is so
7 important to our fishery species. Water clarity has been over
8 the previous several years, really good. And species
9 abundance actually have -- those numbers have been pretty
10 good. I know we mentioned we have seen -- have not seen the
11 diversity but the abundance of the species that are attracted
12 by the Bay program have been pretty strong.
13 And then we do work very closely, as I mentioned
14 before, with the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission. I have
15 seen you at those meetings. And so I know you are familiar
16 with that works. And all I can do is to help us make
17 Maryland’s part on cleaning the Chesapeake Bay, and courage
18 the other states to do their part. And then work with the
19 other states through the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission
20 to help make sure that those decisions that are made there are
21 based upon science, that everybody has an abundance of stock
22 issues from.
23 You said those Striped Bass get hit all along the
24 way and then we are the last ones to see them as they come up
25 the Bay.
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1 MR. LANGLEY: The 12 months out of the year.
2 SECRETARY BELTON: But the folks in New York will
3 look at it just the opposite. They would say golly, they
4 started up there in the Chesapeake Bay and then they run the
5 gauntlet before they get to us. It is a resource that
6 everybody benefits from. It is so important for everybody to
7 contribute to make sure that they are going to be abundant in
8 the future.
9 Yes, great comment though. It takes everybody
10 working together to get it.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you, Mark.
12 SECRETARY BELTON: Oh, my pleasure.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you very much.
14 SECRETARY BELTON: Thanks again for your time and
15 effort on this Commission. We talked about the MORE
16 Commission before you got here. Dave is one of the newer
17 members of the Commission. So, I do not know if you are
18 coming to tomorrow’s meeting?
19 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I am.
20 SECRETARY BELTON: Good. Great. So, we will see
21 you then.
22 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Thank you, again.
23 SECRETARY BELTON: Appreciate your time and effort
24 you put in. Thanks for everything you do.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. Secretary. Thank you.
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1 I will echo Dave Blazer’s remarks and thanking Secretary
2 Belton for coming over to our meeting.
3 Mark has said he would like to develop a better
4 relationship with the Commissioners. He has even suggested
5 that maybe that we would consider having a retreat out of the
6 State offices where we might have an opportunity to delve into
7 the fishing issues more in depth. I am probably in favor of
8 that if there is enough interest.
9 Introduction of New Commission Member - Sewell (Toby) Fry
10 by Chair John Neely
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Join me in offering our newest
12 Commissioner. A warm welcome to Toby Fry our newest
13 Commission. Toby has had a --
14 (Applause)
15 CHAIRMAN NEELY: -- long interest in fishing.
16 Including aquiculture in the Mid-Eastern Shore area. And I
17 encourage everyone to get to know Toby during the coming
18 years. So, thank you very much. With you and Charlie, Scott
19 Lenox, we definitely have some new blood on the Commission and
20 welcome.
21 Finally, we do have lots of issues. Many issues.
22 Most are dealing with water quality in the Bay and right now
23 with hooking mortality. I am hearing it over and over again.
24 But there is a lot of good stuff going on around the
25 State. Right now we have got with Program Open Space, we are
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1 purchasing land in sensitive areas out in Western Maryland
2 along Trout streams. There are any number of remediation
3 projects that are going on right now to reduce nitrogen and
4 phosphorus to prevent siltation and runoff. We have
5 construction of new oyster sanctuaries going on. And lastly,
6 the Bloede Dam is scheduled to be removed I guess in August or
7 September. And that is going to open up a 65 miles of new
8 habitat, new fish habitat, spawning grounds. These are good
9 things.
10 I have said it before, the whole country is watching
11 Maryland. I am very proud of the work we do in our Commission
12 and I thank you, all of you, for what you do. So, thank you
13 very much.
14 So, with that being said let us get into the
15 meeting. Dave Blazer, why don’t you talk about Tom Parham.
16 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yes, as Chairman Neely mentioned,
17 you know, there is a lot going on the Bay and if you look out
18 the window you will see a lot of what has been happening
19 recently. So, we thought it was a good idea to invite Tom
20 Parham back.
21 Tom has been before this Commission a couple of
22 times to talk about what are quality influences on fisheries
23 and with what we have heard about the Freshet down on the
24 Potomac and some that we have seen there. We asked Tom to
25 come and talk a little bit today about some of the rain and
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1 the water quality, Susquehanna, the Conowingo Dam is looking
2 to open up a lot of gates in the next day or two. And some of
3 the impacts that that might have on the Bay. So, Tom, fire
4 away.
5 Bay Water Conditions
6 by Tom Barham, MD DNR
7 MR. PARHAM: Dave said to keep this brief so I am
8 going to keep this very, very short.
9 As Secretary Belton said, you know, the State of
10 Maryland and also Maryland DNR, you know, cares a lot about
11 the Bay and is working hard to restore it. What our group
12 does is we have a monitoring group. We have 125 stations
13 throughout the Bay watershed that we monitor monthly or
14 biweekly and some of them are continuously monitored every 15
15 minutes to track progress towards restoring our Bay.
16 Well, this information is also useful too for
17 looking at habitat conditions and obviously for this group
18 right here, you know, how does it relate to fish that living
19 here.
20 So, what I was going to do is kind of break this up.
21 It is going to be two slides, but it going to be before what
22 happened last Saturday and then what is coming up.
23 So, before last Saturday, you know, we are coming
24 into Summer conditions. Everyone remembers those rains from
25 late May. Lots of rain. For folks at the Potomac River flows
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1 never even got down to normal. So, lots and lots of rain.
2 Right now, we are, before last Saturday, the river
3 temperatures were running about 84 degrees and the --- of
4 Maryland’s waters. Main Bay temperatures were just a
5 little bit cooker, around 82 degrees. But if you go from the
6 surface down to the level where there is no longer aqua-
7 oxygen for fish, of three milligrams per liter, that was about
8 80 degrees. So, there is not a lot of difference between
9 surface temperature and --- temperatures.
10 In fact when you look at all our --- information we
11 go out like two weeks, and we look at water conditions from
12 surface to bottom. The coolest water that had best oxygen was
13 at these Bay Bridge, Swan Point and South of Dorchester. And
14 those areas right there ---.
15 MR. GRACIE: I am having a little trouble hearing
16 you.
17 MR. PARHAM: Sure. All right. I will speak up.
18 MR. GRACIE: Can I ask you a question because I am a
19 little lost already.
20 MR. PARHAM: Sure.
21 MR. GRACIE: The 80 degree temperature only occurs
22 at low oxygen levels. That -- and it is higher than that
23 everywhere else. Is that what you are seeing?
24 MR. PARHAM: The surface waters are a little bit
25 warmer. As you go deeper it gets cooler.
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1 MR. GRACIE: I understand that.
2 MR. PARHAM: Bottom temperatures are the coolest but
3 fish cannot go there because there is not enough oxygen.
4 MR. GRACIE: I am asking you if the breakpoint for
5 hypoxia let us call it, as the breakpoint, it is at 80
6 degrees?
7 MR. PARHAM: No.
8 MR. GRACIE: It is lower than that?
9 MR. PARHAM: It varies, depending on how the flow of
10 the salinity. So, right now the conditions where the oxygen
11 at the three milligrams per liter, most areas of the Bay it
12 above 80 degrees.
13 MR. GRACIE: In other words we do not have three
14 milligrams per liter at temperatures below 80 degrees?
15 MR. PARHAM: Correct but --
16 MR. GRACIE: That is what -- just making sure I
17 understood that.
18 MR. PARHAM: That is what makes it tough. I mean
19 because the literature shows Rockfish like, you know, above 84
20 degrees, that is their limit. So, it does not give them a
21 lot of bottom places to ---.
22 So, this was before last Saturday. And now we are
23 going to talk about since last Saturday. So, I am sure you
24 all have seen this. This is a rainfall totals for the last 72
25 hours. These numbers, this center thing is over 10 inches.
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1 You can see Maryland got pounded and also the Bay watershed
2 got pounded too with lots and lots of rain.
3 So, this has certainly impacted what is happening on
4 the Bay. And you can notice that from the last couple of days
5 and the cool temperatures the Bay water temperatures, surface
6 water temperatures are around three to five degrees. So, that
7 is a good thing.
8 There is going to be more oxygen in deeper waters.
9 We had from like Saturday on and even -- I think through
10 Wednesday we had a small craft advisory, lots of winds going
11 on. So, those winds helped mix the waters. Drive oxygen a
12 little bit deeper ---.
13 Of course, you see all the rain up in the watershed,
14 Susquehanna is supposed to peak at Thursday at two hundred
15 thousand CFS, so we are going to have lots of cloudy water
16 coming down the river. These areas right here are -- all the
17 tributaries in Maryland and a big chunk of Potomac River
18 watershed is going to be having high flows for quite some
19 time. So, we will have reduced water clarity.
20 And ultimately when things start to clear up again,
21 going to be -- the water starts to clear up, that means lots
22 of food for algae. So, we will probably have another round of
23 algae --- coming after.
24 MR. DAMMEYER: Will that -- sorry to interrupt, will
25 that -- I image we will see as the algae goes up we will see
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1 less oxygen again.
2 MR. PARHAM: Correct.
3 MR. DAMMEYER: I mean you may even have a crash.
4 Right.
5 MR. PARHAM: Correct. And the other thing that is
6 going to happen is when, the Susquehanna which provides 50
7 percent of the flow to the Bay, and that is pumping out water,
8 that draws in dense low oxygenated saltwater through the mouth
9 of the Bay, and those do not mix very well. That fresh water
10 and that salty water. And what will happen is when the algae
11 dies, and decomposing, use up oxygen, those layers will be
12 very tight. Will probably move close to the surface and come
13 up again, especially if we have clear, you know, prolonged
14 warm conditions, which would typically be in the Summer.
15 So, we have our monitoring folks out this week
16 looking at conditions. So, I guess you can flip to the final
17 slide. So, what we do -- is this information is --- to
18 myself, I said how can we use this stuff to help the folks
19 that are out on the water. So, we put together all our
20 monitoring information and set it up in formats that you guys
21 can use to help you identify what is the depth where the
22 oxygen drops out, what is the difference in the surface
23 temperature and bottom temperature to confine the cooler
24 water. Where the flows are occurring. Where the locations in
25 the algal blooms. What are the bottom habitat locations.
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1 We put all these tools together so you can quickly
2 look through and help you zero in on your area. Like I said,
3 we have 125 monitoring stations. Some of them are, like I
4 said we monitor them every two weeks, some of them are
5 monitoring sites that are in real times. You can see
6 conditions in real time as to what is going on.
7 So, when you go to this, what we do is provide every
8 week, I will write a weekly forecast of what is coming up,
9 very similar to what you see right here. Except it will be a
10 little bit more detailed in areas, what kind of conditions you
11 are going to see. And then they will have -- allow you to go
12 to any of these locations and see the conditions where you
13 are. Yes?
14 MR. GRACIE: Will that be a click-on location and
15 then I would be able to get a very profiled temperature and
16 oxygen under that Spot?
17 MR. PARHAM: Yes. Yes.
18 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Wow.
19 MR. GRACIE: Thank you.
20 MR. PARHAM: Certainly. So, it is -- you can -- one
21 of the cool things above is you can see what -- when I talk
22 with Paul and I talk with folks in Fisheries and ask them
23 where is the fleet and where are they catching fish. You can
24 see like in the Summertime there are at that coolest water
25 than can go. And when you match it up with the monitoring
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1 data, it fits in very, very nicely.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: What is the web address for that?
3 MR. PARHAM: Just look up -- click before you pass,
4 it is under Eyes on the Bay. Just do like Google and you will
5 find it.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Okay.
7 MR. PARHAM: But is it, you know, putting together
8 tools for you guys to, you know, take advantage of, you know,
9 the monitoring programs and -- use it for more than just
10 seeing, you know, the conditions of the Bay but also to help
11 you guys catch more fish.
12 MR. GRACIE: I am embarrassed to ask, first of all I
13 did not know that was there. I am embarrassed to ask you this
14 question. How long has that been available?
15 MR. PARHAM: Since last July.
16 MR. GRACIE: Oh.
17 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Okay.
18 MR. PARHAM: It is part of the Maryland --
19 MR. GRACIE: I guess I had my head in a dark place.
20 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Well, we did have a presentation
21 here about this at the Sport Fish Advisory Committee to
22 introduce it. But a -- that was a year ago, I think.
23 MR. PARHAM: So, off line if anyone has any
24 questions, I would be glad to go through it and show you how
25 to use it in your areas.
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1 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you very much.
2 MR. PARHAM: You are welcome.
3 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Thanks, Tom.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thanks, Tom. Sir, you want to come
5 on in with the NRP report.
6 LT. NOON: Yes.
7 NRP Report & Priorities
8 by Lt. Brian Noon
9 LT. NOON: I think the stats for disseminated
10 everyone. In the second quarter fishing without a license was
11 the top citation getter. But also as many for undersized
12 Striped Bass and fishing in prohibited areas -- fishing
13 Striped Bass in prohibited areas.
14 Natural Resource Police are still surveilling and
15 saturating Matapeake, Kent Narrows and Hoopers Island area.
16 And still writing tickets there. And there are some -- and
17 that was also -- disseminated some of the bigger cases.
18 And one that struck my attention while surveilling
19 Kent Narrows, the bridge tender was fishing out the window of
20 his office and pulling in undersized Striped Bass.
21 (Laughter)
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Mack.
23 MR. WOMMACK: Yeah, I had a question for him. And
24 actually I -- can see if he can just do a little research.
25 Something that really concerned me, I was at Solomons,
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1 actually I was at Brooke Valley and I traveled down to
2 Solomons. And one of the DNR police came up on me. And --
3 make a long story short, gave me a citation for not having an
4 approved life preserver, with ---.
5 So, he told me that you have -- you can’t be on the
6 water with out. So, we packed up and we went, we got on -- he
7 wrote the ticket. We packed up, we went and we got back on
8 land and went on up. I was going to go to the Walmart and get
9 one. But I decided to keep on going.
10 I got to Prince Frederick and the phone rang. And I
11 happen to look down at the phone and it was New Jersey number.
12 And I was kind of, you know, passed it on. But I answered the
13 phone anyway. And it was the officer from Solomons that had
14 talked on the boat. And he said well, I made a mistake. I
15 need to see you. And I said well, I’m in Prince Frederick
16 right now with the boat. And he said well, can you pull on
17 the side and I’ll be up to see you.
18 And my concern is, is this, I sat there 45 minutes
19 before he showed up on the side of the road with the flashers.
20 Now, he wrote the citation or the ticket and he said well, I
21 made a mistake. And I overcharged you and I put the wrong
22 stuff down.
23 Now, my concern is that, you know, as officers I can
24 worry about -- I can deal with it because I’m on the Advisory
25 and I can understand things. But I’m really concerned when
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1 you ask people with boats to pull over on the side of the road
2 for 45 minutes while you come off the boat, get in your car,
3 and drive up to correct a ticket.
4 So, I’m just wondering what kind of training might
5 be going on.
6 LT. NOON: Well, hopefully that never happens. I
7 mean that’s the first thing, that they are issuing the right,
8 the right --
9 MR. WOMMACK: Right. Well, I’m going to give you
10 this card, maybe you can --
11 (Laughter)
12 MR. WOMMACK: Because he even gave me his card. So,
13 maybe you can tell me what is going on down there in Solomons.
14 LT. NOON: Well, that makes life easier having a
15 name.
16 MR. WOMMACK: Yeah, because I’m a little concerned
17 when you got a regular citizen sitting on the side of the road
18 for 45 minutes, while they got to wait for a ticket to be
19 corrected.
20 LT. NOON: I’ll get your name and number before we
21 leave.
22 MR. WOMMACK: Okay.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Are there any other -- and yes,
24 point of order, if you do have a question, just put your name
25 tag up so we can recognize you. Got it, Roger.
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1 MR. TRAGESER: Got it.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Got it. Thank you.
3 MR. TRAGESER: One of the -- an issue that came up
4 at our Black Bear Sub-Committee Meeting dealt with the group
5 of individuals that like to go out in the evenings boat
6 fishing. And we had video of some Large Mouth Bass that had
7 been shot with a bow. I’m trying to find out whether NRP
8 really puts their eyes on this activity much at all.
9 LT. NOON: Where was this located?
10 MR. TRAGESER: I -- probably happened in a couple of
11 different areas, but I know it is more prevalent on the
12 Potomac, probably more than anywhere else.
13 LT. NOON: I know they are shooting Snakeheads.
14 MR. TRAGESER: I mean I heard people say at night,
15 because those boats are all outfitted with lights, it is like
16 a stadium --
17 LT. NOON: Right.
18 MR. TRAGESER: -- down there and those guys are
19 going out. And not to paint a group of -- with a wide brush
20 because I didn’t make this comment -- but a lot of these guys
21 aren’t out there to fish, they are just out there to kill
22 stuff.
23 LT. NOON: Right. They can’t shoot Striped Bass --
24 I mean --
25 MR. TRAGESER: Large mouth.
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1 LT. NOON: Large mouth with a --
2 MR. TRAGESER: Right.
3 LT. NOON: Most of them, I believe, are snakehead
4 fishing.
5 MR. TRAGESER: Snakehead, I know there have been
6 tons of carp that have been fished and what not. But we had a
7 -- we had a video that showed bass -- I believe we have
8 extended an invitation to somebody from NRP to be at our next
9 October meeting.
10 LT. NOON: Okay.
11 MR. TRAGESER: So, I believe it is October the tenth
12 we have that meeting. And we are going to discuss it a little
13 bit more and I would just love someone from NRP be present for
14 that.
15 LT. NOON: Before we leave I will get some details.
16 MR. TRAGESER: All right. I appreciate it.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you, Roger. And thank you,
18 Officer.
19 This next area about fishing license sales, the
20 Commission has repeatedly demonstrated an interest. And at
21 future meetings we are going to be talking about marketing
22 plans, ideas to get -- to promote family time. But getting
23 folks out enjoying recreational fisheries.
24 So, would you like to step forward?
25 MS. KNOTTS: Sure.
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1 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
2 MS. KNOTTS: Sure.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
4 Recreational Fishing License Sales
5 by Karen Knotts
6 MS. KNOTTS: My name is Karen Knotts. And I’m with
7 the Stake Holder Outreach Service Division within Fishing and
8 Boating Services. And I know we are already running a little
9 bit late so I will do my best to run through this quickly.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: You are doing great, Karen. You
11 are doing great.
12 MS. KNOTTS: And try and get us back on schedule a
13 bit. So, you all should have in your packet a copy of this
14 license sales table. I know it is really small and it is
15 probably hard to see. So, I am not going to spend much time
16 on it other than to point out that you have it and if you --
17 (Slide)
18 MS. KNOTTS: If you look at the far right column, I
19 don’t know if you can see it, it is so small, this is license
20 sales by calendar year from 2011 to 2017. And if you look at
21 the far -- the far right column from where you sit, that is
22 the percent change from 2016 to 2017. And all the two, of the
23 19 categories you see listed there are negative percent
24 changes. So -- they decreased by some amount.
25 Now, that is just from 2016 to 2017. So, it is just
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1 one small amount of time but where we are bit concerned
2 because obviously in 2015, October 1 of 2015, is when Maryland
3 switched from calendar year license to 365 day year license.
4 So, we are watching it closely and trying to, you know,
5 understand, is there something going on here that is related
6 to the 365 day license, is it just a low period, we are not
7 sure but we are trying to keep an eye on things.
8 So, this table you have in your booklets, I also
9 want to point out that you can look on our website. And I
10 don’t know, Paul, maybe when you send out the summary we can
11 give them the link, you can get calendar year sales all the
12 way back to 2004. So, if you really want to dig into what
13 things have looked like for a long period you can do that.
14 But if we can move to the next slide, Paul.
15 (Slide)
16 MS. KNOTTS: This next slide is a graph that
17 basically is the same information, just in a graph form. All
18 19 of the categories that were on that table are not here,
19 just because it would be too busy. So, this graph goes from
20 10,000 licenses up to 120,000.
21 (Slide)
22 MS. KNOTTS: So, I kind of just picked off the top
23 license sales products so that we wouldn’t have -- we would be
24 missing a lot of the detail of the trend if I tried to cram
25 everything onto my graph.
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1 So, you have that information though and we are
2 happy to answer any questions if you have any concerns.
3 (Slide)
4 MS. KNOTTS: These are again the top ten or so
5 products in terms of numbers sold. And you can see the --
6 obviously the -- I drew a line in here, the red line, that is
7 2015, which is when we began 365 day licenses.
8 So, we have got some declining that is happening
9 from that point. Again, we don’t know what the 365, we do not
10 know what is causing it, but we are keeping an eye on that, on
11 the trends.
12 And you will be getting the Sport Fisheries -- the
13 budge report that you guys get every year, has a lot of detail
14 on license sales and trends. And we will be working -- you
15 will be getting the FY-18 budget report probably this winter.
16 So, this information is meant just to get to your
17 request about some trends and obviously there are some --
18 there are current concerns here because as Secretary Belton
19 said and you guys are aware of the percentage of funding that
20 we get from license sales is a pretty critical part of our
21 funding.
22 So, anytime that we see our highest selling license
23 products declining over a couple of years like this, it really
24 kind of makes us think and we have begun a couple of actions
25 that will be -- I can talk to you about here in a minute, but
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1 I see we have got a few cards up, so -- I don’t know which one
2 went up first. So, Dave.
3 MR. SIKORSKI: Yes, do you have a -- or could you
4 provide us a month-to-month analysis from the 365 and after?
5 I am curious if we see the same trends for when people fishing
6 licenses. And I say that because I think of my own
7 experience. Nothing changed for how I buy my fishing license
8 after that deadline -- that 365. So, I am just wondering if
9 we can see something from the day of the month point to that.
10 MS. KNOTTS: I think we can make that an action item
11 and we certainly do have it. We will just have to go in and
12 get it. And we did just lose Jonathan Manly, who was our
13 license guru. So, might take us a little bit of time. But
14 Paul is pretty proficient with the database, too. So, yes, we
15 can make that an item.
16 MR. SIKORSKI: And will we get this presentation?
17 MS. KNOTTS: Yes.
18 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Sure.
19 MS. KNOTTS: Okay.
20 MR. NEMPHOS: I am a partner in a retail store. And
21 we have licensing. And I think we get fifty cents a license.
22 And for the work. And we take the computer and -- my only
23 question is, I mean it is great to have you come in because a
24 lot of times they will buy while they are in. But the other
25 thought was, have you ever thought about multiple year
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1 licensing instead of annual?
2 MS. KNOTTS: That is one of the things we have been
3 discussing. So, it is a -- a point of discussion.
4 MR. NEMPHOS: It takes a lot of time. You have
5 people standing in line.
6 MS. KNOTTS: Yeah.
7 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: If I can interject. I do not want
8 to steal some of Karen’s thunder, but one of the things we
9 started to talk about internally and I think we may have this
10 discussion in October talking about marketing, is how do we
11 reverse this trend. Are there something that we can do. We
12 have looked at auto-renewal, you know, collecting e-mails so
13 we can e-mail folks back and get them to renew on line. You
14 know, how can we make it easier for people to do these -- to
15 get their license again. Are there other marketing things
16 that we can do.
17 MR. NEMPHOS: Do you take credit cards for license,
18 does the DNR take it --
19 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah.
20 MR. NEMPHOS: -- because we don’t.
21 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I think so, yes. Yes.
22 MS. KNOTTS: Yes.
23 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: So --
24 MR. : So, does Maryland.
25 MR. NEMPHOS: Maryland charges, too?
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1 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah. So, I think like the multi-
2 year license thing, you know, one of the tricky things is you
3 have to -- one of the things that we -- we are a small state.
4 And we use our license sales as a leverage to get Wallop
5 Breaux money from the Federal dollars, you know, from the
6 Federal taxes on fishing gear and so forth. But we’re a small
7 state.
8 One of the issues that we had earlier on was because
9 we sold the boat license we were only credited that as one
10 license even though you could take six people on the boat. It
11 took us a couple of years to do surveys to get an estimate of
12 how many were actually using that.
13 And one of the issues, I think, that has come up
14 with multi-year, we talked about lifetime licenses, is well,
15 Wallop Breaux only wants to give you credit for that one --
16 that license during that year and if you are fishing during
17 that year. So, if you buy a three-year license, are you going
18 to get credit for all three years or are you going to get
19 credit for it one time as you go through.
20 So, there are some things that have to be worked out
21 on issues like that. But, you know, those are a lot of the
22 discussions that we have started talking about internally and
23 I appreciated the Secretary’s comment about -- the individual
24 who no longer goes fishing but has been buying a fishing
25 license for ten years. I mean that’s helpful obviously for us
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1 to be able to use for a lot of our programs. So,
2 this conversation, I think, is going to continue with some of
3 that.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Karen, will you make sure that this
5 chart is distributed to the Commission?
6 MS. KNOTTS: Sure.
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Through Paul.
8 MS. KNOTTS: Yes. Absolutely.
9 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Please.
10 MS. KNOTTS: Yes.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: In no particular order, I am just
12 going to go around the room and recognizing our time, Toby,
13 you want to start?
14 MR. FREY: Just quick. Does the Bay and Coastal
15 sport registration generate money, revenue?
16 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yes, but not Wallop Breaux money.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right.
18 MR. FREY: My question is --- registration.
19 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: He is asking about the
20 registration.
21 MS. KNOTTS: Yes. That -- no, that -- that probably
22 shouldn’t be on there. It is not a license product. It’s a
23 free registration but folks that go on pleasure boats need to
24 have obviously.
25 MR. FREY: That is what I’m talking about.
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1 MS. KNOTTS: Yes.
2 MR. FREY: My question is if you look, that is
3 roughly a third today of what it was in 2011. But yet our
4 resident Bay and Coastal Sport, which is a revenue thing, is
5 up about ten percent in the same period.
6 MS. KNOTTS: Yeah, and earlier on those
7 registrations, when it first started, the Potomac River
8 Fisheries Commission wasn’t set up for the registration. So,
9 that -- the early year that -- the 2011 does include the
10 Potomac River whereas now that is not -- the Potomac River is
11 not in there, so. That big decline --
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I got you.
13 MS. KNOTTS: -- is a little bit deceptive.
14 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay.
15 MS. KNOTTS: For that one.
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Jim.
17 MR. GRACIE: A comment. I am looking at that chart
18 and I was part of a workgroup I guess we call it that started
19 a whole new marketing program for fisheries. And this was
20 after a long uninterrupted decline in license sales in
21 Maryland. And we had growth from 2011 to 2015. And 2015 was
22 the last year we had the full promotion.
23 I was concerned at the time about taking away that
24 marketing effort and I think somebody should look at this in
25 light of what has happened since then because the fisherman’s
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1 challenge included a big event at the Chesapeake Bay at the
2 Seafood Festival every year. Had two -- a couple of hundred
3 fishermen, it had a lot of interest. And it got cut out right
4 at the point that the -- the inflection point is just past the
5 year when that occurred.
6 So, that is a marketing program we had. We actually
7 showed that it was working with results. And we eliminated
8 it. So, when you have your discussions and maybe this will
9 get said in the MORE Commission, David, that is an important
10 element --
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes.
12 MR. GRACIE: And we now have data to prove it.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes.
14 MR. GRACIE: So, when that was cut out, this program
15 along with some other things that were cut, we should never
16 looked what happened as a result of that.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We are going to continue to revisit
18 this. And we very much hope that you are going to come back.
19 (Laughter)
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Val.
21 MR. LYNCH: In round numbers what are the dollars
22 associated with those declines in registrations?
23 MS. KNOTTS: I am not able to --
24 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Do you want me to take that one?
25 MS. KNOTTS: Yes. I am not able to answer that.
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1 I’m sorry. We can get that information.
2 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Just to give you an idea because
3 it is fresh on my mind, our numbers this year are a little
4 about where 2017 is. And we think that is about a million, a
5 million and a half below where we had budgeted.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Wow.
7 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: So, we were hoping to see a
8 rebound, to come back up to a little bit higher but it is --
9 that dip from 2015 to 2017 is probably -- two and a half to
10 three million dollars. In our budget.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Serious ---.
12 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yes.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: One last comment. Dave.
14 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Micah is up. I was last.
15 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Oh. I’m sorry.
16 MR. DAMMEYER: Well, I had a question, you know, is
17 there currently any ongoing dialogue between tackle shop
18 owners and say like fresh water fishing guys. We don’t have
19 like a boat license but everybody fishes on there. And like
20 I’ve got to get everybody either to a shop or on-line the
21 night before to get a license.
22 Is there any ongoing conversations with people like
23 us about how to make it easier or a little smoother, to get
24 them in and out the door of a shop or say for a fresh water
25 fishing guides, to have us become kind of a go-between -- I
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1 would be happy to go on-line a couple of days before
2 somebody’s trip and say give me your info, okay you are good,
3 you know, pay this one day fee or that kind of thing. Is
4 there anything like that going on?
5 MS. KNOTTS: I’m not aware. David, do you know?
6 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: There are similar discussions with
7 something like that. Again, internally we have kicked around
8 a lot of different ideas. In fact, just this morning we
9 talked about something similar.
10 MR. DAMMEYER: Yeah.
11 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: So, again, we will try and flush
12 through some of these and maybe come back in October with some
13 of the different ideas. But we are looking at ways to, you
14 know, take what we have, how can we improve it, how can we do
15 better outreach, how can we do better marketing, how can we
16 make it easier and more efficient so that these numbers can
17 kind of turn around a little bit.
18 MR. DAMMEYER: And I think you guys do a good job
19 because I travel. I have gone on a lot of the website, you
20 know, some of them are awful, you know, it is like you are
21 applying to like a building permit but it is fishing license.
22 Right.
23 (Laughter)
24 MR. DAMMEYER: Like D.C., Delaware, they are
25 horrible. I mean it’s like I wouldn’t buy that if I didn’t
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1 have to, you know. But, you know, come on. That is how I buy
2 I fishing license, you know, everywhere I go.
3 And so I am sure Charles will probably --- if, you
4 know, you guys want input to come have coffee and chat about
5 it. Yeah.
6 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Okay. Appreciate that.
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: On last comment, Ed.
8 MR. O’BRIEN: Yeah, two or three years ago I brought
9 up the situation relative to communicating particularly with
10 Hispanics so that they understand the rules, that they know
11 how to get the licenses and that kind of thing.
12 Fourth of July weekend I get a place down there that
13 I cast. And where they like to go to. Near ---. And it was
14 parents and about seven relations. And we just asked them,
15 you know, courteous questions, trying to get a feel for it.
16 And nobody could speak English.
17 So, do we have like so many entities do, like the
18 tax people, like brokerages, whatever, to where they have --
19 and in the medical industry, to where when we put out the
20 Rules and Regulations try to encourage people to sign up, do
21 we also have that in Spanish and -- I think we made a lot of
22 progress in all that. But still not seeing it.
23 MS. KNOTTS: We do have some. We have some signs
24 that we work with Natural Resource Police, I think a
25 Conservation Officers help us put out some big yellow signs,
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1 that are very simple. That just say, you need to have a
2 fishing license, you have to follow the rules, anybody over
3 16. Just very simple. That are posted pretty -- pretty much
4 across the State. The signs are about ten dollars apiece, so
5 we can’t put them everywhere. But we have those.
6 We also have on our website, we have a Spanish
7 language page, which we are working on. It has size limits
8 and seasons in Spanish. So, we have been working with the
9 woman who is -- we have a liaison officer now that we can work
10 with who actually is fluent in Spanish and so we have been
11 working with her to try and get as much as we can onto our
12 Spanish page. And have that as a resource.
13 So, we are doing some cursory work to try and get
14 out there and make the information available so that we can
15 talk to the folks in their own language.
16 MR. O’BRIEN: All right. You look at publications,
17 you know, that are read by the Spanish and, you know, I do not
18 know what the progress is --- on that, that certainly would be
19 helpful.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you, Karen.
21 MR. O’BRIEN: It worries me from several
22 standpoints, because I see a certain laxity when it comes to
23 safety on some of these little boats.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right.
25 MR. O’BRIEN: And a -- anyway.
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1 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
2 MS. KNOTTS: So, I had a couple more slides, if it
3 is okay, Chairman, to just -- okay. Paul, if you could.
4 So, I just wanted to run through a couple of action
5 items that were meant to -- things that we felt that we could
6 right away. In terms of reaching out to folks if the 365 is
7 the issue. And as Dave pointed out we can provide that
8 information on the monthly sales.
9 (Slide)
10 MS. KNOTTS: But starting in February of this year,
11 we started sending renewal reminders to people that just said,
12 hey, your license is due to expire this month. Would you like
13 to renew.
14 Everyone that -- whose license, recreational license
15 was expiring that month that we had an e-mail address for,
16 which by the way is a bit of a problem. We only have about 45
17 percent of the e-mail addresses. So, we are not reaching
18 everybody that buys a license. So, for those that were
19 expiring, we sent a message, then we sent it a week later so
20 that in case they missed it whatever, they would get another
21 shot at it.
22 So, next slide, Paul.
23 (Slide)
24 MS. KNOTTS: So, the reminder message, basically
25 this is what it looked like. It was just a renewal notice.
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1 It is a reminder that your license is up for renewal.
2 Some of you may have seen these or heard about these
3 going out. At the bottom there you will see the tag line,
4 “Renew Your License Today”, and then it is the on-line license
5 sale Compass portal, a link to the regional service centers if
6 you would like to go there, license agents so if you want to
7 go to Walmart, the closest one, and then the phone number.
8 So, that message, reminder message went out the
9 second Friday and then the third Friday was the reminder.
10 Next slide.
11 (Slide)
12 MS. KNOTTS: And so what we found was the open rates
13 on the messages were 40 to 50 percent which is above the
14 industry standard for messages if you look folks who sent out
15 e-mails, even the people that subscribed. It is generally 40
16 percent is pretty good. And we’re usually up closer to 50
17 percent.
18 And for those who didn’t open the first message,
19 they go the second message. So, you only got -- if you opened
20 the first one, you did not get the second one. But the folks
21 that got the second message, the open rates on that were about
22 19 percent. If you got it the second time we had a pretty
23 percentage of opening.
24 (Slide)
25 MS. KNOTTS: The Office of Communications is
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1 spearheading this effort. They are working with Fisheries.
2 They changed that message to highlight what is going on. So,
3 the little boxes -- if you could previous slide, Paul.
4 (Slide)
5 MS. KNOTTS: The boxes at the bottom here for the
6 resources, you can see there are actually a spot for four of
7 them. We got a little cut off here. But this one highlighted
8 the angler’s log and angler’s surveys. We have highlighted
9 crab, going crabbing. We have highlighted Striped Bass
10 fishing. Depending on the season, these boxes change. But
11 this message is the same to each month. Okay, next one.
12 (Slide)
13 MR. KNOTTS: So, the Office of Communications, I got
14 in touch with them this week and for the -- just as an example
15 for the May messages that went out, the message went out to
16 12,000 folks who had licenses that were expiring in May. Of
17 those 12,000, 2,000 of them took action. They went to Compass
18 and they clicked which meant they intended to do something.
19 And then of those who went to Compass 1,323 of them actually
20 made a purchase.
21 So, what that translated to in the month of May was
22 about 11 percent of the customers who received the renewal
23 messages made a purchase. So, it was a relatively easy
24 automated thing that the Office of Communications can do and
25 it got a decent return on investment.
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1 So, they are going to continue to send these
2 messages and track what the return is, what folks are doing
3 and that is something that we can report back to you guys if
4 you care to know that. Towards the end of the year we can
5 give you a little bit more information.
6 And the second part there, seven and a half percent
7 of Compass’ total sales were made by someone who came in
8 through one of those renewal messages. So, pretty good
9 turnaround on those. And then I think we have one more slide.
10 (Slide)
11 MS. KNOTTS: The second action that we took was the
12 Department submitted a grant request to Recreational Boating
13 and Fishing Foundation. They had a grant program. We
14 submitted a request to upgrade our Compass licensing systems
15 so that we could be -- have the ability to offer auto-renewal.
16 So, that you could renew your license without having to
17 remember. Some people are on different cycles, they buy their
18 title at one time, their non-tidal at another, they don’t buy
19 one in a certain year. They cannot remember. It used to be
20 January you bought your license. Now, with 365 often folks
21 don’t -- they wait until they are about to go fishing so they
22 are not on the same cycle.
23 So, what we are hoping to do is be able to offer our
24 renewal as an option for folks so that they don’t have to
25 think about is my license valid. It will always be valid. It
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1 will be auto-renew. All they have to do. Yeah, with a credit
2 card.
3 So, we got some details to work out, which we
4 discovered. We submitted the proposal and then we realized we
5 had a few details that had to be tackled before we could
6 implement. So, we had to pull the proposal but Recreational
7 Boating and Fishing Foundation is really interested in working
8 with the Department so we are continuing to foster that desire
9 that they have to work with us and the hopes -- in the
10 meantime we are going to continue to try to work throughout
11 internal issues.
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Karen, thank you very much.
13 MS. KNOTTS: Yes.
14 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I am pretty certain that if we
15 don’t have the worst on-line licensing program in the country,
16 we got to be pretty close to the worst, because what --
17 MR. : No way.
18 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Because when I go -- when I go to
19 the service center, and I ask the people what are the largest
20 portion of your percentage of your complaints, it is people
21 who are not able to navigate the Compass system. And when I
22 go on and I fish around the country and I purchase my license,
23 it is so simple.
24 It is pretty terrible and it’s pretty embarrassing.
25 And so I really appreciate everything you are trying to do to
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1 make this system better.
2 MS. KNOTTS: Thank you. And we will continue to.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
4 MS. KNOTTS: We will continue to do that.
5 (Slide)
6 MS. KNOTS: And the last -- I think the last slide
7 is just the next steps, maybe. Paul? Yes. So, we are going
8 to continue the renewal messages. And again identifying ways
9 to resolve the barriers that are in the way.
10 There is a Recreational Boating and Fishing
11 Foundation workshop this December. All states are invited.
12 They always get all 50 states. And it is a great opportunity
13 to learn what other states are doing. Some of the low-hanging
14 fruit we can pick, what we can do in Maryland and generate
15 some ideas. And with the marketing discussion that you guys
16 are going to have in October, that will be good, too.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Karen, thank you very much.
18 MS. KNOTTS: And then the last thing is the Sport
19 Fisheries Budget Report, which you will get this ---.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We are going to have you come back.
21 MS. KNOTTS: Yes.
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
23 MS. KNOTTS: Sure.
24 MR. : Will you take questions, John?
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I really prefer not to. And I
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1 would like to defer that to the next -- thank you. All right,
2 Jim. Yeah.
3 MR. GRACIE: You got about an 18 percent return on
4 that renewal message?
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes.
6 MR. GRACIE: Do you know what the break was -- but
7 you probably don’t know what the break was between the first
8 and second mailing. My question would be why don’t you try it
9 four or five times and see whether you get 25 percent because
10 it costs so little.
11 MR. KNOTTS: We could do that. The concern was, was
12 repetitive, like getting people upset because we are sending
13 them messages --
14 MR. GRACIE: No, sorting the ones that you have
15 already gotten. Sorting ones -- do not use the ---. And do
16 that more times, because that is a pretty good return. That
17 was 2,000 out of twelve. That is about a sixteen and half
18 percent return. Thank you.
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. And actually that is a
20 very good point. Thank you.
21 We are going to move on. I always hear about the
22 legendary Joe Love. Is he here?
23 (Laughter)
24 MR. LOVE: I don’t know about legendary but he is
25 here.
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1 (Laughter)
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Whenever anybody ever talks about
3 Black Bass in the State, oh, Joe Love, you need to talk to Joe
4 Love. So, at our next session we are going to -- I don’t
5 think Tony is here, is he?
6 MR. PROCHASKA: Here, John.
7 (Laughter)
8 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Hello, Tony.
9 MR. PROCHASKA: I snuck in.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Let me turn the meeting over to
11 you.
12 MR. PROCHASKA: That’s all right.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
14 MR. PROCHASKA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
15 Freshwater Fisheries
16 by Tony Prochaska
17 MR. PROCHASKA: Good afternoon. I am Tony
18 Prochaska, Director for Fresh Water Fisheries. Unfortunately
19 I missed the last two Commission meetings. I had other
20 obligations.
21 And so for the new members, essentially every month
22 we circulate what we call the Freshwater Fisheries Monthly
23 Report. And it provides an overview of what we accomplished
24 the previous month. It is really meant to inform the
25 Commissioners that serve on this body of what we are doing.
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1 And we often post that or we do post that on our
2 Freshwater Fisheries web page. And I get a lot of questions
3 and comments about our monthly reports. So, I appreciate
4 that. I would ask that Commission, if there are sections of
5 what report that they feel are valuable to the constituents
6 that you represent, please pass that information on. So, that
7 would be good to do.
8 So, a few months ago the Chairman asked me to ask
9 some of the staff at Freshwater Fisheries to present on Black
10 Bass and I believe that was a request from Roger. So, we have
11 two presentations today. The legendary Joe Love is here.
12 (Laughter)
13 MR. PROCHASKA: He wears many hats for Fishing and
14 Boating Services, but today he is going to have his tidal Bass
15 Manager’s hat on. And John Mullican will give a presentation
16 on some of the work management activities in non-tidal waters,
17 inland waters of the State.
18 So, with that we have a brief presentation and I
19 believe Joe is up first.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you, Joe.
21 Freshwater Fisheries
22 by Joseph Love and John Mullican, MD DNR
23 MR. LOVE: Thank you. Best introduction ever.
24 (Laughter)
25 MR. LOVE: So, thank you for having me up. I was
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1 given about five minutes or so to convey this bird’s eye view
2 of tidal bass fisheries management. So, I am going to do the
3 best I can in that time. And --
4 (Slide)
5 MR. LOVE: I am going to start real quickly by
6 telling you who is who in tidal bass. This is mainly a catch
7 and release fishery for the Large Mouth Bass in tidal waters.
8 Although we do have some Small Mouth Bass in some areas.
9 (Slide)
10 MR. LOVE: I have sort of characterized the anglers
11 into three groups. They have recreational anglers. They are
12 mainly shoreline anglers. Motorboat anglers and kayakers.
13 They access the Fisheries differently and they have different
14 needs and requests of us.
15 We also have several businesses that rely on this
16 Fishery. Some of them are charter boat guys. We have Black
17 Bass fishing guides throughout, not just the Potomac River but
18 throughout the Tidal waters of the Bay. We also have hundreds
19 of tournaments. Every year the vast majority of them are in
20 Tidal waters as well. And we have bait and tackle shops and
21 they range anywhere from Bass Pro Shops that kind of built a
22 whole identity around Large Mouth Bass. Right down to smaller
23 tackler shops like Earp’s Tackle Shop and Persistent Tackle in
24 Northeast Maryland. So, we got a lot of folks who kind of
25 depend on this fishery and tide water to make money.
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1 But we also have researchers, students and
2 professors across the system. The University of Maryland
3 system and other universities in the State that use Large
4 Mouth Bass as a model for North American Fishes. This is one
5 of the most well-studied species in the country and as a
6 result we have a lot of people who like to target Large Mouth
7 Bass to further their academic careers.
8 (Slide)
9 MR. LOVE: So, we care a lot about large mouth bass
10 in the State. We have a lot of people who are targeting this
11 species and this has been happening for decades within
12 Tidewater of the Chesapeake Bay. Since it was introduced in
13 the eighteen hundreds in some areas. People have been going
14 after this animal for both food and for recreation.
15 But there are some very important cultural values
16 associates with this specie. I remember being at Maryland
17 Bass Nationals President’s Meeting one day and a veteran, a
18 wounded veteran stood up and talked about how valuable this
19 fishery was for his recovery. So, there is a lot of value we
20 can’t measure regarding Large Mouth Bass with respect to the
21 culture of it within the country.
22 I mention that it is about cultural value within the
23 country because this is the most widespread, Large Mouth Bass
24 is the most widespread species of Black Bass in the country.
25 Probably arguably the most popular sport fish in the country.
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1 It did involve in North America so it is endemic to this
2 continent. We are very proud to have it in our waters.
3 Because it has evolved in North America it is also
4 in a lot of areas, a keystone species so a very ecologically
5 valuable in terms of structuring freshwater fish communities
6 and making sure that ecosystems remain healthy and do what
7 they are supposed to be doing.
8 Now only the ecological value, we also pay attention
9 to the economic value. Tournaments that depend on this
10 fishery bring in a lot of money. A simple four-day, I say a
11 simple four-day tournament, large tournament can bring in
12 anywhere between one to three million dollars. We have the
13 Bass Master Lead Series coming this week, that is a four-day
14 tournament, brought three million to Cecil County last year.
15 We will see what it does to Harford County.
16 We have a lot of small club tournaments. Hundreds
17 within the State every year. We don’t know how much money
18 they’re bringing in but over the next year we are going to try
19 and do some in-house work to determine that.
20 Last year we got the first handle that we have on
21 the economic value of recreational fishing for Black Bass in
22 the State. We identified the Upper Bay of the Potomac as the
23 two most valuable fisheries in the State. Of the 51 million
24 dollars that we estimated for freshwater fish anglers in those
25 areas, we are spending 31.5 million was spent just from Black
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1 Bass anglers. So, we are talking about a significant chunk of
2 revenue just from the Black Bass recreational fisheries as
3 well.
4 (Slide)
5 MR. LOVE: The is very important beyond just, you
6 know, having a fun activity for recreational or business. We
7 have a fishery that helps veterans. We have several
8 organizations, several tournaments like the Paralyzed Vets of
9 America that depend on this fishery for communion, for
10 fellowship among one another, for hosting these Black Bass
11 tournaments and for interacting with one another.
12 We have organized youth clubs that depend on this
13 fishery, both in the State and nationally. These are bass
14 fishing clubs in high schools, bass fishing clubs in colleges.
15 Making it to Maryland to come fishing and commune with other
16 bass fishing clubs in the country.
17 Our fishery interacts on the forefront of invasive
18 species management from everything from preventing the
19 establishment of zebra mussels and hydrilla. All the way to
20 managing Snakeheads and trying to protect our waters from
21 their impacts.
22 (Slide)
23 MR. LOVE: Our folks, our fishery also address
24 habitat enhancement issues within the Bay which transcend just
25 Black Bass and help out for forage fish within Tidal fresh
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1 waters. There is a very popular recent reef project that
2 Roger’s group helped out with in Smoots Bay. And at National
3 Harbor it is very useful and very actually very successful for
4 both grasses and forage fish.
5 (Slide)
6 MR. LOVE: We also have a sub-committee you guys
7 know, the Black Bass Advisory Sub-Committee and they are
8 addressing issues, these are just some of the current ones.
9 Roger will identify probably. That they tackle -- and these
10 issues like want and waste and user conflicts and water
11 pollution, they transcend just Black Bass. They actually
12 transcend into freshwater fisheries and perhaps all Tidal
13 fisheries within the Bay.
14 (Slide)
15 MR. LOVE: And, of course, the Black Bass fish
16 conservation ethic stated within Large Mouth Bass and bass
17 tournaments and kind of has transcended itself into fishing
18 handling care beyond those Large Mouth Bass but into other
19 species of fish like Striped Bass. So, the ethics, the way we
20 handle Large Mouth Bass to protect them has actually educated
21 a whole new class of anglers who fish for other things, other
22 than Large Mouth Bass.
23 (Slide)
24 MR. LOVE: So, we do a lot to try and protect that
25 identity in Maryland. And the way we do it, we have five
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1 basic methods. We work with hatcheries to try and protect and
2 promote some of our fisheries, to try and improve them. We
3 work with recreational anglers a lot. Get feedback from them
4 on what they are seeing, how we can do a better job to meet
5 their demands.
6 Every year we work with tournaments, both large and
7 small clubs. We permit them. We work on their release boats
8 to make sure that there is a good way -- that they are
9 handling fish properly so that we don’t end up with fish
10 kills.
11 We conduct studies every year. These studies
12 include tagging studies. We are trying to address things like
13 catch and release mortality and ways that we can improve the
14 fisheries by again, by interacting with our angling community
15 and help to promote this catch and release ethic and ensure
16 that those fish are alive when they are released.
17 (Slide)
18 MR. LOVE: And every Fall we have Fall --- surveys.
19 We diagnose the fisheries. We determine if there are any
20 problems. And we try and remedy those problems, if there are
21 any.
22 (Slide)
23 MR. LOVE: So, this is some of the status updates
24 here. Just kind of briefly tell you using emojis. In the
25 Potomac River and the Upper Bay, those are pretty good
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1 fisheries right now.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I like that.
3 (Laughter)
4 MR. LOVE: They struggled, they finished struggling
5 in the past two or three years, but --
6 (Laughter)
7 MR. LOVE: This is emojis speak now. Right. They
8 struggled the past couple of years but recruitments improved
9 in those systems and that has benefitted the overall size
10 structure within the system.
11 Such that in the Upper Bay area we have -- again the
12 Bass Master Release Series is coming this week and we are
13 hoping that they can catch some really nice size monsters up
14 there so that we can promote this fishery at the national
15 scale, not just within Maryland. We got to give people a
16 reason to come to Maryland and go Black Bass fishing.
17 Gunpowder River and Choptank River are struggling.
18 Those are habitat limited. Gunpowder River has had some fish
19 kills recently owed to some --- blooms. We are working on
20 addressing some of those issues through stopping.
21 In some areas like Pocomoke, Patuxent and Marshy
22 Hope Creek remain pretty quality fisheries. They are not huge
23 fisheries like the Upper Bay or Potomac. But their status
24 hasn’t really changed.
25 And if you guys want some more information on some
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1 of this -- on our status or if you are interested in where to
2 go fishing for Black Bass, we have a lot of information
3 available on line. And welcome -- or invite you to check out
4 the kind of --- bass program to access it.
5 That is it. Turn it over to John.
6 MR. MULLICAN: Thank you, Joe. It is hard following
7 a legend.
8 (Laughter)
9 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Do you have emojis?
10 (Laughter)
11 MR. MULLICAN: Joe did a great job laying out the
12 importance and the popularity of Black Bass in the Tidal
13 water, but that also transcends pretty much to all freshwater
14 in Maryland and really nationally. It is -- you know, black
15 because, large mouth and small mouth and -- most sort after
16 game fish.
17 (Slide)
18 MR. MULLICAN: Okay. So, what I am going to do is
19 talk about our managing Black Bass in the inland waters in
20 Maryland.
21 The Freshwater Fisheries Program is responsible for
22 managing our freshwater resources, fisheries resources, which
23 is a protection, restoration and conservation of those
24 resources. To do that we have to have scientifically valid
25 fisheries research population surveys and so on.
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1 To accomplish that we have a decentralized
2 organizational structure that consists of five regions. We
3 have the Eastern Region which is all counties east of the Bay.
4 The Western counties are separated into two separate regions
5 or districts. We have West 1, which is Garrett and Allegany,
6 West 2 which is Washington and Frederick Counties. The
7 central region which includes a lot of the metropolitan area
8 around Baltimore. And the Southern Region which extends from
9 Anne Arundel County down through St. Mary’s County.
10 (Slide)
11 MR. MULLIGAN: To managing or our monitoring efforts
12 are the basis that management actions and regulations
13 proposals are made and we have a variety. It was mentioned
14 there Maryland is like a -- the country in miniature. We have
15 a lot of different habitats from far Western Maryland to the
16 Eastern Shore. And really the only waters in Maryland that we
17 don’t have Black Bass are some of our cold water streams. And
18 even those, some of them find their way in there.
19 In auditioning for managing for Black Bass we also
20 are charged with managing other freshwater, popular freshwater
21 species, and that our management efforts and monitoring
22 designs have to take into account also getting information on
23 other species.
24 We have also become more involved with the ---
25 species research and monitoring which I will mention how that
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1 may impact Black Bass shortly.
2 (Slide)
3 MR. MULLICAN: Our monitoring efforts consist of
4 independent fisher data. This is data that is collected on
5 the resource itself. We used standardized scientifically
6 value surveys. It will determine things like relative
7 abundance, year class strength, size, distribution, relative
8 condition, growth and mortality of the fish population.
9 And then we have dependent fishery data, and this is
10 information on the users or the angler. And this is on angler
11 effort catch, harvest and that is collected through the
12 tournament permit system, the directors supply -- record back
13 with results of their tournaments. That data is meshed with
14 our independent fisheries data to help monitor transit in the
15 resource.
16 We also have an angler preference survey.
17 Occasional creel surveys and the on-line volunteer angler
18 survey.
19 (Slide)
20 MR. MULLICAN: As Joe mentioned the economic value
21 of Black Bass, large and Small Mouth Bass, this is partly
22 because there is really is no water that doesn’t have bass in
23 Maryland pretty much. So, they are available to almost
24 everyone. They are an exciting game fish. And the recent
25 angler preference survey in 2016 revealed that 70 percent of
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1 fishing trips by freshwater anglers targeted bass. And based
2 on the average expenditure per trip, that resulted in a very
3 large economic impact in almost $150 million.
4 (Slide)
5 MR. MULLICAN: To monitor the Black Bass fisheries
6 and impoundments and really our other species as well, we have
7 adopted a standardized survey based on a lot of the
8 methodologies from the American Fisheries Society, the
9 Fisheries Technique Standardization Committee, these surveys
10 are used to generate population indices and it is the basis
11 again for our regulations or management actions.
12 This standardized procedure allows us to make
13 comparisons both within Maryland and also within the eco-
14 region that we are in, the Eco-Region 8, as well as nationally
15 because the methodologies are similar and for those
16 comparisons.
17 We use in the impoundment a systematic method of
18 allocation where we have both a systematic and a random
19 component to it which insures that we don’t sample the same
20 sites each time, but we are able to sample sites that
21 incorporate all areas of the reservoir. And the number of
22 sample sites that shows is based on previous sampling data and
23 we try to have a precision of up around 15 percent for
24 relative standard areas.
25 And sometimes we have to compromise with -- and --
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1 this method allows us to get data from both Black Bass species
2 as well as some of the other king fish species without
3 stratifying.
4 (Slide)
5 MR. MULLICAN: Although we sample a large number of
6 waters, more than a hundred impoundments and major rivers, I
7 am just going to talk about a few of them here to get an idea
8 of how we go about doing that.
9 Deep Creek Lake this year is the electro-fishing
10 survey sites for Deep Creek Lake. And the seining sites.
11 Seining is used get -- to collect --- juveniles and we get an
12 index of year class strength from that.
13 The electro-fishing sites historically have been
14 fixed at 20 locations around the lake. Those sites were
15 established many, many years ago. And have been sampled
16 continuously. And we are now moving to more of a random site
17 generation for the reservoir and doing -- to increase our
18 precision we will probably increase the number of sites.
19 Some of these sites will be retained because it is
20 part of the habitat evaluation with SAV, the Parks have been
21 treating some of the evasive hydrilla and impoundment.
22 Another complicating factor for Deep Creek for those
23 who have fished it, and are well aware of the number of docks
24 around the lake, those are popular targets for anglers, but
25 they can also make it very difficult to sample the lake. So,
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1 and those are in there for a pretty lengthy part of the
2 season. So, that is one of the factors that we have to work
3 around.
4 (Slide)
5 MR. MULLICAN: Deep Creek is the largest impoundment
6 fully within Maryland at 3900 acres. It has a multi-species
7 fishery which includes both cold, Trout species, cool and warm
8 water species, so we have all --- and of course, large and
9 Small Mouth Bass. It is a popular year-round economically
10 important vacation fishery. So, in addition to the Black Bass
11 the angler preference surveys that we have done indicate that
12 the -- for instance the Walleye Fishery is targeted nearly as
13 much as the bass fishery.
14 Again to assess the bass population we use and
15 annual seining survey during the Summer to get assess --- and
16 we use to fall -- both electric-fishing surveys to assess the
17 adult population.
18 (Slide)
19 MR. MULLICAN: Just to summary kind of the long-
20 term trend data, the Small Mouth Bass population, we have seen
21 an increase in the catch rate and proportion of quality in
22 larger size small mouth in the population. And a decline in
23 the Large Mouth Bass population.
24 (Slide)
25 MR. MULLICAN: The next summary will be for
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1 Conowingo Reservoir. Conowingo is generally not as popular as
2 Deep Creek. You hear a lot more about Deep Creek. But --
3 Maryland anglers with a Maryland license have about 9000 acres
4 of the reservoir to fish. It is a great fishery for large and
5 Small Mouth Bass. Particularly for Small Mouth Bass.
6 (Slide)
7 MR. MULLICAN: Actually more than half of it is in
8 Pennsylvania, but through a cooperative agreement anglers with
9 a Maryland license can fish from the Conowingo Dam up to the
10 Hope --- Dam.
11 We have increased our presence on the Reservoir to
12 gain -- to get better fisheries data, Black Bass data for the
13 Reservoir. New sampling plan will include some June electro-
14 fishing surveys following the standard protocol to get better
15 population data on sunfish. Sunfish have been historically a
16 very popular target in the Reservoir. And back when we used
17 to have ice they were a very popular target for ice fisherman.
18
19 And then in the Fall we do our, every other year we
20 have a night survey to assess the Black Bass. We used a --
21 our random site protocol and we increased that to 30 sites.
22 And in order to get those sites done and that involved a
23 cooperative effort between our Eastern Region crews and our
24 Central Region crews.
25 (Slide)
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1 MR. MULLICAN: This is some of the latest results
2 from Conowingo Reservoir. Small Mouth Bass are more abundant
3 than large mouth. And some of the largest bass that we see
4 are small mouth rather than large mouth. It is pretty
5 atypical for most reservoirs in Maryland. There has also been
6 a significant increase in the catch rate of large small mouth.
7 And it has a very attractive size distribution with a lot of
8 fish between 13 and 18 inches.
9 (Slide)
10 MR. MULLICAN: And the last water to kind of a
11 different approach would be the non-tidal Potomac River, our
12 preference surveys for our -- fishery dependent data indicates
13 that the non-tidal Potomac is the most popular freshwater
14 fishing destination in Maryland. And that is because it
15 offers, you know, multi-species opportunities. And since it
16 forms our southern border for over 200 miles it is accessible
17 to nearly everyone on the Western Shore. So, there is a lot
18 of opportunities.
19 (Slide)
20 MR. MULLICAN: We have to use a little bit different
21 methodology for the free flowing river because the conditions
22 can be pretty unstable. And it is generally very shallow,
23 rocky profile. So, we can’t -- it is very difficult to use a
24 random site approach there because some of the access points
25 are more than 14 miles apart. And it is just not navigable
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1 for most of the time that we are doing the surveys.
2 (Slide)
3 MR. MULLICAN: So, we have established a number of
4 fixed sites that we survey annually in the fall. And well as
5 a number of fixed sites that we use the seining survey.
6 Some of the trends we have seen here, typically for
7 river systems and for bass fisheries in generally is a highly
8 variable reproduction, which you can see here are -- highest
9 year class or strongest year class occurred in 2007. But
10 since then we have not had any dominate year classes. And you
11 can see we had a couple that are right around the long-term
12 median with some very low year classes
13 (Slide)
14 MR. MULLICAN: The main cause for low year class,
15 the poor year class, for survival, of young small mouth is the
16 river flow in the springtime.
17 (Slide)
18 MR. MULLICAN: This graph here shows 2007 when we
19 had the record hatch. It shows, you know, very curly high
20 water and then a gradual decease in flow. Very stable
21 conditions. Lot of spawning opportunity for the fish. And
22 then through June, the juvenile fish had good opportunity for
23 survival and growth.
24 (Slide)
25 MR. MULLICAN: Compare that with this year, which
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1 isn’t done yet apparently, and this would be the average flow
2 for the year and you can see how this graph kind of mirrors
3 what the average flow for the year would be. And this what we
4 have this year. And this might be the first year since the
5 seining survey was initiated in 1975 that flows may not be
6 conducive to even conduct the seining survey this year.
7 But nevertheless we assume that the year class will
8 be extremely poor this year.
9 (Slide)
10 MR. MULLICAN: And this is what that looks like.
11 This is over a hundred thousand CFS on the upper Potomac and
12 the structures in the center of the river, those are old
13 bridge abutments for any old railroad trestle that are more
14 than 20 feet high.
15 (Slide)
16 MR. MULLICAN: One thing that was related to flow
17 that was kind of interesting that looking back is how climate
18 change maybe effecting the ability of and changing the
19 horologic conditions in the river and reproduction, alters in
20 water temperature can alter species ranges, community
21 composition. We have already started to see this through the
22 results of our seining survey, where Large Mouth Bass are
23 becoming more common in the lower portions of the river.
24 And also the change in the horologic regime can
25 impact fish spawning time. For instance Small Mouth Bass.
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1 (Slide)
2 MR. MULLICAN: This is the date of the maximum flow
3 in the river. And obviously it is quite variable from year to
4 year. But going back from 1895 you can see that the trend is
5 a trend for the maximum flow to move later into the year.
6 Where that now corresponds with the beginning of May. Bass in
7 the river generally start spawning and on the bed around May
8 5th to May 10th, in that time frame.
9 And then this also shows the corresponding average
10 monthly flows for May going back to 1895. And you can see
11 also that there is quite a bit of variability. But the trend,
12 the long-term trend has been for increasing flows in May.
13 So, that is something unfortunately that we are
14 contending with and this year is a perfect example of that.
15 (Slide)
16 MR. MULLICAN: Another issue that we are going to
17 have that might effect Black Bass on the river is flathead
18 catfish. In recent years their numbers have increased
19 dramatically. We are trying to get a handle now on, you know,
20 looking at their diet, their growth and how they may impact
21 the other ecology of the river and other fish species in the
22 river. So, they are another factor that we are going to have
23 to be dealing with.
24 And unfortunately years like this that impact
25 reproduction of bass don’t really impact the reproduction of
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1 flathead catfish. It actually probably provides them with
2 greater opportunities to spawn since they are cavity spawners
3 and there is more, with the higher flows there are more
4 cavities available to them.
5 (Slide)
6 MR. MULLICAN: This shows just our long-term trend
7 data for Small Mouth Bass in the Upper Potomac. Over the last
8 decade these are measures of size, distribution and their
9 catch rate. And basically you can see here that our last
10 year’s data, in spite of some of the recent poor production,
11 we are still seeing the proportion of large fish in the
12 population and the catch rate of larger bass in the population
13 is at or slight above the mean for the last decade.
14 (Slide)
15 MR. MULLICAN: And this is shown by -- this is our
16 electro-fish and catch rate for Small Mouth Bass, 14 inches or
17 greater going back to 1985. And you can see that there has
18 been improvements in that.
19 (Slide)
20 MR. MULLICAN: And last Fall we collected the
21 largest Small Mouth Bass that we collected during electro-
22 fishing surveys in the river and that was just the fish at the
23 bottom which was 22 and a half inches Small Mouth Bass.
24 (Slide)
25 MR. MULLICAN: And that is just kind of a summary of
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1 some of the waters that we sampled --
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
3 MR. MULLICAN: -- by no means all of them.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Questions.
5 MR. MULLICAN: If anybody has any questions, you can
6 --
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Roger.
8 MR. TRAGESER: We had basically, John gave us this
9 presentation at our sub-committee meeting.
10 MR. DAMMEYER: I got a quick one. On the flathead
11 catfish is there kind of -- you guys kind of mapped out a
12 range on the river where you are seeing it?
13 MR. MULLICAN: Well, yeah, basically it is from Dam
14 5, which is near Clear Spring, down through Washington County
15 is the highest abundance. They have shown up down at Edwards
16 Ferry, Light Ferry and I’m sure from those points further
17 down.
18 MR. DAMMEYER: Yeah.
19 MR. MULLICAN: That’s just population. It is still
20 in the center. And one reason for concern we do a capture
21 survey every five years on the river. And in 2011 at
22 Shepard’s Town we collected no flatheads. It was all channel
23 cats and the last time we did the survey in 2016 more than
24 half the catfish we collected were flatheads.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Wow.
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1 MR. MULLICAN: And these fish are getting big. They
2 are 30 pounds or so.
3 MR. DAMMEYER: Are you guys seeing them far down, as
4 far down as like the tide line or is it --
5 MR. MULLICAN: I would imagine they can show up
6 anywhere in there --
7 MR. DAMMEYER: -- the middle of the river.
8 MR. MULLICAN: But right now the numbers are really
9 expanding in the middle of the river. But they have been
10 reordered down, you know, further down.
11 But the difference between them and a lot of the
12 other predator species is just the size they get and the
13 abundance. And flatheads are more predatory than the other
14 catfish.
15 MR. DAMMEYER: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
16 MR. MULLICAN: It is something that we will have to
17 evaluate.
18 CHAIRMAN NEELY: John, do you see the potential that
19 the small mouth population could crash because of flatheads?
20 MR. MULLICAN: I have looked a lot in the literature
21 trying to find, you know, studies that looked at the impact of
22 flatheads on small mouth. And, you know, there is a lot in
23 the mid-west where their native range is. They, you know,
24 they do co-exist. I couldn’t find any direct impact where
25 they would cause the population to crash.
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1 It doesn’t mean they couldn’t have impacts on the
2 population and reduce numbers either, you know, they may be
3 direct predators, I’m sure they would take advantage of it.
4 But they probably would impact because they have --
5 competition for resources.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right.
7 MR. MULLICAN: A lot of the items that the bass
8 would feed on, the flatheads feed on crayfish and sunfish and
9 stuff, so there would be a competition for resources.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you very much.
11 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: One more?
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes, sir. Please. Thank you.
13 MR. GRACIE: I get mixed up on locations of dams
14 numbers. Are they above Hancock?
15 MR. MULLICAN: I have not heard any above Hancock.
16 MR. GRACIE: So, you haven’t see them there. So,
17 weren’t worry about --- yet.
18 MR. MULLICAN: Not yet.
19 MR. GRACIE: Okay. Thank you.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We have some committee reporting
21 now. And Roger, why don’t you --
22 MR. TRAGESER: Real quick.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Start with Black Bass.
24 Committee and Workshop Reporting - Black Bass
25 by Commissioner Roger Trageser
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1 MR. TRAGESER: So, we have -- we are going to go
2 down and putting up possibly helping to put a weigh station in
3 Leesylvania. Virginia is really starting to pick up the
4 pace as far as fish care for larger touring. And Leesylvania
5 had a lot of large touring. They are sort of the Virginia
6 small --- given the number of tours they run out of there.
7 But we have seen some very bad tournaments run out
8 of Leesylvania before. So, we got their attention, --- got
9 some revenue in place. We have --- Maryland have actually
10 been responsible for three of the stations that have been
11 built in Maryland. I have got drawings and everything else
12 from the last station that we built up at Dundee Creek.
13 Once we set up a date we are going to go down with
14 some of the powers that be down there, John Odenkirk from
15 Virginia Fisheries and scope that out and see about putting a
16 station in down there for them.
17 As I mentioned before the bow-fishing, we have some
18 concerns, especially after the videos that we saw, where large
19 mouth had been targeted. Whether it is intentionally or
20 unintentionally. They are not supposed to be. So, my request
21 to have an officer present in our October 10th meeting, we
22 are going to set that up.
23 We also had some discussion about creating a waste
24 law. Wildlife has it, Fisheries doesn’t. There could be some
25 complications with that if it is even possible, but -- we are
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1 going to have some discussion on that.
2 Nick Nutner is the gentleman who -- one of our
3 members who sort of heads up sort of water quality habitat
4 department. He and Joe had talked about utilizing an
5 (Applause) called “Water Report”. I haven’t had a chance to
6 go and take a look at it. But Nick wasn’t at our last meeting
7 so we are going to talk about that a little bit further. And
8 I think I actually have the creator of that (Applause). We
9 have invited that creator to come out to our October meeting.
10 And then one other last item right now, and we can
11 move on, this is was something that was hot and heavy. When
12 we first started the committee and that was haul seining in
13 shallow water areas. Now, we had people from the commercial
14 fisherman come in and talk about it. And they all seine and
15 anything much less than eight to ten feet. Well, we got
16 individuals, guys on the river all the time, Potomac and some
17 Upper Bay areas where they certainly have seen haul seining
18 activity take place in waters a lot shallow than that.
19 While we would love to not see haul seining in
20 shallow areas where there is good grass beds or whatnot occur
21 at all. Where we are particularly concerned about is early in
22 the spring when grasses are just starting to grow back up and
23 these individuals go out and swing their nets around and pull
24 them in.
25 They are going to rip anything and everything out of
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1 there. And if there are new grasses starting up, they are
2 going to come up, if there are beds that have already been
3 created and they have bass’ by catching in the nets, you know,
4 they can throw them back and whatnot, but chances that it’s
5 gone and that portion of these beds have just been gone.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Have you spoken to the Fisheries
7 biologists from DNR about this?
8 MR. TRAGESER: Well, you mean as far as the impact,
9 per se?
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: And are they concerned?
11 MR. TRAGESER: No, I think -- see, I think that is
12 where part of the probably is. I think --
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY:
14 MR. TRAGESER: -- this is an observation which is
15 pretty detrimental to the population possibly. But we haven’t
16 really done any studies on it.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right.
18 MR. TRAGESER: The concern -- the Department action
19 is negligible because haul seining is one activity that the
20 Department of Natural Resources does not have any control of.
21 That is basically done on a county-by-county basis.
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Perhaps you could follow-up.
23 MR. TRAGESER: Oh, we are.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: And then come back at a future
25 meeting with a report.
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1 MR. TRAGESER: That is on our agenda for October.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Be great.
3 MR. TRAGESER: We go in a little further than that.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
5 MR. TRAGESER: Okay. That’s it.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
7 MR. TRAGESER: Sure.
8 CHAIRMAN NEELY: You know, your sub-committee meets
9 regularly and thank you for all you do.
10 MR. TRAGESER: Oh. My pleasure, our pleasure.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Did you have a question, Steve?
12 MR. LAY: I did if you could take questions.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We will take one question.
14 MR. LAY: Just to comment, if you are looking to
15 look in haul seining there were actually films made of haul
16 seines made on the Susquehanna Flats back when it was a
17 Rockfish issue. And the haul seines did not bother the grass
18 beds.
19 MR. TRAGESER: Well, my understanding is when we saw
20 those films, those films were made in like July or August.
21 So, we had grass beds that were already well-established. And
22 that is probably the case.
23 With a well-established grass bed that is already
24 out there, as those nets go through, this concern is really
25 new established, new season grass beds where the grass is just
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1 coming up, whether or not we are -- and we have had propel
2 report where they can see where there is, you know, bits and
3 chucks of grass that has just come up.
4 It is more a real shallow -- and plus, I think they
5 were haul seining in, again eight to ten feet of water.
6 MR. LAY: No such water on the Susquehanna Flats.
7 They have to wade round their nets.
8 MR. TRAGESER: Well --
9 MR. LAY: At waist deep when they do this.
10 MR. TRAGESER: -- this is where the confusion comes
11 in because we got information from watermen that showed up at
12 one of our early sub-committee meetings telling us this, that
13 and the other. Oh, we don’t do any shallow water haul
14 seining. And we have people out there that see it happening.
15 And we are concerned about it, because obviously
16 there are things that are happening that aren’t being reported
17 to the --
18 MR. LAY: Yeah, I was part of that Susquehanna Flats
19 --
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: All right. Thank you, Rod. Thank
21 you. But please do follow-up.
22 MR. TRAGESER: Oh, we are following up.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: All right. Thank you. Dave Blazer
24 is going to take over. This just this next section on the
25 handouts.
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1 Handouts
2 by Chairman Dave Blazer
3 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah, what we have talked about
4 doing is we’ve sent all these handouts from all the
5 workgroups. We’ve tried to get the information of what
6 happens at the workgroups to you all early, because there is
7 some information in there.
8 So, what we would like to do is send you those
9 handouts. Have you read them. And if you have questions when
10 we come to the meeting, instead of kind of rehashing or
11 repeating a lot of those.
12 So, like the penalty workgroup, if there are some
13 specifics, because a lot of the things that come out of these
14 workgroups if they are specific recommendations or issues we
15 are going to bring them to you automatically. But sometimes
16 the handouts are just the discussion. We are pressed for time
17 most of the time anyway.
18 So, we felt let us just send the minutes and the
19 handouts saying what these workgroups are discussing instead
20 of taking time here until we get a proposal or something
21 specific.
22 So, for example like the penalty workgroup, the
23 oyster advisory committee, the aquiculture coordinating
24 council, you know, there are a lot of discussions going on at
25 those meetings, but there is really nothing to really report
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1 out as we go through.
2 So, the only that, you know, I really wanted to
3 report out was the Blue Crab and industry workgroup that we
4 met. You know, we presented the winter dredge survey results
5 to the workgroup, where it is basically to hold the status quo
6 on the Blue Crab fishery, for the female Blue Crab fishery.
7 We met with the workgroup. Their recommendation was to keep
8 kind of the status quo but to extend by ten days, but reduce
9 the bushel limits for a conservation equivalent process as you
10 go through.
11 That was the recommendation of the industry
12 workgroup. We are going to take that to Tidal Fish on
13 Thursday. So, we just wanted to report that out that that is
14 probably the approach we are going to take as we go forward
15 with Blue Crabs based on the winter dredge survey. That was
16 pretty much the consensus of the group.
17 And then I guess the last thing is the MORE
18 Commission. The Secretary was here, referenced that pretty
19 well. David Sutherland, one of your members is on that
20 commission. And Kelly, who is here, is one of the staffers,
21 if you have any more commissions about -- any more questions
22 about the MORE Commission.
23 So, if you guys are okay with that process, again is
24 the --
25 MR. GRACIE: Who is the staff person? Say that
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1 again. I’m sorry.
2 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I’m sorry?
3 MR. GRACIE: Who is the staff person --
4 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Kelly.
5 MR. GRACIE: Hi. I did not know who she was where
6 she was --
7 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah, I’m sorry. Well, Kelly
8 doesn’t work in fishing and boating. She works for Chesapeake
9 and Costal Services. So, in another unit within the
10 Department. And she is staffing that effort. And I think we
11 got a meeting with her to talk some of the stuff here in the
12 very near future about some of the fisheries related stuff.
13 So, again -- Kelly, just for your information,
14 Secretary Belton was here and did an introduction and talked
15 about a little bit briefly about the MORE Commission and what
16 they are doing, so he may have -- stolen some of your thunder
17 going on.
18 MS. COLLINS: I am happy to answer any questions.
19 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah, we’ll see. Anybody have any
20 questions or comments.
21 MR. GRACIE: Last name one more time, please.
22 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Chow.
23 MS. COLLINS: Mine?
24 MR. GRACIE: Yes. Spell it.
25 MS. COLLINS: Collins.
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1 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Oh.
2 MS. COLLINS: C-o-l-l-i-n-s.
3 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Okay.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Is there anybody here who serves
5 on the Oyster Advisory Commission? Has -- I am just curious,
6 has the Commission taken position on the dredging of May-O-
7 War Shoal?
8 MR. : No.
9 MR. : No.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Will they?
11 MR. : I seriously doubt it.
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Thank you. Are there any
13 other questions? Yeah, Mack.
14 MR. WOMMACK: Talk about issues, but I don’t know if
15 it is the right time to do that, you know --- right time to
16 talk about it.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Does it pertain to any one of these
18 handouts that we just --
19 MR. WOMMACK: No.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: -- went over?
21 MR. WOMMACK: Something dealing with the Lower Bay.
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay.
23 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I think that is on the next page.
24 MR. WOMMACK: Okay.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay.
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1 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: We will get there.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thanks, Mack. And Dave, do you
3 want to introduce Jim Uphoff.
4 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah, one of the initiatives that
5 is going on is looking at forage fish, not only here in
6 Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay but also on the Coast. And we
7 have asked Jim Uphoff from Fishing and Boating Services to
8 come and talk about some of the work that he and his group are
9 looking at some of the forage issues and information that we
10 have. So, Jim, if you want to --
11 Forage Fish Index
12 by Jim Uphoff, MD DNR
13 MR. UPHOFF: Yes. Okay. I’m Jim Uphoff. I’m the
14 manager of what is called the Fish Habitat and Ecosystem
15 Program. I probably -- the times I have been here before it
16 has all been kind of habitat stuff, so this is from the
17 ecosystem.
18 And essentially -- well, been working on a forage
19 indicted for Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. And it
20 is a response -- well, to the Chesapeake Bay Agreement that
21 they have actually two forage goals. One is very expansive
22 trying to do multiple predators and a whole big bunch of prey.
23 This is something a little more focused with the hope that,
24 you know, that maybe by starting small things can build rather
25 than trying to do it all at once. So, that is kind of the
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1 idea behind this. Go ahead, Paul.
2 (Slide)
3 MR. UPHOFF: And so what is -- and this is like the
4 probably ten slides overview of, you know, what was a twenty-
5 something slide presentation that started out as a sixty-
6 something slide presentation. So, we are rolling through this
7 thing. I know there will be questions. And at the end, I --
8 you know, anyway I am more than happy to further discussions
9 later, maybe just make that offer again right at the end.
10 So, the indicator approach. Well, why would you
11 pick Rockfish. They’re obviously Maryland’s State fish.
12 They’re really important to our fisheries. They are our main
13 year-round predator. They eat a wide variety of diet items.
14 And there has been concern over the years about the lack of
15 forage and their health, disease outbreaks, lesion outbreaks,
16 things like that.
17 So, the idea here is to basically assess the major
18 forage for Striped Bass and the also how well they’re doing.
19 What’s their condition, how well are they surviving.
20 So, this was actually, I don’t know, we have a
21 workshop down in Solomons, this was the question that Lynn
22 asked that was incredibly concise. It was how much forage is
23 there and is it enough. So, that is kind of what we’re trying
24 to at least lay out here is something that is hopefully
25 understandable and kind of gets things rolling as far as
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1 working on these kinds of concerns in a marine environment.
2 These are often questions that are asked of
3 freshwater management but for some reason in marine management
4 we kind of neglected it and there is a big more towards it.
5 (Slide)
6 MR. UPHOFF: So, the major forage for Rockfish based
7 on past studies are Menhaden, Spot, Bay Anchovies and Blue
8 Crab. That is by diet weight, that is about 90 percent of
9 what they eat. They eat a bunch of other things, too, and
10 some other food is important in episodes, but on average these
11 have been the things that have been identified in diet studies
12 all the way back into the nineteen thirties.
13 (Slide)
14 MR. UPHOFF: We are using existing surveys and
15 existing data as much as possible. We have to keep the cost
16 low. We did add some diet sampling from one project that does
17 fish health stuff. They are already collecting lots of fish,
18 killing them, anyway we can get the diet information from.
19 We have five indicators and we’re trying to
20 summarize it with one final score. And this isn’t etched in
21 stone. These are not the Ten Commandments. They can be
22 chanced and improved over time and is part of the reason
23 bringing them here is just to see, you know, if this meets,
24 you know, fishermen’s needs and if there isn’t maybe something
25 else that we can add to it. Go ahead, next one.
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1 (Slide)
2 MR. UPHOFF: So, the first thing and I’m going to go
3 through each of the indicators and then the score and a little
4 bit of other stuff. But this is the first indicator is the
5 condition of Striped Bass. I have a colleague and he is also
6 a good friend of mine, who did his Ph.D. work at the
7 University of Maryland. He did a lot of diet. Challenging
8 Striped Bass that had micobateriosis with -- by feeding them
9 and not feeding them.
10 So, he ended up with this really good data set and
11 did this really thorough analysis of condition indicators.
12 Typically in our business we just take the weight of the fish
13 and divide it by the length. And for Striped Bass that is
14 actually pretty insensitive. When they start the -- basically
15 the way you have healthy fish is they accumulate body fat.
16 And when Striped Bass use up their body fat they replace it on
17 a one-to-one basis with water. So, they don’t necessarily
18 lose enough, that much weight, but their condition might be
19 really poor.
20 So, essentially we are looking a period here of
21 forage conditions where on average -- where almost 70 percent
22 of these fish had no body fat. So, body fat, having no body
23 fat means you are vulnerable to starve. Doesn’t mean you will
24 starve. But you are at that last stage before you start
25 absorbing your proteins and things like that, that are not
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1 good.
2 The target condition is down here at about 30
3 percent. It is based on some observations from 1990. And
4 what you are seeing basically is that these fish, for the body
5 fat times here, is 1998 on, started out in very poor
6 condition, gradually improved, had some years interspersed in
7 here where they had been in good condition. And they have
8 sort of have been -- really what has happened is it has gone
9 from poor to just kind of bouncing around up and down in these
10 being, you know, going from poor to good condition and in
11 between. Next slide.
12 (Slide)
13 MR. UPHOFF: Okay, Rockfish abundance. These are
14 resident fish. These are the fish that after bit females
15 spawn and migrate up the coast, these are the fish that stay
16 in the Bay. They are primarily males and there are some
17 immature females in this. We actually don’t have surveys that
18 collect these adult fish. But the recreational fishing
19 records -- survey that is done actually can give us a pretty
20 good indicator of the relevant trends.
21 This is -- used in a lot of different stock
22 assessments. So it is just a borrowed technique from the
23 Striped Bass assessment, wheat fish, blue fish and so on.
24 And so in the moratorium years, in the over fishing
25 and in the recovery, catches were very low. Dominant year
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1 class occurred in 1993, recruited into the fisheries in that
2 this is not just harvest, these are harvested and released
3 fish. So, we talking fish basically that are two to five
4 years old in this pod of fish.
5 Went through a prolonged period of high abundance, a
6 drop and now we were back with two dominant year classes into
7 a period of high abundance again.
8 And the best, the fish are in their best condition
9 unfortunately when there aren’t many of them and when there is
10 a bunch of them, they are in poor condition. Next slide.
11 (Slide)
12 MR. UPHOFF: These are our foraging indices. We
13 have -- Maryland is blessed with some very long-term seining
14 records. And we also have some troll surveys. So, we have
15 seine indices for Atlantic Menhaden, the Anchovy, the Spot.
16 And we have a trawl surveys that do a good job with Anchovies
17 and Spot. And we have the Blue Crab dredge survey. And these
18 are the small crabs. Certainly times of the year Striped
19 Bass, a lot of those. They will eat bigger crabs. But they
20 have to be -- basically have to be soft crabs or paper-shells
21 for them to eat them.
22 Anyhow, the scale here is a one on this scale means
23 it’s average for 1989 to 2017. So, all these things are now
24 on the same relative scale. So, Menhaden this year would have
25 been about 15 times higher than they would be on average
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1 during 1989 to 2017. As an example.
2 So, high forage period somewhere in the mid-
3 nineties, it downshifted into low forage with occasional
4 bursts of good years of forage. Next slide.
5 (Slide)
6 MR. UPHOFF: There is more to successful feeding of
7 predators than just the abundance of prey. There is this --
8 if you have enough predators and a lower amount of prey, the
9 predators actually get in each other’s way. It is kind of
10 like having a boat that can handle about two people and you’ve
11 got five onboard and they are all trying to fish at once.
12 Doesn’t work out real well.
13 And so they are all competing for this limited
14 amount of prey, getting in each other’s way and so on. So,
15 this ratio then of the forage index to the Striped Bass index
16 I showed you previously, gives you some idea of the relative
17 availability of prey that is relative to the amount of Striped
18 Bass around here. It is a little different picture than what
19 you see.
20 And this is during the period where we have our
21 condition index. And yes, there are targets and limits, but
22 two more lines on this thing just would make it impossible.
23 But this is essentially, some of the years where conditions
24 were particularly good would have been 2005, this is 2008,
25 2011.
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1 And particularly for Spot they bounced up and down,
2 but there is a period here where it is a little more abundance
3 in --- but this is pretty much all during this low forage
4 period. And then Striped Bass ---. Next slide.
5 (Slide)
6 MR. UPHOFF: Use the fish themselves as an indicator
7 of how much forage is out there. So, we get samples in the
8 fall. Fall is a pretty good time to sample for Striped Bass
9 for prey, because prey are well mixed. They are now out in
10 the water column, leaving the rivers, they are being fed on --
11 their mixed up from top to bottom and then the Strippers are
12 coming in there feeding on them. So, it is a very well mixed
13 system as opposed to -- it might have been in the Summer,
14 Striped Bass are just hunkered down, they are not really
15 feeding a lot. You are seeing prey on top but you won’t find
16 it necessarily in their guts.
17 So, what we are looking at here is simply the
18 percentage of the fish that are 18 inches and smaller, that
19 don’t have prey -- yeah, that don’t have prey in their guts.
20 This allows us to go back to a study that was done
21 by Ed Hollis in the thirties. One of the first diet --
22 probably the first published diet study in the Chesapeake Bay.
23 Some work that was, Jennifer Griffin did on DNR collections
24 from the fifties. This was a Ph.D. candidate. Somebody I
25 knew, good guy, Anthony Overton. He did a big study in the
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1 nineties.
2 And this is when the condition was the poorest. So,
3 this, at about this point --- percent of the Striped Bass in
4 this study didn’t have food. We kind of used that as an idea
5 of, well, this is the point that you do not want to really
6 necessarily want to go beyond.
7 And so from the period where we have some diet data,
8 you are basically looking at quite a few years -- or several
9 years where you had these kind of really poor feeding
10 condition. You have also have some years where the body fat
11 index, the body fat target was met, body fat was good. So, we
12 have some idea that in the 20 or 30 percent of empty stomach
13 range, they have been feeding pretty well, at fifty-
14 something percent empty stomachs they hadn’t been feeding that
15 well. Next slide.
16 (Slide)
17 MR. UPHOFF: And finally, this is just something
18 that is trying to get some indication of the relative survival
19 of fish before they harvest -- before harvest gets at them.
20 So it is a little easier to interpret.
21 And we have a -- the Striped Bass people have a kill
22 net survey in the spring. Age three males are very common in
23 this. It is a good index for their relative abundance. If
24 you take that and divide it by the juvenile index three years
25 earlier, you get some idea of the relative survival. The
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1 faction of fish that are surviving.
2 So, in this period here, which is our target period,
3 the relative survival is much higher than it is down here
4 where we have poor feeding conditions and -- well, lower
5 survival. So, we have some idea, your good survival here,
6 poor survival here and since then it has been bouncing up and
7 down. And these are fish that could be catch and release
8 mortality but it doesn’t seem likely that it is bouncing
9 around that much.
10 So, that is the world wind tour of that. Next
11 slide.
12 (Slide)
13 MR. UPHOFF: So, what we are doing now is you take
14 those indices, basically you assign them a rank, where one is
15 really low indicating your worst conditions, five is really
16 high, it’s you best conditions. You kind of take the -- so,
17 you have the various indices and you have the average. This
18 gives you some idea of what a summary of -- again, your worst
19 feeding conditions, your best feeding conditions and what is
20 in between.
21 And then you could look at these, which you can’t do
22 because I’m rushing through this thing, to get some idea,
23 well, what indicator is doing what. They were generally low
24 in this period and they have been much more variable in there.
25 But essentially when Striped Bass were high, their
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1 scores were very abundant, forage being low, scores were low,
2 it got better as the -- and then it got worst, again. Next
3 slide.
4 (Slide)
5 MR. UPHOFF: So, the issues with the indicator,
6 basically you can always find somebody to criticize your
7 sampling. So, this is somewhat opportunistic and it is based
8 on that hook and line sampling, et cetera. But many diet
9 studies are just, you know, built that way and this is what we
10 are going to be able to do for the money. It is a lot more
11 expensive to do it otherwise.
12 We have low forage contrasts, that is the Rockfish
13 are bouncing up and down lot more than the forage. So, we
14 don’t really know if it was possible to shift back into this
15 high forage regime, what this thing might look like.
16 There is a mix of responses of the indicators and it
17 is ecological stuff. It is complicated. You can’t see it.
18 It is not all occurring at the same pace. Some things might
19 take two years to show up. Other things might show up in a
20 year. Sometimes the responses are very immediate and abrupt
21 and not just linear like you would like. So, it gets pretty
22 complicated. Some of the indicators are going to be
23 contradictory, just because of this mix.
24 The Fall diet that we are using is going to miss
25 some of the other feeding that could be important,
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1 particularly things like feeding -- there are years where
2 polycletes in particular are very abundant and that gives
3 those fish a boost in the spring that carries over into the
4 fall. Their condition will actually be better than might be
5 indicated by foraging indices.
6 And forage availability does not necessarily mean
7 the same thing as forage abundance. For one thing fish
8 actually -- well, they learn. They are not robots. They
9 figure things out a little bit. If it is successful then they
10 are going to repeat it. If it is not successful they are
11 going to die. So, it is an evolutionary thing that basically
12 makes them more flexible, more efficient than just being
13 indicated by the abundance of a prey alone.
14 And for the smaller fish the six of Spot and
15 Menhaden, can be a big issue. If they are too big they can’t
16 feed on them. If they’re small they actually do very well.
17 This is something that happened with the 2011 year class. In
18 2014 it should have been a lot worse than it was, but there
19 were in particular both Menhaden -- well, Menhaden were small
20 enough that they could handle and were at least where these
21 samples were drawn from they did very well.
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Jim, please leave time for
23 questions. Because I --
24 MR. UPHOFF: I am but if I don’t speed through this
25 then you won’t get any --
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1 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah, but I know there are going to
2 be a lot of questions.
3 MR. UPHOFF: Okay. Next slide. I think this is the
4 last one.
5 (Slide)
6 MR. UPHOFF: And these are management costs. They
7 were not policy statements or anything but if you are going
8 into this world of now broadening your management beyond
9 regulating fishermen and their harvest, you start to think
10 about some of these things.
11 Our major prey are basically stuck at low levels on
12 the relative basis. They are not -- they are not high. They
13 have been that way for over two decades. The high Rockfish
14 population is a real popular idea but it may not be the best
15 thing for an ecological balance or forage balance in the
16 Chesapeake Bay.
17 Managing for abundant forage is going to be
18 difficult because basically the spawning stock doesn’t have a
19 lot of influence on how well they do. It is a lot of -- it’s
20 environmentally driven. Could be also water quality, et
21 cetera.
22 The harvest, the one option would be to harvest more
23 and smaller Striped Bass. But you got to get that through and
24 that is not an easy sell in any of the traditional management
25 arenas. But that may not entirely balance the prey either.
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1 There is not a one size fits all solution to all this. It is
2 possible that the worst conditions may be avoidable. But the
3 best are going to be hard to, you know, the best conditions
4 are going -- for the fish are going to be really hard to ---.
5 Suggestion both from what I showed you with that
6 relative survival and also tagging experiments that have been
7 done on adult fish. The natural mortality is increased. If
8 that is the case then these expected outcomes for Rockfish,
9 from low fishing mortality may not be realized because it
10 would be offset by natural mortality. And the next slide.
11 (Slide)
12 MR. UPHOFF: Obviously I am not going to be able to
13 handle every question or anything. I am available. I make
14 myself, call, e-mail, I will come talk to your group. I can
15 do a seminar. Bar Mitzvah or --
16 (Laughter)
17 MR. UPHOFF: Whatever you need, you know, if think
18 this is entertaining. There is a longer version on the
19 Chesapeake Bay website. I don’t know how the hell you are
20 going to write this down. I gave this to the --- kind of --
21 that is why Dave said okay. You only get ten slides.
22 (Laughter)
23 MR. UPHOFF: And so, questions.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Questions.
25 MR. UPHOFF: Comments.
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1 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
2 MR. LANGLEY: I have a question. Jim, based on the
3 presentation earlier that we saw with this oxygen, water
4 temperature and whatnot, these fish seem to be getting pushed
5 and concentrated areas --
6 MR. UPHOFF: Okay.
7 MR. LANGLEY: -- in the Summertime. How is that
8 effecting the forage fish or are the forage fish necessarily
9 being pushed in the same areas as the Striped Bass and if --
10 MR. UPHOFF: I can’t tell you that from this. We
11 would have to have diet samples. But generally in the Summer
12 from the diet samples I’m familiar with, I work with a fellow
13 named Jim Price for years -- he on his own initiative
14 collected something like 20 something thousand Striped Bass’
15 stomachs including sampling of charter boat catches off of
16 Tollman and so on.
17 So, the Summertime these fish are basically are
18 almost shut down, as far as feeding. They don’t really get a
19 lot of food. It maybe because it is not available because
20 again the forage is one place, you know -- on an evolution
21 thing it is not a good idea to grow up around where all your
22 predators are. So, they kind of try to keep separate.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: That makes sense.
24 MR. UPHOFF: But you also -- you know, things that
25 used to be real abundant like Spot, that they would feed on
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1 all Summer, aren’t nearly as abundant.
2 In fresh water reservoirs Striped Bass can do very
3 well in poor water quality if they have a lot of food.
4 Reservoirs are pretty cool because they are like big
5 experiments. And there have been some, you know, work that
6 was done on that particularly in North Carolina where the warm
7 water temperatures and oxygen conditions and things like that
8 weren’t near as bothersome if they were like chock-a-block,
9 you know, whole bunch of Gizzard Shad, Thread Fin Shad,
10 Herring and stuff like that that they could feed on.
11 So, there may be a reinforcing component of this
12 that if the forage is not particularly abundant, you know,
13 they are going to seek out a place and just wait, try and wait
14 it out. And then when the Fall when the forage starts coming
15 out of the rivers or the Menhaden in particular, you know,
16 they will take advantage of it.
17 A lot of these -- some of the fish move out --
18 smaller ones move out in the Bay and feed on Anchovies all
19 Summer.
20 MR. LANGLEY: And if I can explain, the reason for
21 this question is, I know we enacted the regulation with circle
22 hooks and from personal experience circle hooks got hooked
23 less fish -- I am speaking personally -- from what I have
24 done. So, it certainly is a move in the right direction.
25 But I’m hearing still rumors of fish and mortality
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1 being high and whether it could be because of these fish are
2 really hungry and aggressively feeding and maybe chumming or
3 techniques they’re engulfing the baits in competition for food
4 more. I am just kind of --
5 MR. UPHOFF: No. I understand. And I think -- I
6 was involved in the chumming study that was in the --- did,
7 helped him out on that some and I analyzed a lot of the data.
8 The deep hooking is one aspect of what is going on.
9 June is just a really, and July are kind of crummy
10 months for catch and release. Some of it might be because of
11 the difference between air temperature, water temperature.
12 You are taking a cold-blooded animal out of that water and
13 suddenly you are hitting him with a 90 degree air temperature.
14 They can’t regulate that and it just -- does them in.
15 One of the things I wished we really had done is pad
16 some indication of condition. We just didn’t think about it
17 then. You have to think about that these males in particular
18 have just exhausted enormous amount of energy spawning. They
19 come down, now they are, you know, they are looking to feed.
20 Some years they may do okay, get a bunch of May Worms or
21 sometimes -- I have seen them now feed with --- Rays, they
22 have like bellies full of clams. Maybe eat some White Perch.
23 But if that doesn’t happen they are already in a -- so, you
24 know, you got nutritional stress, temperature stress, oxygen
25 stress. Stress.
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1 And it is not necessarily the best combination for
2 catch and release, but you have what you have.
3 MR. LANGLEY: Thank you.
4 MR. UPHOFF: Yes.
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Captain Ed.
6 MR. O’BRIEN: Yeah, this a very good presentation
7 I’ve got a half dozen questions I would like to get into in
8 some detail.
9 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
10 MR. O’BRIEN: But I know we can’t do that tonight.
11 I won’t try to open it up to that. If you tell me you think
12 you can get him back on the agenda as we proceed through this
13 Striped Bass season, because we got a lot of questions coming
14 out of ASMFC people and they are genuine, they are really
15 interested, this hook and line fishery, has really brought us
16 to the forefront of curiosity. What we are doing here now.
17 And it has really opened some doors about how
18 interested Maryland is in conservation. And you have really
19 got a lot there.
20 MR. UPHOFF: Like I said, if you guys need me to go
21 someplace and talk at some other time, rather than just this
22 forum, I can --
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Well, I’m curious. With Captain
24 Phil and Captain Ed, did you feel like his numbers on forage
25 fish on the stock assessment, does that jive with what you are
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1 seeing, with what you are observing?
2 MR. LANGLEY: --- one of my ---.
3 MR. O’BRIEN: I think it does in many ways. But
4 there are a lot of questions that come from it, you know. We
5 keep talking about reference points.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
7 MR. O’BRIEN: And we were shot down at ASMFC in a
8 previous administration, simply because we didn’t have
9 reference points really defined. And they really didn’t think
10 at the time they really wanted to handle that. So, that is
11 something right now, you know, as in the last meeting, they
12 were starting to ask some questions that were sort of -- from
13 a couple of people, not a whole bunch because there was a
14 gathering of respect around how we’re handling this.
15 And so what I said is, hey, you all turned us down
16 when we were going to get into reference points. It seems
17 like reference points in the discussion that we are having
18 here --
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right.
20 MR. O’BRIEN: -- have disappeared. And now we’re
21 talking about other things. Would you agree with that, Phil?
22 MR. LANGLEY: Well, I think I mean Chesapeake Bay
23 reference points for to manage our ecosystem as in the Bay or
24 important enough, I think that is the direction that we
25 certainly want to give. But I don’t know how that is all
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1 going to play out in the next dock assessment.
2 MR. O’BRIEN: Some of those reference points though
3 are so key as he said, the male/female ratio and when these
4 fish leave the Bay, it is not the same very year, but they’re
5 two reference points that don’t seem to get into the dialogue.
6 MR. UPHOFF: What kind of is happening I gave -- a
7 few years ago I gave something similar to this. I’m on what
8 is known as the -- I guess we are the ecological reference
9 point group, trying to come up with essentially forage
10 reference points for many.
11 We had a whole slew of candidates approaches,
12 anything from simple indicators all the way up to ---. And
13 the composition of the group basically, they favored the
14 modeling approach. They felt like if they had something like
15 this well -- we can’t get reference points from that. Which I
16 didn’t --- Alexi and I actually -- we vigorously disagreed and
17 we lost. And I haven’t seen Alexi that upset. Usually he is
18 pretty good. We actually went out and had lunch by ourselves
19 ---.
20 (Laughter)
21 MR. UPHOFF: And that is real unusual for him
22 because he is a very congenial guy. So, there is -- but on
23 the other hand I think I made the point in doing that, there
24 may be regional aspects to forge fish management that don’t
25 show up in a coastal assessment.
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1 In other words, you could have a problem here but if
2 you average it out along the coast, it doesn’t show up. And
3 so I think some of the people sort of, you know, got it and
4 that’s kind of the point behind this, is to have something
5 that you can say, okay, yeah, this might work pretty good here
6 buy, you know, we are -- we have a particular problem that may
7 not be well addressed by the comprehensive strategy that you
8 are trying to promote.
9 And, you know, the underlying causes and stuff of
10 this are not real straight forward. You know, we obviously
11 have undergone lots of ecological changes due to nutrients
12 and, you know, there is temperature, there is also some
13 climate variables and fishing and so on.
14 But at the same time okay, we do need to show that,
15 we got a problem, here are at least some things we do need to
16 think about and have a broader discussion than -- I don’t
17 think you solve all your problems by cutting back on ---.
18 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Jim.
19 MR. UPHOFF: I know you don’t.
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Jim?
21 MR. UPHOFF: Yeah.
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Your work is so fundamental to
23 recreational fishing and when will your next set of figures,
24 your surveys, be available?
25 MR. UPHOFF: Well, the stuff through 2017 we are
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1 getting our annual report done here hopefully in the next few
2 weeks. And for 2018 I got to wait until 2018 is over, because
3 --
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: The point is when should we bring
5 you back?
6 MR. UPHOFF: Well -- if you are really bored --
7 (Laughter)
8 MR. UPHOFF: Every quarter.
9 (Laughter)
10 MR. UPHOFF: I’m happy to come -- it probably -- I
11 can generally put these things together -- or most of them --
12 we usually have most of the information available by the end
13 of November. It is not hard to put some of these things
14 together. You know, this isn’t a lookout ahead, this is a
15 look --
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: All right.
17 MR. UPHOFF: -- a look behind. So, I can’t do any
18 better than 2017 right now.
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right. Okay.
20 MR. UPHOFF: If you are interested --
21 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We will talk. Paul, Dave and I --
22 MR. UPHOFF: -- that is a good sign for me --
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah. Thank you
24 MR. UPHOFF: -- and, you know, and a -- yeah, I’m
25 sure --
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1 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: And if I can, Jim, and correct me
2 if I’m wrong, is just to kind of wrap this up, is, you know --
3 this is kind of at the forefront of the new frontier, if you
4 will, of we’ve talked about ecosystem based management, we’ve
5 talked about forage fish impacts and finally, Jim and his
6 team, started to put data to the real issue.
7 Is it conclusive, is it, you know, absolute? Maybe
8 not yet. But it’s a good direction that we’re going and that
9 is why we wanted Jim to come and give this presentation today.
10 This is part of the Bay Agreement. This is ASMFC and the Mid-
11 Atlantic Council, they are all looking at these things.
12 And as Jim has described, you know, he is on the
13 ASMFC, you know, ecosystem based management. So, this -- this
14 effort that Jim and his group are taking is really kind of,
15 you know, pushing and at the forefront of looking and putting
16 data to the actual issues.
17 I know when I was here 20 years ago, we talked about
18 all this stuff --
19 MR. UPHOFF: We’ve been talking about this for far
20 too long.
21 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Right. But now we actually, you
22 know, Jim has been able to take data and put graphs and try to
23 put some of that stuff together. So, you know, there is going
24 to be a lot more on this. This is kind of at the forefront of
25 some of the Fisheries management stuff we’re going to be
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1 focused on over the next several months.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you very much.
3 MR. UPHOFF: Whoever in 20 years hopefully won’t be
4 still doing this.
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you.
6 MR. UPHOFF: There actually will be some management
7 involved.
8 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. Commissioners,
9 Commissioners, one minute break. Everybody just stand up, do
10 a stretch.
11 (Break)
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Commissioners, this meeting is
13 hereby reconvened, and Sarah Widman is going to come on up
14 with her quarterly report.
15 Policy Program
16 by Sarah Widman
17 MS. WIDMAN: Hello. I am going to be fast because
18 we don’t have too much to go over tonight. So, you have a few
19 handouts for us or from us.
20 (Slide)
21 MS. WIDMAN: One that is up there, oh, switching
22 around. It is ---, so we will do that first.
23 MR. : Okay.
24 MS. WIDMAN: A lot of it is housekeeping. I am
25 going to try to go through this quickly because it this is the
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1 most substance that I have for you tonight.
2 So, this is Black Drum, this is the discussion, I
3 think that I want to say that Mike may have brought it up
4 before, it has been discussed at ASMFC. So, again, we wanting
5 to reopen the historical --- with Black Drum Fishery, which
6 in the Bay at levels that match up with this up, South
7 Atlantic States. So, we are looking for feedback on that.
8 MR. : --- outside.
9 MS. WIDMAN: I can speak up, too.
10 MR. : I have a comment on the Black Drum
11 thing.
12 MS. WIDMAN: Sure.
13 MR. : Can you put that back up? So, this
14 language we are looking at is what?
15 MS. WIDMAN: So, we are just looking to get feedback
16 on the reopening of the commercial Black Drum Fishery at
17 levels that would be in alignment with the South Atlantic
18 States. So, I think in here, that we were requesting to
19 reopen it at a 20 inch minimum and a limit at about 10 fish
20 per vessel per day.
21 MR. : And what is the time line on this
22 when you are ---
23 MS. WIDMAN: So, these ideas we are bringing today
24 to get any feedback you might have immediately on them. We
25 will take that feedback and these concepts and internally and
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1 to decide if we want to pursue them, come back to the drawing
2 board on some other ideas and then we would go out to public
3 comment for two weeks if we decided to move it forward to see
4 what everyone thinks.
5 MR. : Thank you. I got confused because of
6 the ASMFC comment period that was ---.
7 MS. WIDMAN: Oh, yeah. Nothing -- until we get
8 comment from the public we wouldn’t make any decisions.
9 MR. : And just to be clear, there are two
10 separate processes. There is the ASMFC that we had to get
11 before we could start our process.
12 MR. : Right.
13 MS. WIDMAN: Right.
14 MR. : So, now we are starting our process.
15 And looking for recommendations. The ASMFC limits were kind
16 of a not to exceed, if you will, and that is what those 20
17 inch and the -- so forth. So, that is what ASMFC has approved
18 as kind of where we can go to.
19 MS. WIDMAN: Anything else on that one? Okay.
20 MR. : Well, wait. I think Jim Gracie --
21 MS. WIDMAN: Oh.
22 MR. GRACIE: Yeah, I just have a question. Maybe I
23 missed it and you said before. Do we have any way of
24 measuring the health of --- in Maryland so that we are
25 actually managing --- on something other than ASMFC maximum
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1 limits? It is a migratory field, I mean it is not there all
2 year.
3 MS. WIDMAN: So, Black Drum is a costal stock. It
4 is managed by the ASMFC. This was put -- we put this forward
5 to the ASMFC because we are the only state among the South
6 Atlantic States, that is managed from New Jersey south, that
7 has a complete commercial large ---. We are the only ones.
8 So, this proposal was put in place to -- and
9 basically the reason that happened was because we had closed
10 the fishery with the intent that it would be -- well, we
11 closed it when we started --- study. The ASMFC took it on and
12 froze everybody where they are. So, we got frozen in the
13 moratorium.
14 So, to your question there is no specific state
15 management. It is managed according to Coastal reference
16 points, the like Striped Bass, like all the other ---.
17 MR. GRACIE: Thank you.
18 (Slide)
19 MS. WIDMAN: Okay. Anything else on Black Drum?
20 All right. The next few I will go through quick because they
21 are housekeeping.
22 (Slide)
23 MD. WIDMAN: So, there was a Bill clarifying
24 commercial licenses related to oyster divers and attendance.
25 And we just want to make sure that language is clarified in
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1 regulations, to match the Statute that was passed.
2 Also, there was a Statute that passed increasing the
3 oyster recycling tax credit. So, we did some housekeeping,
4 fix up our regs to what passed there.
5 (Slide)
6 MS. WIDMAN: The next one was one that I will
7 probably talk more with the tidal fish about. There was a lot
8 of discussion on it. But essentially we had these equo ---
9 enterprise zones that really weren’t being used because we
10 kind of, things changed as we went through the aquiculture
11 process and kind of started that whole industry going a few
12 years ago. And so they were just kind of sitting there as
13 areas that weren’t very useful. And so we had some
14 discussions.
15 So, basically I think the concept that would be
16 scooped is to take the natural oyster bar areas and those -
17 -- and return those to the public shellfish fishery, the
18 commercial fishery. And then the areas outside would just be
19 undone from the AEZ and be open areas so that clammers could
20 be in there where they used to be.
21 (Slide)
22 MS. WIDMAN: Sheepshead, this -- was something that
23 the anglers had expressed concerns about the depletion of
24 Sheepshead in State waters. So, considering that we wanted to
25 scope of the idea of changing the creel limit for Sheepshead.
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1 So, right now they are grouped with a whole bunch of
2 other species in the Snapper/Grouper complex, which means you
3 cannot keep more than 20 of them a day or combo of 20 of those
4 species. So, technically someone could keep 20 Sheepshead per
5 day. So, we were thinking of throwing out some options for
6 folks to consider and give us feedback on, they are listed
7 there.
8 So, one would be four fish per day per person.
9 Which makes it consistent with Virginia. One of them would be
10 two fish per person per day, and that is recommended by some
11 anglers that have weighed in already.
12 Third one would be ten fish per person per day.
13 That is similar to some of the southern states, or we could
14 just not make any changes. So, those were ones we wanted to
15 go out and some public comment on, for people thought we
16 should go ---. Just comments on that one.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I am just curious from Scott and
18 Beverly, any thoughts about Snakeheads?
19 MR. LENOX: I’m actually the one that brought this
20 up a couple of meetings back.
21 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
22 MR. LENOX: And before I brought it to the
23 Commissioner’s attention. We didn’t even know that it was
24 supposed to be managed by the State. So, this is a real move
25 in the right direction because -- we know it is a southern
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1 fish. We are starting to see it pretty prevalent in Ocean
2 City in the Summer months and even earlier now. We saw some
3 in June this year.
4 So, what we want -- what our anglers want to have
5 happen is have it not become a problem where people can’t come
6 down because there might just be one wave of fish that comes
7 earlier in the season, we don’t know enough about it. But we
8 don’t want that wave to be completely depleted by anglers that
9 know what they’re doing. We want it to be available for other
10 people that come down basically. So, this is a real move in
11 the right direction.
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Anything.
13 MS. FLEMING: I agree with Scott.
14 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah, okay. Thank you.
15 MS. FLEMING: It is a nice Fall fishery off the
16 rocks.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right.
18 MS. WIDMAN: The next one --
19 MR. GRACIE: John, you going to give any of us the
20 chance to ask questions?
21 CHAIRMAN NEELY: I’m sorry.
22 (Laughter)
23 MR. GRACIE: I guess, I don’t know -- I mean I look
24 at three options here, I don’t know that anyone has any basis
25 for me to make a decision, except maybe be consistent with
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1 Virginia. Are there reasons behind these or is there some
2 information that we should have before we -- I mean you are
3 asking for recommendations. I wouldn’t know what to base it
4 on.
5 MS. WIDMAN: So, I think that the first
6 recommendation obviously being consistent with Virginia is
7 something we see a lot in our State just because of the
8 proximity. The second one came from the community itself, the
9 third one would align us with some of the other management in
10 similar states along the coast. And then obviously we could
11 just go with no change, so that --
12 I mean obviously, when we go out for feedback on
13 things like that we throw out options were we are completely
14 open for people giving us additional options. It is not like
15 you are limited to those four. Those were just the ones that
16 I guess, our staff had thrown --
17 MR. GRACIE: When you going out for feedback are you
18 talking about Scooping?
19 MS. WIDMAN: Yes, these are also --
20 MR. GRACIE: Oh, okay.
21 MS. WIDMAN: -- be going over.
22 MR. GRACIE: When is that going out?
23 MS. WIDMAN: So, this would go before Tidal Fish on
24 Thursday and then we would run it through the Department with
25 any other questions or comments internally and then hopefully
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1 in the next week or two we would get --
2 MR. GRACIE: Okay. So, it’s imminent?
3 MS. WIDMAN: Yeah. And we put it out for two weeks
4 for comments. And --
5 MR. GRACIE: Okay. Thank you.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. Yeah, Phil.
7 MR. LANGLEY: Just a quick follow-up with where Jim
8 was going with this, too. I think of maybe Lynn or Dave or
9 Mike or somebody, when was the last stock assessment on
10 Sheepshead and how is the Atlantic stock -- based on this
11 stock assessment.
12 MS. FEGLEY: So, with Sheepshead this was managed by
13 the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council. So they are
14 the advisory body ---, we got the North Atlantic, the Mid-
15 Atlantic which are very familiar with and the South Atlantic.
16 They manage Federal species.
17 So, we were consistent with the Federal Management
18 Plan initially. That is why that creel limit was so high.
19 That is where the stock assessment purpose animal resides is
20 in that Federal document. But because this animal is moving
21 north and it has some very localized behavior the South
22 Atlantic Council said we’re out. We are not going to manage
23 this anymore. And they are giving management authority back
24 to the States. And so that put us in a situation where we
25 have really no regs for this except for this high creel limit.
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1
2 So, to answer the stock assessment question, that it
3 has been a while. And those documents maybe four or five
4 years, and they are in the Federal documents ---.
5 MR. LANGLEY: Thank you so much.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: You okay? Beverly.
7 MS. FLEMING: In my opinion if the anglers are
8 recommending two fish per day I think that is where we should
9 go because it is a more conservative figure. You can always
10 go higher. And if the anglers themselves are recommending it,
11 then they would possibly not be so upset.
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. And Scott.
13 MR. LENOX: I think that the two fish per day might
14 be something that I said at a commission meeting, you know, a
15 few months ago. But that was just thrown out by some guys
16 that said they wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a two fish limit,
17 because I think that is plenty for two fish per angler.
18 And I think this is moving in the right direction
19 because initially this wasn’t on the radar of you guys at all
20 and it is only the South Jetty in Ocean City, Maryland, that
21 is the only place that we really catch them now. We catch
22 them down by the bridge in Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay,
23 that that is it. That is the only place that we see them.
24 So, I think our stakeholders want to see it get put
25 on the radar so that they see it is being looked at and
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1 managed like other fish are in our area. It is kind of a
2 proactive approach to something that they see, would plan on
3 seeing more and more of in the future as these, you know,
4 tropical type fish move into our area.
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right. Are there any other
6 questions or comments? Yeah, Mack.
7 MR. WOMMACK: I get kind of confused with sometimes
8 when we talk about the ---. Well, they been coming in the
9 lower Bay on the Virginia and Maryland side for a while on the
10 --- they --- fish most of them.
11 And when you say two fish a day, you are talking
12 about the economic growth of the State. And as a fisherman I
13 can see four. But two fish a day you getting back to the
14 Trout situation. When we are talking about the Gray Trout
15 ones. You might as well close the season.
16 One fish and then you are asking the question why
17 people are not buying license and all and why things are going
18 downhill. Well, if you can’t catch anything what is the use
19 of doing it.
20 So, I think you really need to think about that two
21 fish a day. I mean, per man, that’s a little, you know --
22 especially on something that is, you know, is not a real heavy
23 fish here, so if you catch four, you know -- you know, it is
24 more of a southern fish. And they do come up and feed on our
25 wrecks and stuff, even here at the --- Street between Point
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1 Lookout, they do come up. I have caught them there. But, you
2 know, two fish a day I think that’s a little bit, you know.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: As usual you add your homespun
4 common sense.
5 MR. LENOX: I agree with Mack. Like I say, that two
6 fish per day number which is thrown out there by some guys who
7 are really concerned by --
8 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah, it didn’t say all anglers, it
9 just said --
10 MR. LENOX: No, I am interested in --
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: -- some anglers.
12 MR. LENOX: I’m interested in seeing what the
13 Scooping brings out and when it goes to the public comment,
14 I think that most of the people that I represent down in Ocean
15 City are going to say four fish would be great.
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Great. And David, one last
17 comment.
18 MR. SIKORSKI: Yes. And a short one. I think it is
19 always important to keep consistent regulations with
20 neighboring states when possible. That is a fish that people
21 commonly fish for in Virginia. Keep Maryland’s regs as
22 similar as possible. We are good to go.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Great. Thank you.
24 MS. WIDMAN: Move on? Okay. Moving on. So, there
25 are some recreational changes we would like to scope. One of
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1 them is really just updating the ASMFC and the allow
2 recreational anglers an unlimited number of Smooth Hound
3 Sharks. So, we just wanted to update ours to match that.
4 And then adding in a component in the regs that
5 would basically safely release them and amend the maximum as -
6 -- survive-ability. This is already kind of incorporated in
7 Rules and the Federal Highly Migratory Species Shark Rules.
8 And we think it is just a good practice to continue in
9 Maryland State waters, as well. So, those are two things we
10 would like to scope on Sharks.
11 Snapper/Grouper complex, again just minor spelling
12 errors on that. And adjusting the size and possession limits
13 by public notice so that we can implement management measures
14 from --- in a more timely manner for those fish. Would be two
15 things that we would like to go scope.
16 Golden Tidal Fish, again this is more to try to
17 update our stuff so that we are in consistency and compliance
18 with the Atlantic Council’s management plan on Golden ---
19 Tidal Fish.
20 So, for the record it would be -- Golden Tidal, pre-
21 limit would be eight per person per trip. And using a rod and
22 reel fishing gear.
23 And I think that is it for Scooping. Questions on
24 Scooping? I don’t have too much else.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Are there any questions.
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1 MS. WIDMAN: You guys have the -- on the regulatory
2 update stuff, there is not a lot -- to go over there. The
3 only reg that went into effect was the Circle Hooks, J-Hooks
4 from earlier this year that we discussed at length. But we
5 don’t have anything new to go over.
6 You also got some handouts to summary of the sport
7 fish --- workgroup that met last month. And then current
8 recreational and --- suspensions. That is it unless people
9 have questions.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: One last opportunity for any
11 questions of Sarah.
12 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Could I make a comment?
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Please.
14 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I want to give kind of the same
15 spiel that TFAC later this week, but we have run into a
16 situation where we promulgated regulations that upset some
17 folks and we have been hearing about it since we promulgated
18 those regulations.
19 So, I want to mention that here because you are the
20 body that we run these things past all the time. We scope
21 them. Then we let you know about the regulatory, you know,
22 what is being considered there.
23 And it kind of took us by surprise with this
24 regulation that we did on the commercial side that people were
25 upset about it. And we ran it through the system. We scooped
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1 it. We ran it through TFAC and then when we said, okay, it’s
2 done, it’s gone through, the public comment period and
3 everything else, then all of a sudden we had people coming out
4 of the woodwork complaining to us about it.
5 Well, we are wait a minute, wait a minute, you know,
6 we’ve got these processes designed so that we get feedback,
7 not only with public comments and public hearings that we
8 advertise those things, but we also want to rely on you all to
9 provide that advice to us.
10 Just, I just want to remind you that as an advisory
11 commission the input that we receive today was very valuable.
12 We appreciate that. But talk to your folks. I’m sure Scott
13 and Beverly will talk to their folks down in Ocean City about
14 Sheepshead. Talk to them. Find out. Help us get that
15 information so that we can do the right regulations so that we
16 don’t have a problem later on.
17 You know, we don’t -- that is why we started the
18 Scooping process because if we did a regulation, and people
19 wanted it changed, we would have to start the whole process
20 over. So, Scooping gives us an opportunity to get some
21 feedback before we make a formal proposal.
22 So, again you all have a responsibility as advisory
23 committee members. We rely very heavily on your all to help
24 us get the word out and get that information back to us or to
25 have your constituents get back to us about things. We want
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1 to make sure that we’re getting the public comment, public
2 feedback and we don’t want to go through a whole process being
3 totally silent and then we promulgate a regulation and then we
4 get blind-sighted.
5 So, I am going to talk to TFAC about that, but I
6 also want to remind you of your responsibility.
7 MR. : Can you tell us what the issue is?
8 It might help us figure out what --
9 MS. : Yeah, what went wrong?
10 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Well, I will tell you for five
11 years we extended the pound net season for Striped Bass. Into
12 December, which is part of the gill net season. So, now we
13 have an overlapping of the pound net and gill net season. So,
14 now all the gill netters are mad that the pound netters have
15 access into their time. But for five years we’ve extended
16 that pound net season into December because they still had
17 quota left.
18 So, now the gill netters are mad. Well, they didn’t
19 want that. I said well, five years we’ve been doing this. We
20 went through the whole process. And, you know, now we’ve got
21 a little bit of a controversy going on there. So, Steve, I
22 don’t know --
23 MR. LAY: Yeah, what it was, was the season was
24 extended on a year-by-year basis.
25 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Right.
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1 MR. LAY: And last year it was permanently put into
2 place as a permanent thing.
3 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Right.
4 MR. LAY: And that’s when they got upset.
5 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Right.
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Mack, real quick.
7 MR. WOMMACK: Okay. I mean not real quick but I’m
8 going to try my best.
9 (Laughter)
10 MR. WOMMACK: Anyhow, speaking of what he’s saying,
11 I heard the phones going off for the last month. In the Lower
12 Bay and Western Shore and Eastern Shore. And one of the
13 problems that we’re having is we have like a playground here.
14 The oyster beds --- when they come up.
15 People on the Lower Bay, Solomons, Point Lookout,
16 Crisfield, Deals Island on up the Bay, depend on the bottom
17 fishing --- and in the Upper Bay with the Rockfish. They make
18 their living on the bottom fish.
19 The problem I have is that --- sounds and
20 tributaries at the same time that the charter boat captains
21 and the regular sport fishermen are out there in the Summer
22 months. And the fish are not getting food. And it is
23 becoming to be where you don’t want a war between two entities
24 about sharing the playground.
25 So, I’m asking is there any way that this Commission
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1 could get together or form a committee to look in and see if
2 we can get equal playing time on the ballpark with each party
3 because charter boat captains are saying we’re not making any
4 money. We’re going downhill. The industry is getting worse
5 and worse and people are not coming anymore because there are
6 no fish.
7 Now, the netters are going to say, hey, well we net
8 and we doing this, and I don’t have a problem with them doing
9 what they do. But I’m just trying to see, can we come to a
10 common ground that will work for both teams. If you could get
11 a committee or something together to look into it.
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Would you like to put this into the
13 form of a motion?
14 MR. WOMMACK: Yes. Following motion.
15 MOTION
16 by James Wommack
17 MR. WOMMACK: Can I ask this Committee --
18 Commission, can we get a committee to look into the netting of
19 the oyster beds in the Sound and Tributaries during the peak
20 month for the sport fishermen and the charter boat captains
21 which make their living.
22 MR. SIKORSKI: Second.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We have a second?
24 MR. SIKORSKI: Yes.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Discussion? Because I don’t
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1 understand your motion. But that’s all right.
2 MR. WOMMACK: Okay.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: So, Phil?
4 MR. LANGLEY: If I could offer some discussion on
5 that. Mack is absolutely right, some -- there’s a flare-up
6 probably three or four years ago in the Sound over the charter
7 boat captains and recreational anglers fishing the bars. They
8 felt that they were being pursued by the --- netters which
9 were watching where they fished. And then after they finished
10 up on the evening then the gill netters would move in and kind
11 of catch up the fish in that area. And then they would move
12 to another bar and they felt like they weren’t being followed
13 around. And there was not enough fish to go around for both
14 user groups.
15 And which kind of relates to the comment I made to
16 Secretary Belton that the problem is like this year over in
17 the Sound they waited forever in the Lower Bay, that the Spot
18 never showed up. And then when the Spot did show up the
19 charter boat fleet what’s left in the Sound start pursuing the
20 Spot but at the same time the gill netters were waiting for
21 the same thing and never showed up.
22 So, then you got user conflict because you have a
23 reduced resource, okay --
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Sure.
25 MR. LANGLEY: -- that you have different user groups
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1 trying to get access to.
2 And at one point in time Spot weren’t really a
3 sought after fish, commercially. And today they are about a
4 dollar a pound off the boat on a commercial market. So,
5 there’s a lot more focus being placed on currently today that
6 it wasn’t in the past.
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay.
8 MR. WOMMACK: Well, let me just say this about the -
9 --. The Sound is kind of designed like --
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Mack, are you amending your motion?
11 MR. WOMMACK: No, I ---.
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Dave.
13 MR. SIKORSKI: Yeah, I’m glad Mack brought this up.
14 It’s been a -- these are secondary fisheries all the time in
15 Maryland. We talk about Striped Bass. We talk about oysters,
16 crabs, we forget about this stuff. And it is all related, we
17 know that. You know, you all know I’m a --- nerd and I love
18 seeing Jim’s stuff. All the stuff related. And what directly
19 relates to it even further is economic benefit.
20 And so sometimes we have to make a tradeoff. And we
21 want these species to benefit one sector or another or how can
22 we work together to make benefit, you know, in a proper way.
23 Because I will tell you how, even at a dollar a pound, a Spot
24 is worth a whole heck of lot more than a dollar a pound on a
25 head boat, on a charter boat.
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1 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay.
2 MR. SIKORSKI: And, you know, coming home to feed a
3 family. It is a public resource that our public needs access
4 to in some way, shape or form. And it’s a difficult talks.
5 There is no question that CCA has been involved in the gill
6 net --- throughout the country because at a certain point when
7 management fails, that’s a solution.
8 And that could be where we go if need be. But I am
9 fully supportive of a process to walk through this and talk --
10 try and get stakeholders to, you know, figure it out before it
11 comes to that. But if not, that ---.
12 These species really need to be paid attention to.
13 They are very habitat specific. And we can’t ignore one thing
14 and have policies go in one direction and ignore negative
15 impacts in the Bay and others.
16 And I’ll blow the oyster horn again. There are a
17 lot of oysters down there. But that problem of habitat and
18 how it effects all these other things continually plays out.
19 So, we can’t ignore that when shaping one policy next to the
20 other.
21 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Is there any public comment? Yes,
22 sir. Yes, sir.
23 MR. : You need to get to the microphone.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes, sir. Thank you, Sarah.
25 Public Comments on Motion
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1 by Kirkland Hall
2 MR. HALL: Thank you so much. My name is Kirkland
3 Hall. And I am from Somerset County. And I certainly
4 appreciate the Chairman and all those that are here, just
5 giving me this opportunity.
6 I have been approached, I am not a fisherman, but I
7 love fish --- activist basically all my life. And whenever
8 someone comes and approaches me and asks for some assistance I
9 do the best I can to help them. Well, Captain Phil and Mr. --
10 - and the gentleman that spoke, you basically took my thunder.
11
12 (Laughter)
13 MR. HALL: But that’s okay because again this is an
14 education for me. Let me give you a little background about
15 Somerset Count, Worcester County, Somerset County.
16 Somerset County is basically called by historians
17 the land in which time has forgotten. We are the poorest
18 county in the State of Maryland. We have 60 percent of our
19 citizens are in poverty and 50 percent in deep poverty. We’ve
20 basically lost most of our small farms.
21 And now we are in the process of losing our seafood
22 industry, especially the charter boat captains. A number of
23 them are going under, if not already because of the
24 competition that they had with the gill netters. And if we
25 lose the seafood industry we’ll losing our small farms.
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1 And let me -- incidentally every child in Somerset
2 County is free. Free lunch. And free breakfast. Because the
3 economics in our county is at the bottom. So, we’ve got to do
4 what we can to help those individuals whose livelihood depends
5 on the productivity of the charter boat industry.
6 And we will beg -- and they’re pleading and I
7 appreciate you come saying, I’m happy that you are willing to
8 have commission. And we need to be able to come together so
9 that both parties can be comfortable.
10 But my plea again is to help these families.
11 Crisfield and --- they are the desperate. And they have
12 nowhere to turn. And you our last hope.
13 So, I just want to say that and since they already
14 said that information, I’ll leave you with that. Thank you so
15 much.
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you, sir.
17 MR. HALL: You’re welcome. You’re welcome.
18 MR. : Steve had a question, didn’t you,
19 Steve?
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Steve does and Larry does, also. I
21 hate to go back -- I’m going to give you the final comment.
22 Larry, did you have a question?
23 Public Comments on Motion
24 by Larry Jennings
25 MR. JENNINGS: It relates to all of these in that we
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1 are concerned about license fail -- license sales. Most
2 people fishing in the Summer with their family. It would be
3 going ground fish fishing. They’re really not concerned with
4 Striped Bass all that much. Yes, they would like to catch
5 them. But they want to catch something.
6 And when you have all of these different Panfish,
7 your Croakers, your Spots, White Perch aren’t even that easy
8 to catch or a big enough size, that’s what is driving license
9 sales down.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Is there any other public
11 comment? Steven, you have the final --
12 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Dave, I just have one -- you
13 mentioned Spot and I just heard Larry mention some other fish,
14 what -- I want to know what fish you are actually talking
15 about. Something more than just Spot?
16 MR. SIKORSKI: Oh, I believe in Mack’s situation
17 it’s Spot and Croaker are probably the two most popular in
18 --- Sound. In other areas it is. It could be White Perch, it
19 could be Spot, it could be Croaker, could be some of the
20 panfish that are in more of the fresher areas, --- Yellow
21 Perch, Blue Gills in some places ---.
22 MR. LAY: Well, you are talking about the dill net
23 fishery getting in the way. I want to know what fish the gill
24 net fishery is putting the pressure on that may be --
25 MR. SIKORSKI: It’s the spool nets that we talked
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1 about in the past with conflict with mid-Bay charter boats and
2 White Perch and Spot. And now it is conflict with Tangier
3 Sound charter boats with I would assume Spot and maybe some
4 Croaker.
5 MR. LAY: Spot and Croakers basically --
6 MR. WOMMACK: Spot and Croakers, we don’t want to
7 situation where it gets too light to --- but we have one --
8 MR. LAY: Right. But it is not Crappies and Yellow
9 Perch, they don’t yield that them in the Summertime.
10 MR. SIKORSKI: Not in Tangier Sound. No.
11 MR. LAY: Okay. Spot and Croakers.
12 MR. WOMMACK: And like I was going to explain to you
13 earlier, and this is just going to take a minute, that Sound
14 is like an artery on the side of the heart. And when that
15 tide flows and when fish coming up through Tangier get sucked
16 through there on up to --- Straits, on up through the
17 migratory rivers and on out to Hooper Strait and on up to the
18 Bay.
19 So, when you’re talking about the problem up of the
20 Bay where there is no fish for the Rockfish, well, that is one
21 of the problems starting right there, because if you close off
22 the coral can’t nothing get through.
23 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Captain Ed.
24 MR. O’BRIEN: Yeah, we’ve brought before this
25 Commission in the past a very difficult subject. And that is
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1 summertime gill netting. Now, the solution has got to be some
2 kind of a formula that is fair to the watermen in Somerset
3 County and the charter boats and recreational fishermen. It’s
4 a huge problem that we can’t seem to face.
5 We’ve had a situation where charter boat captains,
6 head boat operators, sit down with the watermen. And when you
7 get local like that you can come up to a certain agreement.
8 But the agreement you might come up with in Eastern Bay won’t
9 work down there in Somerset County.
10 So, it’s just something that for the last ten years
11 whatever, it’s something that has not been able to solved by
12 these Commissions.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: All right.
14 MR. O’BRIEN: And I certainly, obviously appreciate
15 the charter boat satiation. But there is Somerset County
16 watermen too, that make some money doing this. So, it has got
17 to be -- this is going to really take some work. So, far DNR
18 has tried to pull it together. It’s very difficult.
19 Certainly -- the gentlemen in the back, you are very
20 public speaker. And it seemed to me that your tone was to be
21 favorable to both commercial and recreational. And that means
22 that maybe it’s something that has to fluctuate each year
23 based on the fishery. Based on upon, what, where and when. I
24 mean it’s a -- Summertime gill netting is a tough subject.
25 Summertime charter boat fishing right now is a very tough
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1 subject, too. That’s --
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
3 MR. O’BRIEN: That’s it.
4 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We have a motion the floor. And
5 Dave has got to ask a couple of questions.
6 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yes, so I want to make sure --
7 because I was trying to write down the motion as
8 comprehensively as I could. But I have a couple of questions.
9
10 The gist of the motion was to form a committee to
11 look into the Summer gill net charter boat user conflict
12 issues that occur during the Summer season, you know,
13 throughout the Bay but especially in the Sound.
14 I had the motion by Mack and the second by Dave
15 Sikorski. Do we want a joint committee of SFAC and TFAC, do
16 we take this to TFAC on Thursday and ask for volunteers. If
17 that is the intent, you know, I can put that in. Mack, are
18 you okay with that?
19 MR. WOMMACK: Yeah, I don’t have a problem with
20 that. We all have to come together sooner or later.
21 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Right. It will eventually come
22 back to everybody. So, is every -- you guys are okay with
23 that? So, I will make the committee of SFAC and TFAC members?
24 And I think that’s it. Again, is that -- describe -- we’ve
25 done some of this before but we are willing to give it a shot
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1 again, so we will go through this process. And then after the
2 vote I will ask for volunteers.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Well, Mack is probably going to
4 chair it.
5 (Laughter)
6 CHAIRMAN NEELY: But, Mack, we have a motion on the
7 floor. And would you be kind enough one more time to restate
8 your motion so that we can then vote on it.
9 MR. WOMMACK: Okay. The motion would be that we are
10 going to form a committee to look at the process of netting
11 during the Summer months in the Sounds and Tributaries to try
12 to come to a common goal where the netters and the charter
13 boat captains and the recreational fishermen can share these
14 oyster beds to be fished on, as well as netting on.
15 I guess that is kind of -- well, maybe Ed might be
16 better in putting that together because he’s pretty good at
17 that.
18 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: We’re good.
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah, will do. And then I need a
20 motion to approve, right? Or do I just call for a vote?
21 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Call for a vote.
22 MR. WOMMACK: So, we are going to put a motion
23 together, and do a study on this, on these nets crossed the
24 oyster beds at peak time in the Summer.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. Let’s call the question
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1 and call for a vote. All in favor say aye.
2 ALL: Aye.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: All opposed?
4 (No response)
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: There being no opposition, the
6 motion carries. Thank you. And Reverend, thank you very much
7 for your --
8 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Can we ask for volunteers?
9 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Oh, yeah.
10 (Laughter)
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Sorry.
12 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I want to get them now while
13 they’re thinking about it.
14 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Who would be willing to serve on
15 this committee, working with TFAC, also? We probably need
16 three people from this -- so, Captain Phil, Dave Sikorski and
17 Mack Wommack will be the three representatives from the
18 Commission.
19 MR. SIKORSKI: And because it is such a localized
20 type of situation, at least in Tangier Sound, I think it would
21 make sense to have non-commissioners participate, as well.
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes, thank you.
23 MR. SIKORSKI: And I would like to have a proxy if
24 possible, you know, for CCA or from, you know, somebody from
25 that region that represents recreational anglers. Whatever,
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1 you know, would make us, lead us towards success in the best
2 way.
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: How do you feel about that, Toby?
4 (Laughter)
5 MR. : Looks like a deer in the headlights.
6 (Laughter)
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We need somebody from that region.
8 I know you are from the mid-Shore.
9 MR. FREY: All right.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you for volunteering.
11 (Laughter)
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Toby Frey is going to serve on this
13 committee. And also I think Larry Jennings will probably, he
14 would like to pitch in, also. And perhaps he could be your --
15 MR. FREY: Thanks, Larry.
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Didn’t you say that. I -- oh, you
17 were raising your hand.
18 (All in discussion off microphone.)
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. I think that --
20 MR. GRACIE: You are going assign a staff person to
21 take the lead on this --
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yes. Thanks, Jim. Guys, we are
23 recalling running light on time, and I am going to ask Lynn to
24 provide her updates on an expeditious manner.
25 Policy Program
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1 by Lynn Fegley
2 MS. FEGLEY: Yes, I’m Lynn Fegley. For those of you
3 who haven’t met yet, I’m the Director of the Stock Health Data
4 Management and Analysis Division. Mike and I work together to
5 help Dave out at the Atlantic States and Mike represents Dave
6 in the State of Maryland on the Mid-Atlantic Council.
7 So, here we go. In your --- books, tab 8, we are
8 going to heretofore provide you with meeting summaries and
9 agendas for both the Commission and the Council meetings just
10 so that you have a mechanism for really keeping track of what
11 is going on at those meetings. Those are all also available
12 on the respective website, but it is just a tool to help you
13 understand what is going on and bring questions to us if you
14 have them. The next --
15 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: I am sorry, if I can just -- you
16 know, there is a lot of material here. And again, you know,
17 we meet four times a year. But we are always available by
18 phone. So, if you see something in these ASMFC or Mid-
19 Atlantic Council meeting minutes call Lynn, Mike or myself or,
20 you know -- we are more than willing to talk to you outside of
21 this meeting about some specifics here.
22 MS. FEGLEY: Absolutely, always available. So, the
23 next meeting is going to be, I believe it begins Oust 5th. It
24 is that first full week of August. There are a couple of
25 things that are happening.
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1 I did want to back up for a moment and remind
2 everybody here that the Cobia history is open. It is open
3 until September 30th, and we have the same regulations as
4 Virginia. You can have one fish per person, not to exceed
5 three per vessel per day, with a 40 inch total length maximum
6 size. So, just be aware. That’s open. It’s happening. It’s
7 done.
8 So, moving forward to Menhaden, at this upcoming
9 meeting the Menhaden board will consider whether the
10 Commonwealth of Virginia is out of compliance. If it is they
11 will be a process where the Secretary of Commerce is notified.
12 The Commonwealth of Virginia manages their Menhaden fishery by
13 legislation. And they were not successful with getting a Bill
14 through their General Assembly to comply with the ASMFC
15 amendment that went through in November. So, that is going to
16 be an interesting discussion.
17 It has been mentioned here tonight a few times the
18 South Atlantic Board does Spot and Croaker. I never want to
19 be accused of soft-balling, so I won’t. This is going to get
20 -- this is going to get sticky. Both of those species, we
21 will be receiving twenty-eight -- 2017 numbers, so numbers for
22 the 2017 year for both Spot and Croaker. The management
23 benchmarks they are using now would trip management action for
24 both of those species.
25 We are one of the few states that has regulations in
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1 place for Croaker. We, along with everybody else, don’t have
2 much at all for Spot. So, there will likely be an addendum
3 initiated in August to start to talk about management action
4 for both of these species. So, we’re talking suddenly for
5 Spot. We are going to have something like size limits, creel
6 limits, seasons. We are going to have to have that
7 conversation.
8 So, look for hearings and conversations about that
9 coming up in -- I would like to say September/October time
10 frame. This one is a big deal. So, just heads up, it’s
11 coming.
12 Striped Bass, they are going to review compliance
13 reports in the Striped Bass coordinating. Mike has gotten a
14 heads up from the Commission that there is going to be some
15 comment that we are -- we were not consistent in our circle
16 hook regulations with what we said we were going to do to get
17 that 19 inch fish. So, there is going to be a little bit of
18 conversation going on there.
19 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: J-hook.
20 MS. FEGLEY: That’s the J-hook provision, right.
21 American Eels, there will be an approval of an addendum for
22 American Eels, this is primarily concerns the commercial side.
23 It will re -- it will basically reset eel management. It will
24 look at the coast-wide cap for managing, too. The management
25 trigger. And if that management trigger is fired, what do we
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1 do. That is an allocation question.
2 So, all those questions are on the table for eels,
3 that is a big one for the commercial guys.
4 There is also, we got a notice from the Commission
5 every species board at the Commission has an advisory panel.
6 We have some panels where there are not populated with our
7 people. So, we need to have a little look at that internally.
8 We haven’t had time to digest it. But look to us to come back
9 to you in the Fall and go over that and think about it, if you
10 have interest in any of these species.
11 Those lists should also be on the ASMFC website, if
12 you want to check them out in the interim before the fall.
13 Moving on to the council, this is Mike’s -- Mike’s
14 land. They are going to be reviewing and establishing quotas
15 for Summer Flounder, Black Sea Bass, Scup and Bluefish. And
16 those are going to be reviewed and established for 2019 and
17 beyond. So, there is going to be a lot moving and shaking.
18 Again, Summer Flounder, Black Sea Bass, Scup and Bluefish.
19 And speaking of Bluefish, early 2019 look for
20 management coming out of the Commission. There is going to be
21 a management plan. That is going to look at State quotas and
22 allocation for Bluefish. Heads up. That one is coming at us,
23 too.
24 So, that’s it, so that is the management update.
25 There are two more things to go over. Should we take
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1 questions on that before I blaze on.
2 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s appropriate.
3 Jim, you want to --
4 MR. GRACIE: Well, yeah. I don’t know what all this
5 means. What’s next about our use of the J-hooks that is
6 inconsistent with what they’re prosing. What do they do? I
7 mean -- we can’t change it in the middle of the season. We
8 are going to be penalized or --
9 MS. FEGLEY: No --
10 MR. GRACIE: -- somebody going to -- what do you
11 think is next --
12 MS. FEGLEY: It would be a compliance issue, so I
13 don’t know --
14 MR. GRACIE: What does that mean?
15 MS. FEGLEY: Well, it mean that they would ask us to
16 change it.
17 MR. GRACIE: Oh, so we could come into compliance.
18 MS. FEGLEY: Yes, they would ask us to --
19 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Give us an opportunity.
20 MR. GRACIE: Okay.
21 MS. FEGLEY: They would give us an opportunity to
22 change it or they -- call in Commerce. And whether or not
23 they decide to do that, I don’t know. Mike is getting --
24 MR. GRACIE: So, we are not sure, in other words,
25 right now? We are going to wait and see.
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1 MS. FEGLEY: No. We’ll see.
2 MR. GRACIE: Okay.
3 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: We have been talking to a lot of
4 the other states and they understand the predicament because
5 we called them and talked to them about it before.
6 MR. GRACIE: Before you actually implement it --
7 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Before we actually implemented it.
8 MR. GRACIE: If we change it, on the proposal.
9 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: And we knew the risks.
10 MR. GRACIE: --- a revision and the proposal at the
11 last meeting.
12 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Right. Right.
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: David.
14 MR. SIKORSKI: Can you give us a little more detail
15 on the Bluefish situation, because I know there is a public
16 comment period out right nor for reallocation from
17 recreational to commercial. And is that what you are
18 mentioning for management changes and --
19 MS. FEGLEY: Yes, it is recreational and I honestly
20 don’t know the details on this one. It don’t. It’s Mike’s
21 ball game. But I do believe that that’s what it is. And I
22 don’t have any more details for you.
23 MR. SIKORSKI: And I used to spend a lot more time
24 tracking council stuff but don’t have it anymore. So, from
25 what I understand --
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1 MS. FEGLEY: I think this is Commission though.
2 MR. SIKORSKI: What is that?
3 MS. FEGLEY: I believe that this is going to be a
4 Commission --
5 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: It’s a joint.
6 MS. FEGLEY: Is a joint? Okay.
7 MR. SIKORSKI: I think the Council is on the lead on
8 Bluefish right now. So, I know that the comment period ends
9 July 30th. This was something that -- some of our regional
10 fisheries consultants from CCA handled so, again, I don’t know
11 that much about it. But from what I understand there is a
12 consideration of a reallocation from the recreational side to
13 the commercial side for what is stated as -- fish that are not
14 caught by the recreational side.
15 And that speaks to some -- just basic differences
16 between recreational versus commercial, which generally with
17 commercial there is obviously an incentive to catch your
18 quota. But with recreational we have ---, we have challenges
19 with understanding exactly what our catch is. And so there
20 are different methodologies in the two different fisheries.
21 You know, the idea being that quite often
22 recreational anglers don’t always keep what they catch. And
23 so it is not as easy to count as a hard quota where there is a
24 lot more regulation, quite often on a commercial fisher.
25 And so many -- and we believe that using historical
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1 catch data to reallocate a fishery, noting that recreational
2 fishing isn’t the same as commercial fishing, is a bad idea.
3 And we do have a position, you know, in opposition of
4 reallocation using that. And recommend something more of an
5 economic analysis.
6 Bluefish are the third highest harvested
7 recreational species based on --- numbers, so they are
8 extremely important. And so we are in opposition of that. I
9 would -- was planning on trying to make a motion but without
10 Mike here to provide a little more thorough on it --
11 MS. FEGLEY: Do you want him to come back in the
12 Fall meeting, because this is it, you know, it is happening
13 for the Fall meeting with more detail on it?
14 MR. SIKORSKI: Yeah, I think it would be important
15 that this Commission understands what our State’s
16 representatives are being face with decision-wise, because it
17 is an allocation issue, it is recreational to commercial and
18 we need to understand it better before our State just goes
19 ahead and does something.
20 And we have great representatives there. Mike being
21 one of them. And I think it is really important that this
22 body as a recreational fishing advisory commission knows that
23 issue inside and out.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: And if -- would changes be made
25 prior to the Fall meeting?
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1 MS. FEGLEY: I do not believe so although it sounds
2 like there is a public comment period that may end before
3 that.
4 MR. SIKORSKI: Yes, that ends July 30th.
5 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah.
6 MS. FEGLEY: Yeah.
7 MR. SIKORSKI: And I can follow-up with some more
8 information for the Commission, as well. I mean I would have
9 no issues asking the Commissioners via e-mail or on a phone
10 call, you know, for some sort of support.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: If it would please the Commission I
12 would be willing to draft a letter stating the position of, in
13 general terms, of our Commission, without -- without your
14 input.
15 (Laughter)
16 MR. GRACIE: I guess -- I’m not the -- cast
17 dispersions on your --
18 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
19 MR. GRACIE: -- integrity, but I’m not sure you are
20 in a position to know the feelings of the Commission, to be
21 honest --
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Well, I was going to poll the
23 Commission and then perhaps draft a letter.
24 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: If I can --
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah, I agree with you, though.
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1 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yes. Mr. Chairman, if I can
2 propose a --
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Yeah.
4 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Maybe what I will do is, we will
5 get with Mike tomorrow morning and we will craft an e-mail,
6 giving you the details about the Bluefish allocation and time
7 line and we will try and get that out tomorrow or Thursday so
8 you all know. And then if you want to do something, have a
9 letter, make a position known to submit to --
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Sure.
11 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: -- ASMFC or Mid-Atlantic Council,
12 you know, by all means we can do that. But I also again, as
13 my little speech before, talk to you folks, get some feedback,
14 you know, Lynn, Mike and I will always take your calls, even
15 after July 30th because ASMFC doesn’t meet until August 8th.
16 And the Mid-Atlantic Council is the next week. We’ll take
17 comments all the way up until, you know, a vote is cast.
18 So, July 30th, if that’s the time line, that’s for
19 official comments to be sent to Mid-Atlantic Council or ASMFC.
20 So, we can still, you know -- but let’s -- Mike, Lynn and I
21 will get together and we’ll craft something and will try to
22 get that out to you all to clarify the details what that
23 Bluefish amendment is.
24 MR. SIKORSKI: I appreciate that, Dave. And I think
25 -- I don’t think the thirtieth is the deadline hearing what
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1 you just said. No?
2 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah.
3 MR. SIKORSKI: I’m comfortable with that. This body
4 can have some time to figure it out, if you want to make a
5 position known to the Department, you can.
6 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yeah.
7 MR. SIKORSKI: From what you just described.
8 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right. Ed. Captain Ed.
9 MR. O’BRIEN: I think it has been covered.
10 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay. Thank you.
11 MR. O’BRIEN: I would like to get a compliment in,
12 but Lynn, though, she’s involved with the South Atlantic more
13 than anybody. And she does it very, very well. And
14 establishes a good rapture, but there is going to be a lot of
15 tough decisions on some of these species.
16 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Right. Ed.
17 MS. FEGLEY: Okay. So, the next thing on the list,
18 Mike owes me for this one, is the circle hook update. We
19 heard a lot of feedback about circle hooks being part of lot
20 of about -- a lot of dead fish floating.
21 So, a couple of things are happening. We’ve done a
22 significant amount of outreach. In terms of compliance, which
23 we will need to know for ASMFC. We have our access point
24 interview crew, the --- crew interviewing anglers, that they
25 meet about circle hook compliance. They have interviewed over
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1 400 people. So, we will putting those numbers together.
2 It seems as though right now the idea we are getting
3 is that people who are chumming and --- compliance is very
4 high. But it’s not as high for people using chums of bait.
5 More of those people are intending to stick with J-hooks.
6 We have released, Paul and Karen’s group, some
7 additional messaging to remind people that even though they
8 are using a circle hook, it is still a good time to be gentle
9 with the fish. It’s hot. Dissolved oxygen levels are low.
10 So, we are working to get as much education out as we can.
11 That’s circle hooks. Any questions on circle hooks?
12 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Are there any questions? Any
13 discussion? No. Okay.
14 MS. FEGLEY: Okay. Yellow Perch is the last one.
15 We were asked to look at three aspects of the commercially
16 Yellow Perch fishery. We have scooped these, we have received
17 comments. And so there are a couple of things that we are
18 going to move forward to propose.
19 One is that we are going to propose to open
20 commercial Yellow Perch fishery in December. Because this is
21 a highly accountable fisheries with tags, they have a quota.
22 We --that they will try that December opening.
23 The other one is that there is a requirement that
24 Yellow Perch fishermen who are harvesting for the live market
25 have to have a DNR staff member arrive to witness the pass off
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1 between the fishermen and the dealer’s truck. We are going to
2 remove that mandate. Basically the commercial fishermen will
3 still have to let us know when they are making that
4 transaction. And the Department may very well show up. But
5 we do have a high percentage of our Yellow Perch commercial
6 fishermen on our ---, electronic hailing system. So, we feel
7 the accountability there is pretty high.
8 If the commercial fishermen is not on --- it will be
9 a higher likelihood they will get that visit from the
10 Department.
11 There was also a request to open the Choptank and
12 Nanticoke Rivers to commercial Yellow Perch fishing. We need
13 to do some more research on that, to understand what our data
14 looks like and how we would establish those quotas. So that
15 is not something we are going to pursue immediately. We are
16 going to dive deeper into that issue.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you. That was a suburb
18 report. Are there any questions? Dave had his hand up first.
19 MR. SIKORSKI: I was going to -- when the Secretary
20 was here I was going to mention enforcement because
21 enforcement is something that we have challenges with
22 throughout the State. And I think having, you know, we know
23 there are a lot of retirements happening within NRP and it’s
24 hard to keep up and there is no money available.
25 But without enforcement, when you change things like
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1 opening the Yellow Perch season in December, you have ---
2 season, you have oysters, you have I believe wintertime gill
3 nets, you know, you have all these things and one more strain
4 on that, on the Agency. And while I want to live life
5 trusting my neighbor, you know, it is tough sometimes.
6 So, it remains a concern that a season opening in
7 December, even though it is a well-managed fishery under
8 attack, could open up some issues with loopholes. So, I think
9 that -- you know -- we can just wave a magic wand and multiply
10 game warders, we would be better off, but we can’t.
11 But from whatever the Department can do to kind of
12 provide over --- and that kind of thing, it’s important to us,
13 to recreational anglers. Make sure that that Yellow Perch
14 fishery is managed well.
15 MS. FEGLEY: Yes, thanks, Dave. And I just do want
16 to reiterate that I don’t have the exact number but we have a
17 very high percentage of our Yellow Perch fishermen, most of
18 them are on that --- system so it is pretty -- we got a -- of
19 all fisheries, that one we have a handle on.
20 MR. SIKORSKI: Yes. And I know it’s not -- mostly
21 catch happens later in the year, later in that season, that
22 just provides a little flexibility to the commercial guys. We
23 understand that.
24 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Jim.
25 MR. GRACIE: Yeah, a question for Lynn. The
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1 Choptank and the Nanticoke, have you developed a plan and do
2 you have a time line for what, how you are going to collect
3 that information that you need?
4 MS. FEGLEY: Oh, I think for the Nanticoke, I really
5 think that it would involve additional data collection. We
6 have a substantial amount of data in the Choptank River. But
7 we are not sure -- we are not sure exactly what it is going to
8 give us in terms of quota settings. So, no time line as yet.
9 We are going to need to look into that as time allows and try
10 and figure it out.
11 MR. GRACIE: Well, you said you two different things
12 now. And I think I understand what you are going to do in the
13 Choptank.
14 MS. FEGLEY: Right.
15 MR. GRACIE: Do you have a data collection plan for
16 the Nanticoke and --
17 MS. FEGLEY: We do not. And we may not have one if
18 we -- you know, if we don’t have the resources to get in there
19 and do it, we’re not going to do it. And it likely won’t go
20 forward. So, it is tiered, right.
21 MR. GRACIE: Okay.
22 MS. FEGLEY: The Choptank is a higher possibility
23 than the Nanticoke and we will just need to see what we got.
24 MR. GRACIE: Thank you. I understand now.
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Is there any other discussion from
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1 the Commissions?
2 (No response)
3 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Larry. You have been very vocal
4 about Yellow Perch. You and Ken, Doctor Ken. Is there
5 anything here that you would like offer during public comment?
6 MR. JENNINGS: No.
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Okay.
8 MR. JENNINGS: And --- change and the stock
9 assessments were important to be able to determine and catch
10 and ---.
11 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Great. Thank you. We are now at -
12 - we have a quick comment.
13 MR. LAY: Quick comment. On Yellow Perch, the
14 commercial fishery last winter only caught half the quota.
15 So, we’ve got plenty extra.
16 MR. : Can you speak to --- experience on
17 that.
18 (Laughter)
19 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We are going to explore that
20 further in the Fall.
21 (Laughter)
22 CHAIRMAN NEELY: So, thank you.
23 MR. : On that note.
24 (Laughter)
25 CHAIRMAN NEELY: We now have our -- we now have a
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1 session devoted to public comment. Is there anything that you
2 all would like to offer? You have all been very patient
3 sitting here for over three hours. Yes, sir.
4 MR. CAMPBELL: I have a question to ask about the
5 Cobia. Did I hear that was a 40 inch maximum size?
6 MS. FEGLEY: Minimum.
7 MR. CAMPBELL: I thought you said maximum.
8 MS. FEGLEY: Did I say maximum?
9 (Laughter)
10 MS. FEGLEY: Correction. for the record, that is a
11 minimum size. I am so sorry.
12 (Laughter)
13 CHAIRMAN NEELY: And would you please identify
14 yourself?
15 MR. CAMPBELL: My name is Tim Campbell and I’m a CCA
16 member.
17 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Great. Thank you, sir. Is there
18 any other public comment?
19 (No response)
20 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Dave Blazer has a few closing
21 comments and then we will bring it to a conclusion. Thank
22 you. Few announcements.
23 Final Comments
24 by Chairman Dave Blazer
25 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Two real quick things. I think in
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1 your folders under tab one is the oysters future report. I
2 think we have talked a little bit about that. Dave Sikorski
3 and I were on that group. And Allison and the -- so, please
4 read through that. A lot of good consensus building and
5 discussion and a lot of different ideas that the University of
6 Maryland did through a facilitated process. And I think the
7 results are pretty interesting and pretty good. So, that is
8 the final report.
9 That has been presented to the Secretary for the
10 Department to consider moving forward with some of those
11 recommendations there. So, please look that over. If you got
12 any questions about that I am sure Dave, Allison or myself
13 would be more than happen to answer those or you can call
14 Doctor North at University of Maryland.
15 The last comment that I have is we will be looking
16 for an appointee for the Potomac River Fisheries Commission.
17 Dennis Fleming, who has been a long member there for about the
18 last 11 years is moving to Florida. So, he has resigned his
19 position on the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, which Phil
20 and I sit on. So, we will be looking for a new Commissioner
21 for the Potomac River Fisheries Commission.
22 If you know someone or that might be interested
23 please let us know so that we can get a pool of candidates to
24 be considered for the appointment as we go forward.
25 I believe Dennis moving to Florida for warmer
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1 climates and he has got a job. He was the Director of Public
2 Works for Charles County. And I think he has got a similar
3 position down in Pensacola, Florida. So, he is pretty excited
4 about that.
5 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Are there any other announcement?
6 (No response)
7 CHAIRMAN NEELY: Thank you so much. Great meeting.
8 CHAIRMAN BLAZER: Yes, well done.
9 (Whereupon, the meeting adjourned at 6:20 p.m.)
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