Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle Tied Up and Drowned.....

[Bill Hitchcock]

Ellise,
I am very familiar with CFRG and the folks that created it. I know most of them personally. I am very familiar with their agenda to end commercial fishing in North Carolina. I have hosted radio shows (Thanks for the limbaugh reference) exposing them and their tactics. These radio shows are online.
This group is driven by self interest. Facts don't matter to them, only their own desires.
Google the following, Turtles, Lies and Gill Nets to listen to a half hour special on this matter.

All CFRG is is a free Blogger site. CFRG is not an incorporated group, they don't have a web site, there are no meetings, they have no paid members, they have no members at all. The only way to "join" their free blogger blog site is to e-mail them and they decide whether or not you can join their club.

Let me give you an example of the lies they propigate. They claim that local commercial fishermen are the reason for poor speckled trout populations. CFRG claim that is the reason they want speckled trout given gamefish status and have actively rallied the state legislature for it. (Gamefish status bans commercial take and only allows recreational)

The fact is that in North Carolina recreational fishermen catch over three times the amount of speckled trout than commercial fishermen do. Go over to the NC Division of Marine Fisheries site. All Recreational and commercial landings are there.

By the way-Go over to the Karen Beasly Turtle Hospital web site. There they list all of their "patients" (turtles) for the past 13 years. Each turtle listed has described what was wrong with it when it was brought in. Of the hundreds and hundreds of turtles brought in over the 13 year period only about 8% were associated with any fishing gear. (Fishing gear interactions includes both recreational and commercial gear.)
In fact-Fishing gear was the least cause of any injury/illness to the turtles.

I spent three decades on the water producing TV and film for folks like ESPN, National Geographic, National Marine Fisheries Service, Sea Grant, Duke, Stanford, etc. I have been out with all types of fisheries, fishermen, fish and spent over 100 days a year on the water for most of my professional career. I have seen first hand countless types of commercial and recreational fishing.
This I can tell you-The battle isn't about resource. The battle is about fishing rights.

And if you like fresh, locally caught seafood-Thank a North Carolina commercial fisherman.

[Ellise]

Originally Posted by Bill Hitchcock

Ellise,
I am very familiar with CFRG and the folks that created it. I know most of them personally. I am very familiar with their agenda to end commercial fishing in North Carolina. I have hosted radio shows (Thanks for the limbaugh reference) exposing them and their tactics. These radio shows are online.
This group is driven by self interest. Facts don't matter to them, only their own desires.
Google the following, Turtles, Lies and Gill Nets to listen to a half hour special on this matter.

All CFRG is is a free Blogger site. CFRG is not an incorporated group, they don't have a web site, there are no meetings, they have no paid members, they have no members at all. The only way to "join" their free blogger blog site is to e-mail them and they decide whether or not you can join their club.

Let me give you an example of the lies they propigate. They claim that local commercial fishermen are the reason for poor speckled trout populations. CFRG claim that is the reason they want speckled trout given gamefish status and have actively rallied the state legislature for it. (Gamefish status bans commercial take and only allows recreational)

The fact is that in North Carolina recreational fishermen catch over three times the amount of speckled trout than commercial fishermen do. Go over to the NC Division of Marine Fisheries site. All Recreational and commercial landings are there.



By the way-Go over to the Karen Beasly Turtle Hospital web site. There they list all of their "patients" (turtles) for the past 13 years. Each turtle listed has described what was wrong with it when it was brought in. Of the hundreds and hundreds of turtles brought in over the 13 year period only about 8% were associated with any fishing gear. (Fishing gear interactions includes both recreational and commercial gear.)
In fact-Fishing gear was the least cause of any injury/illness to the turtles.

I spent three decades on the water producing TV and film for folks like ESPN, National Geographic, National Marine Fisheries Service, Sea Grant, Duke, Stanford, etc. I have been out with all types of fisheries, fishermen, fish and spent over 100 days a year on the water for most of my professional career. I have seen first hand countless types of commercial and recreational fishing.
This I can tell you-The battle isn't about resource. The battle is about fishing rights.

And if you like fresh, locally caught seafood-Thank a North Carolina commercial fisherman.

I am no fan of fishermen, recreational or commercial. Both varieties of "sportsmen" litter up the beaches and waterways with their discarded fishing line, fishhooks (which I have personally been injured by), discarded bait containers, nets and traps, not to mention the cigarette butts and beer cans you find thrown around the beach and lakeshores and riverbanks wherever fishermen go.

Fishing is a blood sport, and in my opinion, leads to other forms of cruelty. I will spare you the tales of animal cruelty that I've heard of fishermen engaging in, not to mention the use of live bait. In all likelihood, some sort of fisherman was responsible for the death of the turtle that was tied up and dragged.

I went to the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital website. Out of the 34 turtles admitted in 2009, 8 of them were injured by fishing paraphernalia. That's over 20%. These animals have a hard enough time surviving, they don't need fishermen adding to their peril.

Let me ask you this: in the long career on the water with fishermen that you mentioned, have you tried to educate these fishermen about the damage that their discarded lines, hooks and nets do? Have you tried to teach them to discard their cigarette butts and beer cans responsibly? I certainly hope so.

[Bill Hitchcock]

The vast majority of the people who fish are not fishermen. Fishing for these folks is an activity mixed in with golf, boat rides, site seeing tours, beaching, etc.
The commercial fisherman and the ardent recreational angler generally are good stewards of the resource. They don't carelessly discard lines and hooks because they don't want to have happen to them what happened to you. (Anybody that has fished for any length of time has had an injury or two)
And the thing the commercial fisherman and the ardent recreational fishermen hate the most is by-catch. (By-catch is any non-targeted species). By-catch is a waste of time, money and energy.
There isn't a single commercial or ardent recreational fisherman that wants anything to do with a turtle.

Caveat-There's "one" in every crowd. No group of people is idiot free.

[burdell]

Originally Posted by Ellise

Don't you just love the human race?

I do, the people who do these things are sub-human.