Comment from Michael Athorn, Southern Offshore Fishing Association

The petitions submitted by Oceana and the other NGO's collected signatures from well meaning but misinformed people by publishing innacurate figures and representing poor extrapolations of fatally flawed or limited data as fact. Not once did these NGO's tell the public that only 18 sea turtle interactions were observed in the 18 months that observer coverage was gathered, nor did they once tell the public that of 18 interactions in 18 months, seven came on one trip that was not even a reef fish trip but was targeting shark. Oceana demands a prohibition of use of squid as bait in waters deeper than 55 fathoms with absolutely no scientific evidence or even study to back up their guess that this would make any difference. Oceana has absolutely no idea what kind of bait is going on a bottom longline hook and apparently is ignorant of the fact that when bottom longliners use "squid" they are not using whole squid as the pelagic longliners do but are using small (often salted) chunks of what would otherwise be a wasted byproduct of the Pacific giant squid fishery, the wings. The petitions and the demands are based not on science but on guesswork and poorly extrapolated figures from a tiny data set. Even including the latest available figures in that data set, the ones from 2008, hugely changes the results but doing this would represent an inconvenient truth for these NGO Conservation Groups who rely on emotion and skewed numbers to achieve their goals. The attached file was also submitted and has more information.