Comment from David Conway

Amendment 17B needlessly threatens a healthy and productive fishery in Southeast Florida and in the Keys--a fishery that is enjoyed by thousands of people annually and also provides important support for an economy based on sportfishing and recreational tourism. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, using a machete where a scalpel is needed, or not being able to see the forest for the trees...we have to do better than this in fishery management to maintain the respect for management's authority. When other recent actions of the SAFMC have carved up its managerial district like a Thanksgiving turkey and given different regulations to different regions, to lump the Florida Keys into this Amendment's authority--the Keys whose offshore depths and contours and the species that inhabit them---are so different than other vast stretches of ocean under the SAFMC authority--is an absurdity and really an outrage. The limits on species in these depths are already tight and quite restrictive. We really have to do better than implement blanket no fishing regulations. It's a failure of managerial policy.