Comment from Gwen Murtha

I am not certain how this amendment will be implemented. Will the commercial and recreational fisheries be responsible for reporting how many pounds of Red groupers they catch, or will agency employees stop and search fishing boats? How will you determine if the annual catch limits are exceeded? How will the sectors know how close they are to the annual catch limits? Will everyone in the recreational sector get together, weigh their catches and figure out how close they are to catching 56% of 647,000 lbs of red grouper fish? If annual catch limits are exceeded in 2012 and the Assistant Administrator for Fisheries files a notification that both the commercial and recreational sectors will not have an increase in their respective sector ACLs in the following year, what stops either sector from exceeding the catch limits again? How will you inform fishers of the amendment?