Comment from John Nichols

I am a general cat fishermen. I have worked for years and spent a lot of money (more then 300,000) chasing the bluefin with some results. In all my years I have seen very little dead discards by my friends in these categories. General, Angling and Harpoon category fishermen are the most selective of the fishing methods used. Also these same 3 categories spend the most money in a community on a per person basis from bait to tackle and also in buying boats. The long line fishery has shown and continues to show that they cannot fish selectively as does the purse seine fishery. To punish the single fish categories so that the multiple fish categories can prosper is totally unfair and should not happen. By punishing the single fish categories you are also punishing the communities and businesses which support them and in these hard economic times is nonproductive and wasteful. It will also cause the loss of jobs at a bad economic time. These dead discards also are detrimental to the rebuilding of the tuna stocks but this does not seem to enter into NMFS thinking. We know that NMFS is trying to help the longline fishery catch more of their quota of sword fish. In any other fishery when certain quotas are reached the fishery is shut down. Whether it is the target species or not. NMFS looks like they want to do anything they can to not shut the longliners down. Also NMFS has shown in the past through their actions that they would like to see the tuna fishery ended to some extent. Is this just another way of big government helping the people with the most money and telling the little person they do not matter again. That is what it looks like. NMFS needs to hold the people responsible and make sure there is compliance by at sea monitoring using real time data and not just go after the little guy because it is easier. In this day and age the technology for real time data is now available to anyone who needs it and it is not that expensive anymore.