Leary Comment

Mr. Leary supports the proposed emergency action because the current monkfish possession limits are too small to enable him to afford to build a monkfish net to target monkfish. He states that with the reduction in groundfish quotas for 2013, the proposed monkfish emergency action will help diversify his fishing gear and mitigate his change in fishing behavior. He also believes wasteful discards will be avoided. He suggests that NMFS should review landings at the end of the 180 period to see if monkfish landings are close to the total allowable landings limit before renewing the emergency action for another 180 days to prevent the total allowable landings from being exceeded. See attached file.