Interesting article on red snapper in Bama

What a sham that thing is. That's literally letting the inmates run the asylum.

I thought this was interesting:

quote:

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The vote that Barber mentions has become a point of contention for some. While federal websites report that the IFQ passed with 81 percent support from commercial fishermen, it was not a typical, one-man/one-vote poll. Instead, only the top 167 fishermen — those who had caught at least 5,000 pounds of snapper the previous year — were allowed to vote, and their votes were weighted according to how many fish they caught. For instance, a vote by a captain who caught 5 percent of the harvest counted as 5 percent of the total vote.

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quote:

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Meanwhile, about 350 of their fellow fishermen were not allowed to vote. In the end, the top fishermen who voted for the IFQ were the very fishermen who stood to benefit the most under the new system. In effect, they were allowed to vote for a system that has granted them the rights to the lion's share of the Gulf's snapper harvest each year since 2007. And the people who stood to lose the most could not vote at all.

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That's pretty crazy.

I don't keep track of commercial because frick all of them but when the Feds kept screwing recreational here in Louisiana we stated our own state season.