THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210410
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
A federal judge Wednesday partially lifted a government ban on catching weakfish in deep offshore waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar ruled that the ban still can take effect today, as planned, from Maine to Florida - but not in North Carolina, where 70 percent of the nation's weakfish are caught annually.
His ruling, however, does not mean an open season on weakfish in North Carolina. State regulations will keep fishermen from trawling for weakfish south of Cape Hatteras, where most are found during the key winter harvest.
Also known as gray trout, weakfish are the second most valuable finfish netted in North Carolina, and are an important species in Virginia as well, where more than 1 million pounds were sold last year as a cheap sea trout.
The U.S. Commerce Department maintains that its ban is necessary to help reverse a serious decline in weakfish. Department biologists estimate the population has slipped from 54.4 metric tons in 1979 to 19.1 metric tons last year.
But six seafood and commercial fishing groups from North Carolina and Virginia are challenging the ban in federal court, arguing that it not only is based on flawed science but also is unconstitutional.
In his ruling, Doumar sided with fishing groups who argued that it is only fair that they continue to fish in North Carolina until the constitutional issue is decided.
Group officials were pleased Wednesday with Doumar's decision to allow a limited catch off North Carolina this winter, but said the real fight remains ahead.
``It gives us a stay of execution, you could say, until we can get back to Judge Doumar's court and really talk about this moratorium,'' said Jerry Schill, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, a New Bern-based lobbying group for commercial fishing interests.
Doumar is scheduled to hear arguments Feb. 8 in Norfolk on the legitimacy of the ban, which seeks to bar all weakfish harvests in federal waters from 3 to 200 miles offshore.
His ruling Wednesday does nothing, however, to change a North Carolina plan that bans all flynet trawling in ocean waters south of Cape Hatteras. Trawling is the most popular way to catch weakfish during winter months.
This all means that watermen must travel north of Hatteras to legally trawl for weakfish. And given the cold weather and the time it takes to reach these waters, officials estimate a relatively small catch the next two months.
Still, conservationists and government officials fear that the ruling defeats the underlying intent of the ban - to stop North Carolina from capturing so many weakfish that otherwise would migrate north and supply states in the mid-Atlantic and New England.
``Without the immediate conservation measure of a temporary ban on fishing for weakfish to force rebuilding of the stock, all public users of the weakfish resource along the entire coast would experience the severe and long-term impact of a complete stock collapse,'' said Rollie Schmitten, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The government first started regulating weakfish in 1985. But, as government officials have complained, few states abided by protection plans back then, leading to the current crunch and a proposed moratorium.
While weakfish stocks have consistantly decreased since the 1980s, they showed a slight increase last year, said Louis B. Daniel, a biologist with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, who opposes the moratorium.
Daniel and other North Carolina officials argue that the federal ban, if approved, would allow fishermen to still trawl offshore - and in the process, accidently net weakfish, which invariably die when ensnared this way.
Under the North Carolina plan, all trawling is banned south of Hatteras, thus eliminating any chance of deadly bycatch, Daniel said.
If the federal ban takes effect in North Carolina after the court battle in February, Norfolk seafood merchant George Georgiades said he could lose 45 percent to 55 percent of his winter merchadise. by CNB