Fishing industry fears state bills
LANSING » The once vibrant commercial fishing industry in Michigan has dwindled down from thousands of businesses to just 13 fulltime fisheries.
And those that are left are afraid legislation in a state Senate committee could be the end of the industry all together, M-Live. com reported. That their mom-and-pop style operations would move out of the Great Lakes for good, and leave the door open only for large, investor-style corporations to take over the industry.
“What it does is it finally just chokes us out,” said Amber Peterson, operator of The Fish Monger’s Wife, one of the remaining commercial fisheries. “It doesn’t even offer us the dignity of a quick death.”
House Bills 4567, 4568, and 4569 would add new regulations for commercial fishers - like providing the Department of Natural Resources with GPS coordinates of their nets and gear when being used in the Great Lakes and require lost or tampered with gear to be reported.
The major concern with the legislation, the parts of the bills that commercial fishers say are industry threatening, are the provisions that permanently prevent commercial fishers from fishing for perch, walleye, and lake trout. This would only leave them whitefish, a fish they say is dwindling in numbers because it’s being eaten by lake trout.
Commercial fishers have had zero quota on lake trout and walleye and only recreational anglers have been allowed to fish from them for years. Perch has only able to be taken in the Saginaw Bay. Peterson said commercial fishers had an understanding that eventually, once the numbers on those types of fish were up again, that they would again be able to take those fish.
These bills would permanently make those three types of fish unavailable to commercial fishers.
This is all part of an ongoing battle in the Great Lakes between commercial fishing and sport fishing. Similar legislation was introduced last session that didn’t get a committee hearing, along with competing legislation to allow for commercial lake trout fishing.
The lake trout fishing bill didn’t make it to the governor’s desk but it did pass the state Senate before dying in the House chamber.
The DNR is on board with bills favored by recreational sports fishing. After steadily making their way through the state House, the Senate Natural Resources committee has been taking testimony on the bills for weeks.
The Department of Natural Resources said it supports the bills because it said the state’s regulatory code is long overdue for an update.
The most recent update to commercial fishing regulations was in 1971, said Seth Herbst, Aquatic Species and Regulatory Affairs Unit Manager for DNR’s Fisheries Division.
“Just a way to help bring our state license commercial fishing industry into the modern era because right now our law enforcement division has significant struggles enforcing the industry based on our current regulations,” he said.