Excess of Commercial Fishing Licenses

It would seem to me that the commercial fishermen are overabundant. The number of traps in the waters off our Southern coast has increased from about 500 to an estimated 4,500.

The licensing agencies for commercial fishing should regulate the number of permits allowed for a given area along the coast. It is not the sportfishermen who are depleting the resources of our oceans, but the overpopulation of commercial traps. They are depleting their own profits.

As a sportfisherman, I can attest to the fact that one or two legal lobsters on any given night is a good catch.

I have been diving for three years and have gone out to an area where there is reef to dive and there are traps around the reef, so does that make me a poacher if I take a lobster out of the reef? We cannot dive in very many areas where there are no traps. I do not take lobsters from traps and never will. This is not sportfishing. We are not out to get the commercial fishermen at all.

In short, we need to regulate licensed commercial fishing before there are no more resources to make a living from.

PAT HERRING

Buena Park