Obama Makes It Illegal To Import Billfish Into Continental U.S.
October 11, 2012 | 1 min to read
President Obama on Friday signed into law the Billfish Conservation Act, which bans the importation of sailfish, marlin and spearfish in the continental United States. The new law resulted from collaboration among a diverse coalition of angling and conservation groups and rare bipartisan agreement in Congress. It does not apply to swordfish, which NOAA Fisheries deems fully recovered. Prior to the enactment, the United States was the largest billfish importer in the world.
NOAA Fisheries has announced it will re-open the commercial harvest of golden tilefish in the South Atlantic on Oct. 9, but the recreational harvest of the tasty, deepwater species will be closed for the remainder of the year. The agency says the golden tilefish stock is healthy, and it plans to increase the annual catch limit. But the recreational fishery will not re-open in 2012 because the annual limit was fulfilled earlier in the year.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Miami Herald