It is my understanding from listening to Skip and some others at the South East Swordfish Club meetings as well as HMS personel that reporting your catch will insure that we as sportsmen get our allotment of fish. There is a quota that is alloted to the US and if we don't use it it will be reallocated to the longliners or worse, it could be alloted to other countries.
There are now aplications being concidered by the Federal Marine Fiseries Dept. To allow limited longlineing in our area for "reaserch". If we are not careful we could lose out on our share of the quota.
If there is anyone out there with more information of if I have inaccurate informatin I would like to here it. We all have a lot invested in this. Lets not turn a blind eye to what is happing in Washington.