Look below to locate your county and click beside your State Representative. Then fill out the form below and click submit to email your State Representative a letter to Save Our Pogies.
Reprentative Name
County
Put in your personal information
Name:
Email:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip:
Letter Reads:
Dear [recipient name will be inserted automatically if you clicked on their name]
I would like to inform you of an issue that is very important to me that I hope you will help support. As an avid sport fisherman, the lifeblood of game fish along our coast is a fish called a menhaden [also known as a pogy]. Virtually every fish that swims eats these baitfish as well as pelicans and porpoises. The fish are found in large schools of thousands of fish, generally right along the beaches within State controlled waters [3 miles]. The spring, summer, and fall months are the primary times when various game fish [King Mackerel, Cobia, Trout, Flounder, Tarpon] are migrating through our coastal waters and large commercial net boats are targeting the menhaden. Their "purse" seines have the capability to encircle large schools of these bait fish and in a matter of days can virtually wipe out the entire population along the entire coastal area. The result is the game fish, bird, and porpoises that depend upon these bait fish for their food source are deprived of their food source thus causing them to leave our waters in search of food sources in other areas. This has a negative impact on the multi million-dollar sport fishery that exists along our coast and therefore has long ranging effect on many aspects of our State's economy. When the baitfish are gone, the predator gamefish fish leave and when the gamefish leave the fishermen leave.
My request of you is to provide your support to the effort being established to "Save Our Pogies" [www.saveourpogies.com]. A bill will be introduced by Representative Bonner Stiller[Brunswick County] to ban commercial menhaden netting from our coastal waters Your support is greatly appreciated.
