Who Has It Wrong?

Not to carp unduly about The Times, but we also have a quarrel with a signed opinion piece, called "Haul Seiners Have It All Wrong," that appeared in its Long Island section on Sunday.

It was written by the chairman of the Coastal Conservation Association of New York, Charles Witek 3d, who called haulseiners the "strip miners of the inshore sea," and said their nets kill thousands of bluefish and other untargeted species, even sea birds.

According to Mr. Witek, the haulseiners' sole motive is greed. He believes that if they are allowed to pursue a modified version of the fishery banned by the state in 1990, they would, in effect, deplete striped bass stocks singlehandedly.

This despite the facts that, under a proposal now under consideration, the nets would be shorter and the fishermen would not be allowed to set on weekends or without an independent observer as witness.

Opinions are opinions, of course, although we would have preferred to see Mr. Witek's as a letter to the editor rather than as an op-ed piece, which implies that what is written is responsible comment.

The best opinions are supported by fact and come from reliable sources. The Times should have identified Mr. Witek's organization for what it is: "one of the more radical sportfishing groups which advocates the elimination of any commercial striped bass fishery in New York," according to an official of the State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Mr. Witek blames "netters" for overfishing when in fact recreational fisheries have taken a far greater share of the popular inshore sport and food fish. State and Federal statistics also show that sportfishing has resulted in the harvest of as much or more fluke, winter flounder, blackfish, and sea bass than their commercial counterparts have taken over the past decade.

As Mr. Witek states, commercial bass fishermen have failed to fill their 520,000-pound striped bass quota in recent years. What he neglects to say is that, because they have no quota, sportfishermen were free to remove well over three million pounds of stripers from the sea last year, a trend that shows evidence of increasing.

When the disparity between the recreational and commercial catch of bass is acknowledged, the 35 East End haul-seine fishermen, especially with their quota, size limits, and the modified gear they now have proposed, present a rather weak threat, if any, to the fishery.