[Bill McIntyre]

Kale,

I don't think I've heard of a ticket either, but I don't want to be the test case. As you said, I've heard of divers getting conflicting reports for different wardens. I hate to keep beating the same drum, but if the wardens responsible for enforcing the law don't know for sure what the law says, how the hell is the average citizen supposed to know?

While I'm on this rant, here is another example. Two or three years ago, the Fish and Game Commission decided to allow boat limits. A boat limit means that if I don't take my limit, you can take your limit and the extra fish to make up my limit as long as the boat doesn't have more fish than the individual limits multiplied times the number of people on the boat.

At first I was naive and thought this applied to spearfishermen as well as rod and reel fisherman, but at the time, the Deputy Director of the DFG was a diver and a participant in the Freedivelist, so I asked him. He said it didn't apply to divers since the key word in the regulation was "anglers" and we were not anglers.

Soon after that, I was boarded by the DFG at Catalina Island, and discussed the new regulation with the wardens who boarded my boat. They thought it applied to divers too, but I told them I didn't think so. The next week I was out there again, and the same guys came over to tell me that I was right.

In this case I was safe since I knew the rules better than they did, but its still disconcerting to me that the guys in charge of enforcing the law don't know what it says.

Oh hell, one more. In the late 70s, they closed the coast from Palos Verdes Point to Dana Point for abalone for 10 years to let them replenish. It turned out that it never got opened again, but that is beside the point.

There was a spot off of Dana Point where I could almost always get my limit of four pink abs in about 40 feet of water, so I wanted to know exactly where the line was drawn. One day when I came back to the launch ramp at Dana Point a warden was checking catchs. I asked him exactly where the line was drawn, and he said it was "straight off Dana Point." I explained that when I was out off the point in a boat, there was no obvious place that could be called "the point," and that even if there was, what does "straight off" mean? In other words, I need a compass bearing. He got all huffy, and I told him that I was just trying to obey the law, but I didn't want to pass up abs that were legal. When you argue with them, they assume that you are trying to find a way to break the law rather than make sure that you are in compliance.

The next year the regulation was rewritten so that the southern boundary of the closed area was a line that extended straight off of the Dana Point breakwater. That put my abs off limits but at least is was clear and definitive. It would be nice if all the regulations could be clear.