Hi All,
As promised, here is a copy of the full story I wrote for The Coast Star after attending Monday night's meeting in Manasquan with Frank Pallone:Fluke rally draws hundreds to Squan
By Daniel Nee
MANASQUAN —Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at the Elks Lodge, here, Rep. Frank Pallone [D—6] told hundreds of anglers at a rally on Monday he will introduce a bill to Congress that could help save the summer flounder fishery in New Jersey.
The rally —— organized by the Brielle-based Save The Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, a group of party and charter boat captains and business owners from Monmouth and Ocean counties —— brought the fishing public together with politicians and industry members for the first time to call for flexibility in fisheries management.
The bone of contention for anglers and industry members are the strict and arbitrary rebuilding targets for summer flounder [fluke] contained in the Magnuson—Stevens Act, a federal law regulating the rebuilding of fisheries. Though scientific data recognizes that fluke stocks have doubled since 1993 and are possibly at their highest levels in recorded history, anglers face a fishing ban in 2009 since the fluke biomass —— the total weight of all of the fluke off the East Coast —— is projected to fall short of the 204 million pounds the law requires by 2013.
New Jersey —— and the Monmouth and Ocean County area in particular —— would be hard hit by a closure, putting party boats, charter captains, marine retailers and even some restaurants at risk of bankruptcy.
While fisheries management laws help maintain fish stocks to insure a healthy fishing industry, the Magnuson—Stevens Act hamstrings federal regulators who have no flexibility in applying the rebuilding targets. Attorneys hired by the
Pew Charitable Trust —— a funding source for various national environmental groups —— have sued to maintain the inflexible nature of the law, claiming federal regulators must strictly adhere to rebuilding targets.
Rep. Pallone said Monday that he hopes to help change the law to make it more flexible.
“I have put together a bill that we are going to try and introduce this week,” Rep. Pallone said. “It will provide the secretary of NOAA [National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration] authority to apply flexibility to rebuilding deadlines.”
Rep. Pallone explained that the law would allow fisheries managers in the National Marine Fisheries Service [NMFS], the branch of the NOAA which sets regulations and applies rebuilding laws, to take into account everything from population levels to predator-prey relationships in reaching a rebuilding target for a certain species of fish.
“What we’re saying [in the bill] is that there are a lot of things that contribute to whether or not a stock is rebuilding, and we want these types of things to be a basis for flexibility,” Rep. Pallone said.
Rep. Pallone’s bill would allow flexibility in setting the target date to reach the required biomass levels set in the Magnuson—Stevens Act, inuring a healthy stock and a viable commercial and recreational fishery at the same time.
If the bill were to be signed into law by the president, regulators could begin applying flexibility to rebuilding targets the following season.
‘A long haul’
Though Rep. Pallone will sponsor the bill in the House of Representatives, it will need widespread bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate to be sent to the Oval Office to be signed into law.
“It is going to be a long haul,” Rep. Pallone said, after the cheers over his announcement subsided. “We’re up against plenty of powerful interests who don’t want this to happen, but I believe if you get a lot of support from the fishing community, this will be done.”
Rep. Pallone said grassroots support from the fishing community is important, since the Magnuson—Stevens Act was reauthorized in 2006, and it would be unusual for Congress to reopen discussion on such a recently reauthorized law.
State Senator Sean T. Kean [R—11] also spoke at the rally, cheering on Rep. Pallone’s bill and pledging his legislative support from the state level.
Sen. Kean said he and Sen. John Adler [D-6] would co-sponsor legislation in the Senate to send a joint resolution from the New Jersey Legislature to Congress urging the passage of Rep. Pallone’s bill. Sen. Kean said Assemblyman Dave Rible [R—11] would sponsor the corresponding legislation in the New Jersey State Assembly.
“We will send it to Congress as a statement about how the people of New Jersey, through their legislature, feel about [this] issue,” said Sen. Kean.
But even if the efforts to pass the bill in Congress are successful, federal regulators will need evidence to apply the allowable flexibility to fluke in New Jersey.
The Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund is hoping to raise enough money to hire scientists to conduct fair and unbiased surveys of fluke stocks, in hopes of proving government figures —— as well as the figures of environmental groups —— wrong.
A question of science
According to Ray Bogan, legal counsel for the fund, commercial fishermen in the past have funded efforts to dispute what they saw as inaccurate scientific data obtained by regulators. When the government’s data was eventually proven wrong by privately funded scientific efforts, regulators admitted their mistakes and granted the commercial fishermen relief from regulations based on the flawed data. The fund is hoping to be able to engage in a similar effort to obtain updated and accurate scientific figures on fluke stocks and present them to government regulators who may be able to apply flexibility to recreational fishing interests if Rep. Pallone’s bill becomes law.
Mr. Bogan said that since science can prove fluke stocks are at record levels, the case can be made to regulators that the rebuilding process is trending upwards, and size limits can be raised to support a more successful recreational fishery.
“As long as the stock is in better shape, as long as the stock has shown a trend towards rebuilding, we argue that we should be allowed to catch enough fish so that people can earn a livelihood and have reasonable access to the resource,” said Mr. Bogan. “We need federal legislators to know that the legislature of New Jersey supports this concept.”
“The way the law is written, the science is the law, and law has no ability to recognize that the science is inexact,” said Capt. Tony Bogan, whose family owns a fleet of party boats that sail from Brielle and Point Pleasant Beach.
“They claim [the fluke fishery] about halfway to being rebuilt,” Capt. Bogan said. “In the 77 years that my family has been in the Manasquan Inlet, no one can recall seeing fluke fishing the likes of which we see now. And this is something that is repeated from Massachusetts to North Carolina and from offshore to the back bays.
“The science says ‘All those fluke you see, you’re only halfway there.’ In other words, we have to double the amount of fluke in the ocean by 2013, before they will consider us to be rebuilt,” Capt. Bogan continued.
Capt. Bogan said the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund was considering working with the Partnership for Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Science, a group which conducts scientific surveys on fish stocks it believes the government has poor scientific data on to help correct the data.
“Our basic premise is that either that target [204 million pounds by 2013] is such an unrealistic number to assume it can be reached, or their estimates that we are only halfway there are off,” Capt. Bogan said.
Already, there are scientists who support such a premise. On Dec. 5, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans —— of which Rep. Pallone is a senior member —— held a hearing on the Magnuson—Stevens Act.
Dr. Michael Sessenwine, a visiting scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Marine Science Consultant, testified at the hearing that “it is not reasonable to expect that the rebuilding to an uncertain estimate… can be achieved on a schedule with a high degree of certainty.”
Local impact
For the coming season, the fluke quota, the amount of fish allowed to be taken from the ocean, has already been cut. That translates into heftier size regulations for anglers, which means more fish will have to be thrown back than kept. This poses a threat to party boats, who may be run out of business if people cannot keep the fish they pay to catch.
Realizing the impact that fluke regulations have on the local economy led the Brielle Chamber of Commerce to donate $500 to the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund.
“It’s something that we’ve been concerned about for well over a year,” said Mr. Higgins. “I don’t think it is just a fishing issue, as all of the ancillary business in Brielle, and at the Jersey Shore in general, will be terribly affected if the fluke fishery is shut down.”
Mr. Higgins said local party boats, tackle shops, even gift shops, restaurants and liquor stores, could face a drop in business if the influx of recreational anglers into the area dries up.
“If they can’t catch fluke, they’re not going to come down,” Mr. Higgins said of some summer visitors. “When our organization looked at this, we realized it’s not just a fishing issue and that all of the small businesses in Brielle could be impacted negatively.”
Mr. Higgins said he hopes other local chambers of commerce follow the lead of Brielle.
“You’ve got towns like Belmar that spent a lot of money to build that beautiful marina,” said Mr. Higgins. “There are seven or eight head [party] boats there, if they can’t go out and catch fluke, it was all for naught.
Dave Arbeitman, owner of The Reel Seat bait and tackle shop in Brielle and one of the founder of the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, said a closure of the fluke fishery would have a “dramatic effect” on the entire area.
“I know that if they closed the fishery as is expected in 2009, that somewhere by either the end of 2009 or no longer than halfway through 2010, I’ll be closing my doors,” Mr. Arbeitman said. “There are other tackle shops in this area that would close within months.”
Mr. Arbeitman said businesses from Dunkin’ Donuts, where anglers stop in the morning before fishing, to Point Bay Fuel which provides diesel to party and charter boats would be affected.
“People think that it’s just some people who come down to go fishing and then go home,” said Mr. Arbeitman. “There’s a whole economy supported by this.”
The Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund is planning more public meetings in different areas of New Jersey. To keep tabs on the group’s activities, visit the group’s Web site at
www.ssfff.net.
