Press of Atlatic City Aug 17th
Summer flounder limits likely to increase again next summer as numbers continue to rebound
The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which regulates summer flounder, recommended increasing the 2012 harvest by 1.6 million pounds to 35.55 million pounds, at a meeting this week.
The proposed harvest for 2012 is a 125 percent increase over the lowest year, the 2008 quota of 15.77 million pounds.
The recommendation, which still has to be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service, would set the commercial harvest at 19.59 million pounds and the recreational harvest at 15.96 million pounds. The actual catches would be lower as some fish are reserved for a program called "research set asides." There can also be an allowance for dead fish that are discarded. The actual catch is projected to be 12.63 million pounds for anglers and 18.95 million pounds for commercial net fishermen in 2012.
The news was welcomed by an environmental group that had pushed for strict flounder regulations as a way to increase stocks. Lee Crockett, of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Federal Fisheries Reform Project, called it a "success story" for policies put in place to stop overfishing and rebuild depleted stocks.
"If we get the fishing rate set at sustainable levels, or with depleted stocks reduce catches so they can rebuild, they will. What's good about this is it means more fish rather than cuts. This is what we hope happens with sound management," Crockett said.
The effort began in 1996 with a federal law, the Sustainable Fisheries Act, which was a reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the nation's primary fishing law. The 1996 act set strict timetables to rebuild fish stocks. Lawsuits and other issues put off the rebuilding plan for summer flounder, but in 2008 a goal was put in place to have the "spawning stock biomass" of summer flounder at 132.4 million pounds by Jan. 1, 2013.
The SSB reached 117.9 million pounds when data was collected in 2009. Crocket said the latest data puts the SSB at 163.4 million pounds, or at 123 percent of the target.
Commercial fishermen traditionally get 60 percent of the East Coast quota, with New Jersey fishermen getting 16.72 percent. Anglers get 40 percent of the quota for the coast; New Jersey anglers get 39.2 percent of that.
Pew Charitable Trusts put out a study in 2009 that said rebuilding the populations of summer flounder, bluefish, black sea bass and butterfish would increase economic benefits for the fishing industry by $570 million a year. This included a $536 million boost to the recreational sector, mostly due to summer flounder.
The report was designed partly to support the federal law calling for fish stocks to be rebuilt. Crockett said such plans include some "initial hardships" as catches are cut, but large economic gains when stocks are rebuilt and the harvest is increased.
"We look at this as evidence that the Magnuson Act works. You follow the law and follow the science and good things happen," Crockett said.
If the quota is increased for 2012, the individual states would determine how the shares are doled out. It could mean more fish landed per day, a longer season or a lower minimum fish size. New Jersey usually makes such decisions in March.
