The following was sent to me by local New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council member Ed Goldman. It gives his take on the Summer Flounder situation. Please take time to read it and continue reading on the Save Summer Flounder Fisheries Fund web page and see how serious this is.
THE SUMMER FLOUNDER SITUATION
Summer flounder has been under a 10-year rebuilding plan since 2000. The latest assessments indicate that while the stock was at the highest level ever recorded, we are only half way to the arbitrary rebuilding target of 197 million pounds, a level of biomass never experienced in the fishery. Under the present criteria, overfishing is occurring in the summer flounder fishery. This finding prompted the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to impose pending severe reductions of the summer flounder quota in the coming years. The reductions would give us the lowest quota ever since the management of fluke. Letters to the Council in late 2007 from Dr. Hogarth, head of NMFS and Ms. Kurkul, regional administrator for NMFS warn of a shutdown of the recreational fluke fishery if the fishery is not constrained to lower that the current limits to ensure that the rebuilding efforts reach the goals mandated by the MSAR.
On December 9, 2006, the Magnuson Stevens fishery Conservation and Management Act Reauthorization (MSAR) was passed. Included, was a provision that allowed the Secretary of Commerce to extend the summer flounder rebuilding period 3 years if overfishing was not occurring in the fishery. The terms overfished and overfishing are subjective terms.
Overfished, as recently defined by one national marine conservation organization means that "the spawning stock has been depleted below a safe level and not enough spawning-age fish remain for the population to sustain itself unless harvest is reduced". There is little doubt that most Americans and probably most congressional representatives who voted for the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA) would accept this as the proper definition of "overfished". Those of us who are concerned about the future of our fisheries would support strict measures to insure the health of any species in such a predicament even if it meant hardship for those involved in that fishery. In the summer flounder fishery, however, this is not the definition of overfished upon which the NMFS bases its threats of severe restrictions and a possible shutting down the fishery in the near future. In this case the NMFS definition declares a fishery overfished if it has not reached a threshold stock size based upon calculations, a biological model and growth rates experienced at various times over the past 25 years.
Currently, factors, which would impact the growth of the summer flounder stock, are ignored in the rebuilding efforts. Factors such as predator-prey relationships, coastal development and pollution, to name a few, are not considered in the rebuilding plan. We manage in a single-species mode while the real world is in an Ecosystem mode. We are striving to change our management strategies to an ecosystem based management regime, but this is in its infancy at this time. Also, economic impacts of our management decisions are not taken into account at the Council level although the MSAR states that they should be considered.
Should we try to reach this target? Yes. Should we severely restrict catches and put thousands of businesses located on the entire coast that support this fishery out of business while we experiment to see if we can get there? There are hundreds of charter boats, marinas, restaurants, tackle shops, hotels and other businesses that rely on the summer flounder fishery to survive. We have no right to sacrifice the livelihood of these people and the businesses that have existed for generations to achieve an arbitrary biomass in an arbitrary time frame when we have a healthy and possibly recovered fishery. As long as the biomass is rebuilding is it necessary to put people out of business and destroy the infrastructure of our marine recreational industry?
On December 27, 2007 NMFS published the 2008 final Specifications for Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass. The total allowable landings for summer flounder will be 15.77 million lbs. Summer Flounder will be managed on a state-by-state basis in 2008 as opposed to a coast wide management plan with a peak seasonal closure of June or July as NMFS had favored. I’m guessing that for New Jersey this means that we will be able to have a season in length comparable to 2007 (May 26th to Sept. 10th) with a minimum size of somewhere between 18” to 18 ½ “ and a smaller bag limit. There is a possibility that these severe limits will not constrain NJ’s recreational catch limit and if this occurs coast wide, NMFS will close down the recreational harvest in 2009 as they have threatened.
This year we will also be allowed to catch less scup and sea bass will remain status quo. As other stocks are rebuilding we will be faced with the same scenario as summer flounder. It is for these reasons that the recreational fishing community is urging Congress to amend the MSAR to allow for rebuilding efforts to continue, but not at the expense of extreme adverse economic impacts to the recreational community and our national economy.
Respectfully,
Ed Goldman
NJ Marine
Fisheries Council
Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council
