Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

CCA Position on Addendum VIII
to the Summer Flounder Plan

The Coastal Conservation Association appreciates the opportunity to comment on Addendum VIII to the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan (the "Plan"), which proposes a number of strategies designed to keep the summer flounder recreational harvest at or below mandated levels.

The recreational fishery should be constrained within its portion of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC). However, the means used to constrain the recreational fishery must be different from those used to control the commercial fishery, since the commercial and recreational sectors fish in different ways and their respective harvests are calculated differently.

The commercial fishery is comprised of a relatively small number of vessels that harvest large quantities of fish. Many commercial vessels are highly mobile and can travel long distances to exploit local fish abundance. Thus commercial fishermen can catch or exceed their quota whether the population is increasing or decreasing. Because commercial fishermen have the ability to catch large numbers of fish regardless of the state of the stock, and because commercial landings can be reported in near real time, a hard TAC and paybacks for overages make sense.

The recreational fishery is made up of a large number of small vessels that travel short distances. On average, individual anglers catch at most two or three flounder per outing. The number of outings is directly related to the size of the flounder population, local abundance and prevailing weather at the time fish are available. Because the recreational harvest is comprised of the small individual catches of a large number of anglers, no one has devised a practical method to determine harvest in real time. The Marine Recreational Fishing Statistics Survey (MRFSS) can, at best, provide an estimate of harvest months after it took place. Because recreational harvest is dependent on so many naturally occurring variables, catch level predictions can be wildly inaccurate.

In addition, the TAC is expressed in pounds. MRFSS estimates the catch in numbers and then uses a weight conversion estimate to calculate the weight of the recreational harvest. The harvest poundage is actually an estimate of the catch times an estimate of the weight at age. Again, this is appropriate for estimating coastwide harvest relative to previous years’ harvest, but, we believe, inappropriate as a quota management tool.

Given these facts, a hard TAC and paybacks are not appropriate. A soft TAC with targets is far preferable.

CCA is aware of the need for an addendum to address the recreational summer flounder harvest from 1996 through 2001. However, the 2002 harvest limit was not exceeded, an indication regulations may be working.

The recreational catch of summer flounder is roughly proportional to the species’ population. As the population expands and flounder become more available to anglers, effort and catch will expand. The present allocation of the fishery reflects a time when the summer flounder population was declining and fish were not widely available to anglers, thus inflating the commercial share of the catch relative to the recreational share. The resulting, artificially low recreational allocation is one of the primary reasons for recreational overages. While we understand that allocation is not under consideration during this addendum process, we request that the ASMFC and MAFMC take to public hearing options for different allocations in a future amendment to the FMP.

CCA opposes a hard TAC on any recreational fishery. MRFSS data were not designed to be a quota monitoring tool. Using the data in that manner would be inappropriate. For the same reason, neither are overage paybacks appropriate. Harvest targets remain a useful tool in guiding management, but a hard quota is inappropriate for managing a recreational fishery because of the imprecision of MRFSS data.

As we see it, the problem is essentially two-fold:

1. Management measures have not kept summer flounder harvest within the recreational portion of the TAL. In addition, there is no provision for requiring those particular states that fish over their portion of the TAL to reduce their harvest in subsequent years. Instead, all states are required to reduce their take.

2. No consequences accrue to states that fish over their share of the total allowable landings targets.

We propose these solutions:

1. Measures to keep the recreational fishery within the overall TAC are presently in the manager’s toolbox, assuming all states implement regulations in good faith. The plan allows for variable seasons and bag and size limits, all measures used to constrain the recreational harvest.

We support the use of 1998 as the base year for comparison, simply because it seems the most logical. We suggest the percentages generated from Table 2 of the PID as guidance in determining when a state harvests more than its share of the TAL.

2. We support developing a mechanism whereby a state that exceeds its proportion of the TAL be required to implement regulations that reduce its subsequent years’ landings by the percentage of their overage, provided the overall TAL for the recreational sector has been exceeded

In addition, we believe there should be disincentives for states to implement regulations that may not meet the intent of the management plan. Any state can write regulations that are uncertain to keep the recreational fishery within target landings. When they do, they face little, if any, direct consequence. We believe the Addendum VIII should include measures that punish states that exceed allowable landings by more than a to-be-determined percentage, taking into account the problems with estimating the harvest weight expressed above.

We appreciate the opportunity to participate in the management process for summer flounder, one of the most valuable recreational fisheries in the United States.