Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

Capitol Ideas
Fluke Problems and Solutions

By Richen Brame
CCA Atlantic States Fisheries Director
TIDE
July/August 2007

Summer flounder (aka fluke) management is among the most contentious of all marine fishery management issues. While the stock is rebuilding, it is not yet rebuilt, largely due to managers’ inability to set regulations that keep fishermen from overfishing the stock.

Although the first management plan was adopted 25 years ago, overfishing continued for every one of those 25 years.

Overfishing means removing fish from the stock at a rate higher than the stock can sustain under normal conditions or, in the case of a recovering stock, at a rate higher than that which will allow the stock to rebuild to a level that will maximize sustainable yield within an appropriate timeframe.

Despite overfishing, the summer flounder stock has rebounded, and abundance is a little more than half of what it would be in a fully-rebuilt stock, largely due to above-average recruitment during the early stages of the recovery. However, short-sighted management has hampered the rebuilding process, and last year the recovery appeared to have stalled.

How did we get to that point?

Most fishery management plans incorporate a “line in the sand” that may not be crossed, which is designated the “Threshold.” The threshold usually equates to Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), and also a lower level of fishing, designated the “Target,” to maintain harvest at safe, sustainable levels.

For some reason, summer flounder managers discarded that convention and set the Target and Threshold fishing levels at the same number. For most of the past 25 years it hardly mattered, as managers virtually ignored overfishing and put into place regulations that had no more than a 20 percent chance of rebuilding the stock.

In 2000, a coalition of environmental groups sued, essentially arguing that this type of management was no management at all, and won. The court determined that, to meet the minimum standard under federal law, management plans must have at least a 50 percent probability of rebuilding the stock within 10 years. That forced managers to set a 2010 deadline for full recovery.

Last summer, with the stock only about halfway to recovery, managers announced that the recovery was stalled and that further restrictions would be needed to keep the recovery on schedule. That triggered great concern in the angling community, and it was feared that draconian cutbacks would be imposed. In response, Congress stepped in and granted managers an extra three years, conditioned upon managers being more precautionary, ceasing overfishing and making progress towards the rebuilding goal.

SOLUTIONS

The obvious long-term solution is to stop overfishing, restore the stock and then enjoy the fruits of the recovery. However, since management has embraced overly liberal regulations in the past, that route would involve some short-term pain via low annual harvests.

Some groups have been asking for a “better,” or at least a different, summer flounder stock assessment. However, the stock assessment currently employed has been independently peer reviewed and deemed acceptable at least four times, making it highly unlikely that anything better will be devised. We believe that this approach holds little, if any, chance of providing relief for recreational summer flounder fishermen. In any event, a comprehensive new stock assessment is scheduled for next year.

What is really needed is a new paradigm. Currently, 60 percent of the fishery is allocated to the commercial sector and 40 percent to anglers, based on the sectors’ respective shares of landings during the 1980s. There was no consideration of the relative economic impact or benefits of the allocation when it was made; the 60/40 split was merely an attempt to perpetuate the current pattern of use, with no one asking whether a different allocation might be of greater overall benefit.

To compound the problem, the recreational allocation was further divided into sub-allocations for each state, based on a single year’s estimates from the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey, a survey that, in itself, is of questionable accuracy and not intended for state-by-state quota management.

CCA is asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to do what Dr. Bill Hogarth promised recreational fishermen NMFS would do at the last Recreational Fishing Forum in 2004 – do an economic analysis of the summer flounder fishery to better, more scientifically, allocate this popular resource. That way the benefits to the country can be better realized and more equitably allocated. We believe this method holds the best chance of a fairer allocation of this important resource