Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 26, 2006
CONTACT: Ted Venker, 1-800-201-FISH

Conservationists Demand Science-based
Summer Flounder Solution

For years, management of summer flounder has resembled more of an investment strategy during a stock market bubble than a conservation-minded plan for the recovery of an immensely important recreational fishery. Rather than prudently investing over the long term to guarantee results, managers opted instead to roll the dice and hope for a jackpot payout.

For summer flounder, the big payout never came yet some fishery managers still appear intent on gambling with the future of the fishery.

In July, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s Summer Flounder Technical Monitoring Committee recommended that the 2007 quota be set at 13.9 million pounds due to overfishing and 2005 spawning results that were the worst since 1988.

Despite that recommendation, the Mid-Atlantic Council recommended that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) adopt a 19.9 million pound quota for 2007. In response to that action and claims that the Monitoring Committee’s findings were wrong, NMFS agreed to review the available data. The review, which was peer-reviewed by three respected scientists, employed a different methodology than that used by the Monitoring Committee, but came to a similar conclusion - in order to timely rebuild the population, the 2007 harvest should be capped at 14.2 million pounds.

“That would be a significant, painful reduction for anglers, there is no doubt about that,” said Richen Brame, Atlantic States Fisheries Director for Coastal Conservation Association. “But fishery managers should be commended for reviewing the science and making a very careful determination of where the limit should be set to comply with the law. At this point, the only thing to do is the right thing.”

Many members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder Management Board felt differently when they met on Oct. 25. The Board initially adopted the 19.9 million pound quota, and tacked on a mechanism for extending the 2010 deadline for rebuilding the summer flounder population to 2015. However, NMFS is currently prohibited by law from adopting such an extension and must promulgate a quota that will achieve the target by 2010. To circumvent that prohibition, the Board recommended that Congress and/or the Secretary of Commerce provide relief that would remove the legal requirement that the stock be recovered by 2010, and then match NMFS total allowable landings under the new rebuilding deadline.

However, upon being informed by the NMFS representative that a 19.9 million pound quota would lead to a very substantial cutback in the harvest from federal waters, the management board reconsidered its action, and attempted to substitute either a 12.9 or 14.2 million pound quota. When both attempts failed on tie votes, ASMFC chose not to set the 2007 quota during the meeting, and instead will wait until a joint meeting with the Mid-Atlantic Council in December.

“CCA has been working with fisheries managers to craft measures that bring a reasoned approach to the summer flounder problem, in an effort to avoid working an unnecessary hardship on anglers and related businesses while assuring that the legal structure needed to properly conserve and manage our nation’s fisheries remains intact,” notes Brame. “We’re disappointed that ASMFC didn’t make more of an effort to craft a solution that addressed both of those important goals.”

The recovery of summer flounder has been complicated by many factors, not the least of which is its enormous popularity and ready accessibility coastwide. Businesses dependent on fish and fishing rely on summer flounder to help fill ice chests for their customers. Despite signs that summer flounder were in danger of being loved to death as long ago as 2000, fishery managers have consistently opted to set catch limits at the highest levels allowed under federal rebuilding guidelines.

“If managers had employed a more risk-averse approach earlier in the rebuilding process, we would be facing much less severe restrictions now,” said Sherman Baynard, vice chairman of the CCA National Government Relations Committee. “Yet managers don’t seem ready to accept that lesson, although by implementing the needed reduction now, all the evidence suggests that in three years we should enjoy the benefits of a fully recovered fishery.”

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