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Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council Report
by Tom Siciliano
(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association September 2002 Newsletter)
On July 25th I traveled down to Baltimore to attend a meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The agenda included a discussion of the Stock Assessment for Summer Flounder along with Scup, Black Sea Bass and Bluefish. A draft copy of the Advisory Report on Stock Status was presented and was the basis for the decisions on Summer Flounder.
The stock is considered over fished for 2002 but is projected not to be over fished by 2003! The report goes on to try to prove this point through statistical manipulation. Maybe someone from Enron helped with the math. The National Marine Fisheries Service considers the estimates of the recreational landings accurate. They are considered to be + or - 5-10%. The TAL (Total Allowable Landing) does not achieve the target F (fishing mortality rate). It was .27 instead of .26. This is about as close as you can get considering in 1994 the F was 1.32. One can certainly question if .01 is really statistically significant.
The discard mortality is considered to be 10% for the recreational fisherman. The council members feel that this may be too low, but is a result of studies done in Virginia so will be used until new information is developed. The discard mortality is considered to be 80% for commercial sector and this may be too high but again no data is available.
The total biomass for 2001 was calculated to be 95 million pounds. Based on this estimate a TAL of 23.3 million pounds is recommended. A motion was made for 24.3 million pounds that would have been the same as this year but that was defeated.
What will this mean? The recreational harvest limit will be 9.32 million pounds for 2003. This is down from 9.72 million pounds for 2002. They will review the data in November before making recommendations regarding changes in the recreational possession limit, minimum size or season. If I were a betting man I would put my money on further restrictions in terms of bag limits, size limits or season length.
So what is wrong with this picture? Recreational anglers are catching more fish but taking fewer home. The size limits keep going up so more and more fish are being returned to the water. If we were keeping 15 1/2" fish as we were just a few years ago fewer big fish would be caught simply because anglers would be on their way home early in the day and the bigger fish would be left alone.
What the fisheries managers have done is create a trophy fishery for fluke. The bigger fish are being targeted. It is a simple fact that if the fish were not there the recreational anglers would not be catching them and there are a lot of fish between 14" and 16 1/2" that are being released.
The ASMFC then met in Philadelphia from August 6-8 and I got a chance to review the 258-page report of the Stock Assessment Workshop. This report is full of a lot of good information, but as I read it I came up with more questions than there were answers. One interesting point is the inconsistency in the treatment of the data for different species in the report. The experts recognize the potential for a spike in the data and take a cautious approach when they see something which doesn't quite make sense. When they ran the numbers on Scup the data showed that the fishery was very healthy and not over fished but they questioned the validity of their own numbers because they seemed too high and didn't pass the common sense test. The stock abundance of scup has gone up in recent years. The survey says there are lots of fish. The biomass has expanded but since the recreational catch has gone over the quota there is not likely to be a relaxation of regulations for the recreational sector even though there are a lot of fish. This is in spite of the fact that commercial discards destroyed the scup fishery. This is the reward that the recreational fishery gets. Hook and line fishing has never destroyed a fishery but recreational anglers continue to be punished.
Then these same people choose to ignore consistent trends, which clearly show that the fluke fishery has recovered beyond their expectations. They don't believe their own data but this time failing to use the common sense test. Recreational anglers cannot catch fish that aren't there. Not only are the fish abundant but they are willing to bite the hook and be caught. This is not like the commercial fishery where if the fish are there they will be caught in the net. The commercial quota for a quarter is caught in a very short time, sometimes in as little a 10 days. This says a lot about the abundance of fluke. What is clearly needed is a thorough review of the methodology used in this report. Questions like how the method has been calibrated need to be answered. Are there additional sources of information that would provide additional data and a better number of the total biomass? How is the party and charter boat data incorporated into the report? How many recreational anglers are there and how many trips are made for fluke? I have spoken to a number of fishermen who have stopped fishing for fluke because they are totally frustrated by the regulations. They go out and catch more fish than they ever did but are unable to bring them home for dinner.
The big question then becomes the value to society of the recreational catch of summer flounder vs. the commercially caught fish. Maybe then the recreational/commercial split and quotas should be changed to more accurately reflect the value to society of the fisheries.
Bluefish – A motion was made and passed to transfer 4,160,123 pounds from the recreational sector to the commercial sector. This is the reward the recreational sector has received for being conservation minded and not using their share. No good deed will go unpunished! You use it or lose it! The TAL recommendation is for 37 million pounds with a commercial quota of 10,500,000 pounds and a recreational limit of 26,793,397 pounds for 2003. It was only three years ago that a recreational limit of three fish was being considered. However, if that had occurred the commercial fishery would have had to pay back for over fishing their quota.