President's Report

(from Jersey Coast Anglers Association September 2008 Newsletter)

Summer means vacation time, but the JCAA has not been resting in protecting the rights of all anglers fishing in New Jersey. We have been involved in a number of activities that have direct and indirect impact on our fisheries with the most important one being fluke. There are other issues affecting our fisheries and they are also detailed in this newsletter. Let me start off with the fluke issue.

Fluke

We are all disgusted with the lousy information that has guided fishery managers to impose ruinous regulations on our recreational industry. Instead of just griping and complaining about it, the JCAA led the way in requesting a totally independent review of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) fluke stock assessment that the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission uses to determine our fluke quotas. JCAA and Garden State Seafood have provided funding to the Partnership for Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Science Inc. to send Dr. Eric Powell, Emerson Hasbrouck, and Dr Ken Able to the meetings for the summer flounder benchmark assessment in Woods Hole. JCAA also paid Bruce Freeman’s expenses to attend these meetings. Bruce volunteered his time. The JCAA spent approximately $15,000 toward this effort.

The NMFS uses a number of factors (mortality, stock recruitment, etc) to determine our quotas and it is referred to as modeling. It is these models and the information that goes into them that we wanted to be reviewed. Several meetings were held in Woods Hole, Mass. with the final one in June and JCAA’s Bruce Freeman and Save Our Flounder’s Dr. Maunder attended these meetings. Prior to this new fluke stock assessment, there was talk about drastically cutting back our fluke quota and even having a moratorium on it. The bottom line to all of this is that the fluke stock analysis that came out of Woods Hole, Mass. recommended that our fluke quota for 2009 be increased to 19.02 million pounds from the current 15.77 million pound quota in effect for 2008! While the 19.02 million pounds was reduced to 18.45 million pounds, as I will explain below, it is still good news for all of us! More is better and there is a strong argument that we should have had a higher quota. However, if we did not challenge the NMFS on how they determine fluke stocks and their resulting quota, you can bet the farm that we would have ended up with a lower quota! We will not know what this higher quota means in terms of fish bag limits, size or season until the latter part of this year when there is a determination of how well we observed the fluke quota for this year. I do not want to go into the technical data used in fluke stock assessment that was done by our scientists. I will leave that up to Bruce Freeman and he covers that in his report that is also in this newsletter.

Fluke/Sea Bass August 6th Meeting

This was a joint meeting held by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to set 2009 quotas for fluke, sea bass and bluefish. I attended the August 6th meeting along with Bruce Freeman and Rob Winkel from the NJ Federation that covered both fluke and sea bass.

The meeting on fluke focused on the data used to determine the new quota for 2009. We sat through tedious discussions and questions on the fluke data that was presented and I just want to give you a “fly on the wall perspective” on the proceedings of this meeting. In spite of the charts and graphs depicting fluke stocks through power point presentations, nobody at this meeting had complete confidence in the figures that were shown to us. There was so much time spent questioning the reliability of the data, I personally thought how they could call this the familiar phrase “best science available”! In fact, Captain Jim Ruhle of North Carolina finally exploded and said that these management councils “Need a Reality Check” since they under and overestimate everything! Of course, nobody challenged his comments since they know he is right.

One of the representatives commented that the management councils need information from the recreational community so that they could have better information on fluke stocks. I testified that the JCAA runs an annual fluke tournament and that we pay to have a detailed analysis on that day’s fishing results. Granted it is only for one day, but it is a good snapshot of a day’s fluke fishing. Also, boat captains must keep a log of their fishing and this info could be helpful. Nobody asked for the JCAA fluke report. Our help was extended to them, but there were no takers!

When the motion was made that we should have 19.02 million pounds for our 2009 fluke quota, that was recommended from the Woods Hole study group, several council members started to vote for it. When it came to Pat Kurkel’s turn, who represents the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), she voted no and said that the 19.02 lbs. was too liberal and she recommended 17.87 million lbs. as a more conservative quota. Incredibly, as soon as she came out with this number most of the council members voted for it. I turned to Bruce Freeman and said that we are going to lose this one and get a lower number! However, eventually a compromise was reached to go mid-way between the 19.02 lbs and 17.87lbs and the proposal for the 18.45million lbs. was raised and passed. While there was disappointment that we did not get 19.02 million lbs. and even a higher limit, the fact remains that we did not go backward and get a lesser quota. If we did not challenge their numbers, who knows where we would end up. Given the past performance of NMFS, MAMFC and ASMFC my bet is that we would have a lower quota.

Sea Bass

While we have some information on fluke stocks (and faulty at best), we have little to no reliable information on sea bass stocks. The lack of valid scientific information on seas bass stocks was voiced over and over again by almost everyone at the meeting. Astonishingly, the council members voted to reduce our sea bass quota about 45 %! While we harvest about 3 million pounds a year, the new overall limit of 1.173 pounds set for 2009 is less than the 2.152 lbs allowed in 2008 and 2.552lbs in 2007. Nobody spoke up at this meeting that sea bass is overfished or the stocks are in serious trouble because they do not have the data to support this allegation. However, this again demonstrates that facts are not needed by our fishery management experts to make their decisions. They make their decisions on “the best science available”! Tony Bogan strongly testified against this recommendation as well as myself and that the JCAA could not support this unnecessary cutback. Captain Willie Egerter (Dauntless) also testified that dogfish are decimating all fish stocks, especially sea bass, and that the council members must do something about this serious problem that they created by protecting the dogfish. His testimony was greeted by stone silence. We will know what this quota reduction means in terms of bag limits and season around November. It does not look pretty for 2009.

Governor's Surf Fishing Tournament

On a more positive note, the Governor’s Surf Fishing Tournament will be held on October 5th. Paul Smith is our Manager for this tournament and he has a detailed article on it in this newsletter. So mark your calendar now for the October 5th tournament.

JCAA Dinner Dance

The JCAA will have its annual dinner dance on November 16th at the Crystal Point Yacht Club. November is not too far away, so mark your calendar also for this fun-filled event and to rub elbows with your fishing buddies. More details will follow in our future newsletters.

Sportsperson of the Year

It is time to start thinking who your club should nominate for this prestigious award. The person you nominate should have done something special to promote the sport we love. This person will be honored at our JCAA Dinner Dance.

New JCAA Operations Manager

We are looking to hire a new Operations Manager who will take over the many functions that the JCAA is involved in including our annual fluke tournament. We have been talking about this new position at our meetings for quite some time and we are now very close to issuing a job announcement for it.

Reminder

September 30th is our next General Meeting. Please also mark your calendar to remember this date. Enjoy your summer and good fishing!

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