Quote:
Originally Posted by bulletbob
things have changed from the days when flounder were abundant.. Population is way down, and has been for many years now.
I personally think the explosion in the population of cormorants and seals will keep flounder numbers low in the rivers and bays.. They both eat a lot of them, too many.
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When landings were running at 60 million pounds a year causing recruitment levels to go from approximately 55 million recruits a year to maybe 2 million today, this fishery was over. Cormorants and seals didn't kill this fishery, commercial fishing year round and the harvest of larger females crashed the spawning stock and crashed the stocks recruitment strength. Do cormorants and seals eat flounder, absolutely. They also ate them in the hey day as did the dreaded spiny dog fish and certainly ate them up in colder water Quincy Bay years ago which had the most iconic sustainable flounder fishery ever for years.
What happened to winter flounder is the mirror image of what happened in local waters to ling and whiting and currently happening to summer flounder. They were targeted in highly concentrated schools not far off shore and the stocks were decimated. What's left are the areas that have rugged bottom structure which the draggers can't get at, mainly areas like the Farms, Shark River Reef etc. Any area with a predominantly mud bottom and unobstructed open area it's open season year round until the concentration of fish has been so depleted it's not economically feasible to drag that area anymore.
There should be closed seasons for these fish certainly during their spawn until populations rebound but that hasn't changed in over forty years so no reason to believe it will change any time soon. What amazes me about fisheries like winter and summer flounder is NMFS categorizes these fisheries as overfished but overfishing isn't currently occurring. Its all about credibility, funding, self-preservation. Not of the fishery, of the institutions tasked with managing and protecting these public resources. Definition of self preservation.
If the fishery had 50 fish left and fisheries management said 20 fish was the quota and landings came in under that number the fishery would be classified as "over fishing not occurring". Doesn't matter that we went from a spawning stock of 60 million pounds in the 80's to 150 lbs. today, the fishery based on MSA's definition would be not overfished.
Once any species is targeted year round and larger proportionately female species are harvested killing the younger age classes and smaller males in the process, those fisheries have one foot if not both in the grave. What happened with this prized fishery is complete mismanagement and total exploitation of a public resource by commerce.
We won't see change with in shore populations until we see a change with what's happening every year off shore. Same with summer flounder. Dynamics are very similar between these two stocks which means the risks are very similar as well.
