So a bit more background here.
Any of you who fish for Seabass knows you can hardly drop a clam down with out catching one and the fishery according to their data has been over the Sustainable Spawning Stock Biomass target for a number of years now. That to me and everyone else means the stocks have been rebuilt and we should be looking at easing regulations, right? Not so fast....
A few months back when early 2021 landing data came in they were substantially higher than years past. It was as this point where the management framework kicked in and was forcing a 28% reduction for this year in spite of what is a fully recovered fishery.
The ASMFC dug in questioning the validity of the data since there were some very large anomalies in the recreational for hire sectors. At the same time there is a work effort going on behind the scenes for Recreational Harvest Reform. This reform would allow fisheries management to take a longer term view of the fisheries as well as taking the stock status into consideration which would alleviate the knee jerk reactions to short term landings data.
At this point we are trying to get the MAFMC to make the same considerations as the ASMFC while the Recreational Reforms work continues.
If you want to take a deeper dive, you can read about the Recreational Reforms here
https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...FW_2022-02.pdf
