[Broad Bill]

Want to keep this in front of everyone for as long as possible. Here's 2023 seasonal commercial summer flounder quotas.

We have a stock which is now made up of a high percentage of shorts based on the existing regulations and a much lower percentage of older age groups as size minimums and selective harvest of larger fish by the commercial sector have caught up with the fishery.

All the 15" - 17.99" fish released this year are about to get annihilated by the commercial fleet over the next two months and then again between January and February at the ledge which is what led to the 43% reduction in their quotas this year. Discard waste will be enormous and Dan even though we disagree to what extent I think we agree in general it will be substantial. The further these schools get offshore, the more waste there will be for a number of reasons.

The only driving force that maintains a fishery, the spawn and successful recruitment numbers, is at risk every year as netters pound the stock without any understanding of the consequences. Last year, the September / October quota just for New Jersey was 610,000 lbs. of predominantly large egg laden female breeders. This year due to cuts, it's down to 383,000 lbs. but still substantial and possibly from a relative standpoint representative of a higher percentage harvest of the remaining older age groups. A fishery can't survive this year round pressure and what we'll see next year is a continued decline in the larger age groups and a higher proportion of sub legal fish as well as an absolute decline in those younger age classes accompanied with continued declines in recruitment.

If management of this stock doesn't wake up soon and address this one issue alone, the stock will become irrelevant and the long term economic impacts will far exceed the short term economic benefits decisions are being based on. Imagine what the sponsors on this site who depend on fluke throughout the summer months will do when the fishery is closed or not worth pursuing just like winter flounder. And where will commercial operators who depend on this resource turn when the stock has been irreversibly damaged and imagine the pressure those alternate stocks will then be under. I've been saying it for years, we're witnessing the disappearance of arguably the most important fishery to the Mid-Atlantic / New England regions and doing zero to change the trajectory of this stock which has been completely self inflicted based on ludicrous regulations over the last two decades.