2024 Fluke Regs

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Originally Posted by Broad Bill

The stock assessments for this fishery have all the peer reviewed data you need regarding how the gender composition of the stock has drastically changed over the years at the detriment of females commensurate with changes to increases in size minimums over the last two decades. My above comments aren't based on Rutgers Study, they're based on data from science contained in SAW's.

Common sense would also tell you in any fishery, especially one with a significant commercial presence, if you target exclusively the spawning stock you won't have a fishery for long. That and the fact that the only time this fishery grew in the last 5 decades is when both sectors were harvesting younger age classes and not targeting exclusively older sexually mature age classes made up disproportionately of females. Something current management might want to consider. What fisheries can you speak of which exclusively target breeders, don't protect the spawn, kill millions of juveniles in the process every year which you'd consider sustainable. If you put as much effort and energy into educating yourself with the data that exists as you do into criticizing those who do, one day we might actually be able to have a productive discussion. Until then, keep advocating for peer review as if it's the holy grail of fisheries management since it's done absolute wonders for this fishery over the last 40 years and other stocks which have been wiped out and why we're faced with the strong possibility of a two fish limit in New Jersey next year and a 28% or greater quota cut.

Yeah I don't care about gender composition - I only care about recruitment. You and others who want lower size regulations grasped the sex ratio straw years ago and continue to talk about it as if it's settled science. It's not. "Common sense" is not science, no matter how much it makes sense in your own head.

Fish are not pandas, "breeding females" means nothing when a species' steepness is close to 1. And even if protecting "breeding females" is a valid goal (again, zero evidence that it makes any difference with fluke and most fish), lowering the size limit is no guarantee that you achieve that goal. It's just as likely a 16" fluke is female. In which case you removed a breeding female 2 spawn cycles earlier than otherwise if the regs stayed at 18".

And once again I must point out that there has been zero mention of the obvious elephant in the room - a warming Atlantic that is driving every species northwards for the past few decades. If regulators and biologists aren't taking that into account when they tinker with their models, then you really have something to bitch about.