Winter Flounder report

[reason162]

Originally Posted by dakota560

With all due respect? Please don't use words you don't understand the meaning of, it's insulting.

Not my intention. I take it you're operating in good faith, and that you believe what you're saying...that's all I meant.

You most certainly have a narrative, one that involves ineptitude from scientists to regulators. I don't necessarily disagree with that narrative in all cases, but as you said...you've never heard of these studies that point to isolated inshore WF populations. I provided you links to these studies, and though they've passed peer review they don't pass muster with you.

Stony Brook has done a number of studies pertaining to winter flounder, because to trained scientists, the failure of WF to rebound is mysterious...even though there is hardly any rec or comm pressure on these fish for the past decade (I'm referring to the Southern stock). I will link them here, again:

https://you.stonybrook.edu/frisk/res...under-ecology/

You can maybe direct your questions to the Frisk Lab re their methodology, it's certainly not my job to defend or clarify the study...I merely bring it to your attention. Personally, I'm surprised they found 40 flounder to tag lol.

I also didn't fail to notice that you've not mentioned the gene mapping study that showed inbreeding among different populations...which is exactly what you would expect from an isolated, localized breeding species, with a drastic reduction of genetic diversity due to fewer breeding individuals. These studies compliment each others' conclusions. This ought to give you some idea at the hopelessness of WF recovery, at least inshore.

Recreational has it's impacts for sure. But to think striped bass and tog were not and are still not impacted by commercial netting of breeders in the southern states (as far as bass are concerned) and pots, rock hopper trawlers and illegal harvest of short fish being sold to Asian markets (as far as tog are concerned), I also disagree.

90% of the current mortality on striped bass, across their entire distribution, comes from the rec sector. The stock was fully rebuilt after the last moratorium, and now we're completely in the shit bc of a few state's greed...driven by powerful rec sector lobbies.

Potting for tog is largely a LIS problem, yet NJ tog is equally being overfished (that's the official status, "overfished") yet the ASMFC ignored technical committee's recommendations for drastic cuts over and over again. I agree that they should ban commercial togging in all forms, but I also agree with the fisheries biologists' conclusion that rec landings need to be reduced by 50%. Where do you stand on tog regulations? Have you seen the data?

If a 40 fish study of this nature was included in Peer Review but Rutgers Sex and Length Study was dismissed in this latest Peer Review over technicalities, than the situation is more hopeless than I imagined.

Right. So if the sex ratio study doesn't pass peer review, the entire process is suspect. Because YOU already know the answer to the summer flounder question.

You and I will never agree on the cause of what I consider to be a complete collapse of one fishery which started almost 40 years ago and the eventual collapse of another which has all the same signs based on data from the scientific community you defend. The common thread here is destruction of reproduction capacity in two stocks based on over harvest with winter flounder and increases in size retention for summer flounder driven by regulatory increases for recreational and increase in average size fish being harvested by commercials to compensate for reductions in catch quotas. I suppose the harvest of almost exclusively sexually immature fish in the 80's and 90's with summer flounder versus the complete opposite the last two decades is something I made up to support my preconceived position. Again I never introduced third party data in any of my analysis, I used only whats been published by NMFS and ASMFC.

I can agree to anything given convincing data. What you're confusing with this sex ratio hypothesis is correlation vs causation. Again, as I've mentioned to you before...I reserve judgment until the study work its way through the peer review process, if it indeed passes muster.

Though I must say, it does seem like a pat solution doesn't it. If you're right, then we get to have our cake and eat it too: keep smaller slot fish, AND rebuild the biomass. I can see how such a conclusion is tempting to root for...and you'll be wrong to assume I don't root for it too.