Fluke Regs this year

[bulletbob]

Originally Posted by dakota560

In my opinion two reasons. Magnuson Stevens Act "MSA" which has been revised a few times since being enacted initially in 1976 with focus almost exclusively on attaining an arbitrary SSB thresh hold level never before attained. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who can answer how that level was arrived at. So every year when SSB comes up short, immediately the mandate is reduce catch. That was the correct answer in the 80's when annual catch exceeded SSB. The biomass was being turned over every year, harvest was excessive and not sustainable. Once catch was brought under control, SSB started a significant climb until continued size limit increases caused a negative impact on reproduction causing SSB to reverse it ascent and provisions of MSA kicked in every year since starting in 2003 mandating again catch reductions year after year.

Second NMFS / ASMFC have to make this decision their way on their time frame and their terms otherwise by default they admit they've mismanaged the fishery for the last twenty or so years. No government agency is going to publicly acknowledge that, instead they hide behind the provisions enacted under MSA 42 years ago which is a convenient CYA excuse to fall back on. Basically we're stuck in a political black hole until the fishery is at the brink of collapse. At that time NMFS will have no choice but to step in, introduce a slot, maybe do what I suggested with the commercials which is absolutely needed but a long shot and say THEY saved the day. When that happens is anyone's guess.

Slot limit when the fishery collapses??.. Probably not.. they would just shut it down for recs most likely... bob

[hammer4reel]

Tom
They are hygrading , but not by throwing back smaller fish dead .
They use a net bigger than their minimum size so smaller fish swim through .
I asked about mortality of smaller fish when bigger ones cover the net .
They said most of the smaller fish get pushed up and swim through .
Much of what looks like smaller fluke being pulled is actually skates.
There are actually More skates pulled up in a haul than fluke .

While there are some guys out there who would break the law, for many of these guys the ocean is the only life they know.
They aren’t throwing back fish that someday would be money for them .

The guys making videos throwing back boxes of fluke are showing the waste nmfs is causing not allowing some bycatch while fishing for other species.
Makes them sick to do so.

Originally Posted by hammer4reel

Tom
They are hygrading , but not by throwing back smaller fish dead .
They use a net bigger than their minimum size so smaller fish swim through .
I asked about mortality of smaller fish when bigger ones cover the net .
They said most of the smaller fish get pushed up and swim through .
Much of what looks like smaller fluke being pulled is actually skates.
There are actually More skates pulled up in a haul than fluke .

While there are some guys out there who would break the law, for many of these guys the ocean is the only life they know.
They aren’t throwing back fish that someday would be money for them .

The guys making videos throwing back boxes of fluke are showing the waste nmfs is causing not allowing some bycatch while fishing for other species.
Makes them sick to do so.

Dan when you say they, who exactly are you referring to? If as you say the mesh sizes being used are larger than 14" to allow 14" fish to swim through, why do the commercial regulations allow harvest of 14" fish? To Gerry's point earlier, I'd prefer the mesh size be 14" to have less breeders harvested. What your suggesting is larger fluke are being targeted because of the price differential which defeats the whole point of the 14" minimum. As far as the by-catch issue is concerned, regardless of what NMFS allows, the net result (no pun intended) is a significant amount of fluke are being killed, tossed back dead and not reported in FVTR's. Reason they're thrown back dead doesn't matter, fact that they are does.

While I agree the ocean is in many cases the only thing commercial operators know, you simply have more faith in commercial fishing ideologies than most. I do a lot of reading and a lot of research and have read too many articles about illicit netting and lived to see too many species wiped out in my lifetime by commercial operations. Ling, whiting, cod, mackerel, weakfish (which never rebounded), bass in the 70's, herring which caused the reduction boats to come down here and start mopping up all the bunker as well as the damage Omega Protein does, flounder, fluke, porgies, sharks, tuna etc. It took decades for the porgy fishery to rebound, let's see how long that lasts. Blackfish are next and it's already happening. Any fishery targeted by commercial interests will be exploited until it's no longer economically viable and any by-catch that gets in the way killed as well as ocean habitat destroyed. I'm not a tree hugger by any stretch but where do you draw the line. World demand for fish combined with technological advances in commercial fishing equipment will destroy every fishery until there's not a species left to fish for. That doesn't mean every commercial operator has no conscience, it means there's a history which can't be ignored of one species after another being destroyed by commercial over fishing.

Hopefully we agree (based on the NMFS data we have to work with) fluke reproduction has been decimated over the last 25 or more years. Do you agree commercial fishing should be closed during the Fall migration until we better understand the impact it's having on egg reproduction and the spawning process in general? Until the cause of the reproduction problem is understood and the trend reversed, no amount of changes to catch, possession limits, length of season will compensate enough to rebuild this fishery. Last 15 years prove that point and why every year the options we get to choose from amount to nothing more than scraps. NMFS and ASMFC reshuffle the same deck every year while the fishery is hamstrung today with the same problems it faced 15 years ago.

[hammer4reel]

Originally Posted by dakota560

Dan when you say they, who exactly are you referring to? If as you say the mesh sizes being used are larger than 14" to allow 14" fish to swim through, why do the commercial regulations allow harvest of 14" fish? To Gerry's point earlier, I'd prefer the mesh size be 14" to have less breeders harvested. What your suggesting is larger fluke are being targeted because of the price differential which defeats the whole point of the 14" minimum. As far as the by-catch issue is concerned, regardless of what NMFS allows, the net result (no pun intended) is a significant amount of fluke are being killed, tossed back dead and not reported in FVTR's. Reason they're thrown back dead doesn't matter, fact that they are does.

While I agree the ocean is in many cases the only thing commercial operators know, you simply have more faith in commercial fishing ideologies than most. I do a lot of reading and a lot of research and have read too many articles about illicit netting and lived to see too many species wiped out in my lifetime by commercial operations. Ling, whiting, cod, mackerel, weakfish (which never rebounded), bass in the 70's, herring which caused the reduction boats to come down here and start mopping up all the bunker as well as the damage Omega Protein does, flounder, fluke, porgies, sharks, tuna etc. It took decades for the porgy fishery to rebound, let's see how long that lasts. Blackfish are next and it's already happening. Any fishery targeted by commercial interests will be exploited until it's no longer economically viable and any by-catch that gets in the way killed as well as ocean habitat destroyed. I'm not a tree hugger by any stretch but where do you draw the line. World demand for fish combined with technological advances in commercial fishing equipment will destroy every fishery until there's not a species left to fish for. That doesn't mean every commercial operator has no conscience, it means there's a history which can't be ignored of one species after another being destroyed by commercial over fishing.

Hopefully we agree (based on the NMFS data we have to work with) fluke reproduction has been decimated over the last 25 or more years. Do you agree commercial fishing should be closed during the Fall migration until we better understand the impact it's having on egg reproduction and the spawning process in general? Until the cause of the reproduction problem is understood and the trend reversed, no amount of changes to catch, possession limits, length of season will compensate enough to rebuild this fishery. Last 15 years prove that point and why every year the options we get to choose from amount to nothing more than scraps. NMFS and ASMFC reshuffle the same deck every year while the fishery is hamstrung today with the same problems it faced 15 years ago.

I wish if people wanted to eat fish they had to catch their own . I want to eat elk as much as some guy in Colorado wants to eat fluke .
Don’t see them sending me any elk .
But the case is our fishery feeds more than just us .
While everyone knows commercial fishing has hurt many species in the past , these local boats are highly watched .
F&G wait for them at the docks , and go with them to watch their weights caught .
Their boats are electronically monitored 365 days a year .
The free for all isn’t happening like it used to .

Beyond that unlike some who are drinking the koolaid I don’t believe the numbers NMFS gave us .
For more than a few reasons .
First is I personally see no lack of fish in any of the areas we fish from BARNEGET INLET to north of the Verizono.
No matter where we fish between them we find good bodies of fish .
Commercial guys fishing this area used to fish from BARNEY to FIRE ISLAND to meet their catch quotas. Most fish within 10 miles of their docks the whole season now.
Ask fisherman around what they are catching . Most will tell you they threw back 25 fish just short of 18”.

If we had a 17” limit they would be saying it was the best fluking ever .
NMFS has hit the magic number at 18” .

Talk to boats actually doing the netting for recruitments , they will tell you they are asked to drag areas they know won’t hold fish .
The numbers are bogus , catches can’t be good and NMFS numbers be correct.
.

If we really wanted to believe NMFS numbers as I pointed out at the meeting .we should go back to a 16” size limit
As recruitment by their numbers showed at an all time high with us taking a lot more fish home.

I still would like to know when a fluke drops a million eggs , are half male and half female ?
Or did Mother Nature make more females naturally .
As according to most info 98% of the fish we have been taking for years have been females.
And there isn’t anyone throwing them back.

REAL answers need to be addressed to create real management plans .

Instead IMO the government wants both recs and commercial fisherman to. Get frustrated and stop fishing .
Then they can sell the fish for political gain to other countries willing to pay a lot more money for the fish.


.

One last post on this thread and I'll leave it at that. Dan you can have the last say, but clearly we view a number of issue impacting not just the fluke fishery but all fisheries differently.

Here's what I believe. Fact, increase in the world's population both domestic and abroad coupled with an explosion of health crazed consumers including the sushi market explosion have brought the demand for fish and shellfish to record levels. That demand has caused wholesale prices and the size of the global fish market (estimated at ~$150 billion in '19) to hit record levels as well.

Here's an excerpt from an article "The Rise and Fall of the Codfather, America's most notorious fishing criminal":

Last year, the U.S. government hauled in a big fish: Carlos Rafael, dubbed ‘the Codfather.’ For years, Raphael was the largest player in New England’s groundfish industry, but last September he was handed a four-year prison sentence and a partial seizure of his groundfish fleets and permits. The charges against him include false labelling and falsifying fish records in order to exceed fishing quotas, as well as cash smuggling and tax evasion. Illegal fishing is big business, and the Codfather’s story is just one example of how it is harming the oceans.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) Fishing around the world has an estimated value of $23 billion USD annually and accounts for up to 30 per cent of global catches.

One person essentially ignored every regulation involving multiple species, primarily ground fish, paid $1.75 million dollars to have his scales altered to under report actual weights, falsified FVTR reports (one rare instance when he got caught he reported 1,365 lbs of scallops on board when in fact he had 12,356 lbs.), mislabeled fish to avoid daily and seasonal quota limitations, bypassed the supply chain by selling directly to the NY based black market, owned distribution outlets himself to control and circumvent regulatory compliance and got away with it for 30 years. Law enforcement officials were found to be involved to pull it off. A majority of the commercial operators in New Bedford knew about it but elected to either turn a blind eye out of fear or simply by choice so it went undetected for decades. It wasn't until the FBI got involved (for money laundering cash from black market sales in NY) that NMFS and F&G got involved in a joint sting operation which ultimately took him down. If not for the FBI's money laundering investigation, he'd still be in business or someone else would have purchased his operation for the $175 million he was asking.

Story is well documented and there are hundreds of articles on-line you can read which illustrate just how out of control the commercial industry is with illicit practices. Don't think the "Belford Pirates" earned that distinction because they were "Guardians of the Ocean".

Dan we agree that a majority of commercial operators play by the rules because they're upstanding people and or they have to. Their livelihood depends on it and if caught and they lose their permit(s) it's game over for them. I believe a minority of operators don't play by the rules causing extensive damage to every fishery they target. As much as efforts have been stepped up to address compliance, lack of enforcement resources and based on the sheer amount of dollars involved in this industry, I don't agree enforcement is nearly as iron clad as you make it appear. We simply can disagree on that point.

Question for you, boat sails off shore during winter harvest. Not 100% certain of daily / weekly limits but let's assume it's 1,500 lbs. per trip. Boats are electronically monitored as you mentioned but there's no one from F&G on board which means the catch is not monitored or weighed until it's back at the dock. Assume on this trip, 5,000 lbs of fluke is harvested, operator calls in 2 hours in advance of the 6:00 am to 6:00 pm weigh-in guidelines so F&G is at the docks to meet the boat as required but before he returns, he offloads 3,500 lbs of his catch to a runner boat 5 miles offshore that runs it up to NY harbor, offloads it in any of a thousand different places without risk of detection, gets $5 / lb. for his efforts or $17.5k more for the trip and it's on the menu in NY restaurants later that evening selling for $40 a plate. How would that be detected? Think that doesn't happen? Carlos Raphael made multiple tens of millions a year and accumulated a fortune basically doing just that. With the limited resources F&G is hamstrung with, who would even know?

As far as the 2018 fluke season is concerned, we must have fished different oceans. Since our boat was destroyed in the Seaport Inlet Fire, we charter multiple times a year now. In June and July I had six charters scheduled (won't mention boat names but they were reputable and local). One was cancelled due to weather, two were cancelled because we were told the fluke fishing was terrible, one we went on and 5 keepers were caught between six very good fisherman plus the captain and mate with every boat around us having the same kind of day and one we were told to fish for a different species because the fluke fishing was that bad. August improved dramatically for just about everyone and we had one trip in early September with a very well known local charter and had an outstanding trip. If you based your opinion about the health of every fishery on his catches and reputation alone you'd swear every fishery was in great shape. I'm sure most of you know without naming names who I'm referring to. I think for most, even though I know you don't agree, 2018 wasn't just a mediocre year it was a very off year for the majority even though the network you run with would say otherwise.

As far as the NMFS data and recruitment numbers we have to work with, it is what it is. I don't buy the argument that the numbers are wrong for the last 30 years. This isn't a recent anomaly and if your implying the numbers are wrong you're de facto implying Rutgers "Sex and Size" study is wrong. You yourself in this thread said commercial operators increased mesh limits to allow 14" fish to escape their nets. First I heard that and it defeats the entire purpose of them being given a 14" size limit to begin with which again means they're targeting larger females. I don't believe between the weight of the catch and pressure caused by the trawl that smaller fish covered up by larger fluke will find their way to the top and swim back out unscathed. So again what that means is the recreational and commercial harvest consists almost entirely of female fluke. Combine that with commercial harvest during the spawn without understanding the impact it has on egg production and the numbers are what I'd expect. What other fishery do you know that has data strongly suggesting a reproduction problem and allows commercial harvest or any harvest during the spawn. How can any fishery survive when you harvest nothing but females and commercial harvest pounds the biomass during the spawn. Answer is it can't and the data is exactly what I 'd expect it to be based not on science but based on common sense.

Dan you can have the last say, everyone knows my position not just of the summer flounder fishery but fishery management in general. There's not a fishery with commercial exposure that will survive without regulations, not with $150 billion dollars at stake. Recreational anglers fish because they enjoy it, commercials fish to profit and make a living, inherent conflict in motivations. As I said, I believe a high percentage of second and third generation commercial operators play by the rules but a minority percentage don't and are destroying one fishery after another at everyone else's expense. Current enforcement resources can't possibly control what's going on at sea, it's simply not humanely possible.

There's other issues at play here but in my humble opinion there's three things which should be considered. Re-establish slot and I would make it 14" - 15", somewhere in that range. Start with three fish possession limit initially, 2 fish within the slot and one fish over 18". That should help party and charter boats and allow a big fish for recreational one fish tournaments. Second, when the recreational season ends, the commercial season does as well through December 1 so the spawn is protected. Leave their annual quota the same, re-allocate the timing of the harvest so as not to coincide with the spawn. Third have the powers to be address the wholesale price differential between smaller and larger fluke to eliminate the problem of hygrading. I realize two and three are a long shot with commercial lobbying power but they're changes which need to be considered and in my opinion adopted. After three years, re-assess the impact on the biomass and recruitment and based on the data and science plot the course accordingly. In addition, if enforcement isn't addressed, regulations won't matter if the above statistic is remotely correct in that 30% of annual harvest goes unreported. In addition, a study should be conducted both offshore and inshore to track and understand more of where the reproduction problem is occurring. It shouldn't be difficult to assess and in my opinion is the key to rebuilding this fishery.

[hammer4reel]

Tom
There is no doubt there will always be the guys who cheat .
And they def can cause major damage .
The research set aside program was stopped after a boat payed for 30000 pounds was caught selling 289000 pounds .

My point about the commercial guys who have fished the ocean their whole lives are seeing more fluke than ever.
Many other things they fish for have had fluke showing up as bycatch in places they hadn’t before .
I think they have more knowledge on fish numbers than the numbers NMFS gives us .

We had another great season last year .and traveled less to get to good bodies of fish than years past .

Find the bait , find the fish .
What has def helped the recreational fishing in our area is the betters seasons have been closed through the summer . That leaves much more fish for us to catch than years past when they were fishing the same areas as us daily.

I also see all the boats regularly fishing tournaments to be doing just as well as we did .
They always said 10 % of the fisherman catch 90% of the fish .
And reading here on many posts I believe it’s pretty accurate .

The charter captain you make mention of proves daily , with good fisherman on board and his expertise their are LOTS of fish to be caught where 200 other boats claim there isn’t a fish to be found.

.

[pectoralfin]

I believe that $150 billion number includes imported seafood. Several years ago NMFS decided to include imports to inflate the economic value of the commercial fishery. By the way, this was done despite the objection of the vast majority of responders to the proposed change. If 90% of the seafood is imported, it means that the value of the commercial fishery is really about $15 billion.

I learned more from the above posts than any other website or publication on this matter. Does anyone think to meet with the commercial groups to get a dialog going about this and see if we both can benefit from a unified front?