Fluke Comments to ASMFC

[No Keepers]

Comments sent to Executive Director Moore.

[Ttmako]

I think we need a singular voice or comment in the comments we provide.
Is there a clear concise comment that we all could copy and paste into the link provided earlier.
Walt Whitman i am not.

[bender]

attached is my brief email to Mr. Moore
Our comments do not need to be eloquent.... only heard.

Greetings DR. Moore,

I would like to request that my comments be in included in the supplemental material at the upcoming council meeting.

Regarding Summer Flounder Stocks:
• It is purely common sense that if you are trying to rebuild a fish stock, it should not be possible for said stock to be fished commercially DURING THE PRIME SPAWNING PERIOD, AT THE PRIME SPAWNING GROUNDS!
• It is purely common sense that if you are trying to rebuild a fish stock, the minimum size limit should not be so large that only prime breeding females are able to be legally harvested by recreational anglers.

Respectfully,

Michael Yocius
Bridgeton, NJ
mike@rclsolar.com

[Down The Hatch]

I have thrown my two cents into the hat. Hope something positive comes out of all of this. Very easy to send comments.

[Fortunate Son]

Email sent to both contacts this morning calling for a slot limit and a ban on commercial netting.

[tuna john]

Originally Posted by Billfish715

Hey John....... Forward this to the email addresses listed in the post, but do it soon. Griping among ourselves is doing very little to help the situation. Send your comments, for now, to the two people that are referenced. We should easily be able to send out a thousand comments in two days.

done. I have been reading the entire piece I can't believe what I'm reading. especially that they know what actual commercial discards are and yet choose to use scientific garbage that is much lower and not actual

[tuna john]

my comments.

I have been fishing for over 30 years, and sadly as restrictions have tightened the fishing has gotten worse. One would believe larger size limits and reduced quota would help rebuild overfishing, but in the case of Fluke and sea bass we can see after years it has in fact gotten much worse. As noted in the comments almost 95% of the fluke over 18 inches are breeders and they are the ones recs are killing(if we are lucky). Fishing in cape may nj this was the worst season I have ever seen. I stated last few years it can’t get any worse but surely it has. We would go trips without even catching any keepers and some not even shorts. I would imagine it is very hard to keep 2 sides happy as well as do what’s best for the fishery but in the case of Fluke and sea bass we are making it worse. After reading tab 12 what troubled me most was this.


Because commercial discards resulted in the commercial ACL being exceeded in 2017 and likely in 2018 as well, trends in commercial discards should continue to be monitored closely for potential future incorporation into ACT recommendations. However, commercial catch and landings limits were increased substantially in 2019 and will be maintained at this higher level for 2020 and 2021. To me the recreational angler this says overfish and well increase your quota. Seems greatly unfair especially for two more years when the fishery is in dire trouble.

2nd alarming comment

Extremely revealing chart regarding commercial discards comparing percentages on observed trawls to percentages obtained from FVTR’s. Source is 57th SAW page 302. Could not find comparable information in 66th SAW Assessment Report. If available, would be interested in reviewing years 2012 – 2017. The disparity between observed versus unobserved discard rates (those reported on VTR’s) is substantial and if representative would have significant implications quantifying annual commercial catch levels and associated discard mortality rates.


Why would actual vessel trips be ignored and flawed scientific dat be used when we have factual???

One other comment is MRIP. It has been proven time and time again how flawed and unrealistic the data actually is, yet we continue to us it. In today era of technology there is no reason not to have anglers report their catch via some sort of app, Yes some would be resistant and not have the technology but I think far more anglers would provide data if they knew it would be for the good of the fishery. Please consider in this meeting lowering the size limits for recreational fisherman as well as preventing off shore decimation during the prime breeding season in the offshore canyons.

Concerned Angler

Read the following two articles regarding commercial squid harvest.

https://www.mvtimes.com/2016/09/07/s...thas-vineyard/

and

http://n-magazine.com/somethings-fishy/

I bring it up because there's been many posts as to why summer flounder fishing is so much better out east than in local waters. Less commercial fishing pressure is one reason, huge amounts of restricted areas closed to ground fishing is another. BUT another reason is the amount of squid that inhabit their local waters, a primary forage fish for fluke.

Read the two attached articles and it'll make you realize the amount of waste involved in the commercial harvest. First article / video (video is at end of article) reminds me of the days years ago when acres of baby ling and whiting were scattered throughout the Mudhole area and we know the outcome of that story. Second article further magnifies the extent of the problem. Two comments stand out:

"Last year, commercial fishing boats were allowed under existing federal rules to harvest 19 million pounds of squid between May and August, even though the quota for that period was only 8.4 million pounds."

and

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in June endorsed a package of regulatory changes that would limit the future expansion of the fishery and reduce the squid catch in summer months when squid are spawning. "POSITIVE DECISION BY MAFMC" Squid are easier to catch when they are spawning because they aggregate. "SAME PROBLEM WITH SUMMER FLOUNDER" Females lay as many as three hundred eggs encased within gelatinous capsules that are anchored to the seafloor. Dragging their nets on the bottom, fishing trawlers dislodge the capsules from the ocean floor.

While some squid fishermen contend that this process helps distribute the eggs, researchers contend otherwise. Working with squid in captivity, Roger Hanlon, a senior scientist at the Marine Resources Center in Woods Hole, found that dislodging eggs causes the eggs to hatch prematurely. Because their stomachs have yet to be fully formed, they are unable to eat. “Those animals do not survive,” he says. “They are all dead.”

Precisely what I believe is happening with summer flounder as 64% of the commercial summer flounder catch, most of which is harvested in the fall and winter months during the spawn, comes from three areas 616, 537 and 613 which are all located south and east of Long Island / Montauk around the continental shelf. Highly concentrated schools being harvested all winter long.

Keep harvesting during their spawn and shrinking the stocks food source and they'll search out areas with sufficient forage which many will attribute to geographic movement the result of other factors.

Fisheries management is as much if not more about catch composition as it is about overall catch, protecting and promoting recruitment and considering the consequences environmental and policy decisions are having on the overall food chain. If there's an imbalance in any of those three, the fishery will struggle. Summer flounder has a serious problem with two of the three.

5:00 TODAY IS THE CUTOFF FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS, PLEASE KEEP YOUR COMMENTS COMING. THERE'S NO GUARANTEES BUT YOUR OPINIONS MATTER AND THEY CAN ONLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR THE BETTER SO THERE'S ONLY UPSIDE.

[Rocky]

Originally Posted by dakota560

Read the following two articles regarding commercial squid harvest.

https://www.mvtimes.com/2016/09/07/s...thas-vineyard/

and

http://n-magazine.com/somethings-fishy/

I bring it up because there's been many posts as to why summer flounder fishing is so much better out east than in local waters. Less commercial fishing pressure is one reason, huge amounts of restricted areas closed to ground fishing is another. BUT another reason is the amount of squid that inhabit their local waters, a primary forage fish for fluke.

Read the two attached articles and it'll make you realize the amount of waste involved in the commercial harvest. First article / video (video is at end of article) reminds me of the days years ago when acres of baby ling and whiting were scattered throughout the Mudhole area and we know the outcome of that story. Second article further magnifies the extent of the problem. Two comments stand out:

"Last year, commercial fishing boats were allowed under existing federal rules to harvest 19 million pounds of squid between May and August, even though the quota for that period was only 8.4 million pounds."

and

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in June endorsed a package of regulatory changes that would limit the future expansion of the fishery and reduce the squid catch in summer months when squid are spawning. "POSITIVE DECISION BY MAFMC" Squid are easier to catch when they are spawning because they aggregate. "SAME PROBLEM WITH SUMMER FLOUNDER" Females lay as many as three hundred eggs encased within gelatinous capsules that are anchored to the seafloor. Dragging their nets on the bottom, fishing trawlers dislodge the capsules from the ocean floor.

While some squid fishermen contend that this process helps distribute the eggs, researchers contend otherwise. Working with squid in captivity, Roger Hanlon, a senior scientist at the Marine Resources Center in Woods Hole, found that dislodging eggs causes the eggs to hatch prematurely. Because their stomachs have yet to be fully formed, they are unable to eat. “Those animals do not survive,” he says. “They are all dead.”

Precisely what I believe is happening with summer flounder as 64% of the commercial summer flounder catch, most of which is harvested in the fall and winter months during the spawn, comes from three areas 616, 537 and 613 which are all located south and east of Long Island / Montauk around the continental shelf. Highly concentrated schools being harvested all winter long.

Keep harvesting during their spawn and shrinking the stocks food source and they'll search out areas with sufficient forage which many will attribute to geographic movement the result of other factors.

Fisheries management is as much if not more about catch composition as it is about overall catch, protecting and promoting recruitment and considering the consequences environmental and policy decisions are having on the overall food chain. If there's an imbalance in any of those three, the fishery will struggle. Summer flounder has a serious problem with two of the three.

5:00 TODAY IS THE CUTOFF FOR PUBLIC COMMENTS, PLEASE KEEP YOUR COMMENTS COMING. THERE'S NO GUARANTEES BUT YOUR OPINIONS MATTER AND THEY CAN ONLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR THE BETTER SO THERE'S ONLY UPSIDE.

How in the World can these decision makers not understand what the true problems are? It is not us recreational fishermen for sure.