Save Our Summer Flounder!

[OffTheHook13]

It's scary to think what type of negative impact a closure will have on the industry here on Long Island.

Thousands of people rely on Fluke fishing in the summer.

Not to mention the HEAVY pressure that will be put on other species such as Seabass, Porgies etc.

[livetofishnj]

It's scary to think what type of negative impact a closure will have on the industry here on Long Island.

Thousands of people rely on Fluke fishing in the summer.

Not to mention the HEAVY pressure that will be put on other species such as Seabass, Porgies etc.

You aren't kidding, even the shortened seasons put a lot of pressure on other fisherires. Here in Raritan Bay it means more killing of 20 and 30-pound bass in the spring and then scup, weakfish, and sea bass in the fall, all of which are other fisheries that are either in or on the verge of trouble. We're robbing peter to pay paul, and yet stock-wise, flounder seem to be doing the best. it makes no sense in an overall management scheme.

[OffTheHook13]

More SCIENTIFIC decisions need to be made.

Not some pencil pushing idiots with nothing better to do.

[OffTheHook13]

You know what I find funny, why don't some of these morons that come up with these ideas post on these boards with their side of the argument.

Now, I am not the smartest guy in the world by any means.

But, I can read and I can understand data put in front of me to an extent.

And I think I have a pretty fair idea of what is going on.

I'd love to get into a 1 on 1 debate with one of these people.

[Green Machine]

Local Newspaper Article on the topic.

MANASQUAN —Speaking to a standing-room-only crowd at the Elks Lodge, here, Rep. Frank Pallone [D—6] told hundreds of anglers at a rally on Monday he will introduce a bill to Congress that could help save the summer flounder fishery in New Jersey.

The rally —— organized by the Brielle-based Save The Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, a group of party and charter boat captains and business owners from Monmouth and Ocean counties —— brought the fishing public together with politicians and industry members for the first time to call for flexibility in fisheries management.

The bone of contention for anglers and industry members are the strict and arbitrary rebuilding targets for summer flounder [fluke] contained in the Magnuson—Stevens Act, a federal law regulating the rebuilding of fisheries. Though scientific data recognizes that fluke stocks have doubled since 1993 and are possibly at their highest levels in recorded history, anglers face a fishing ban in 2009 since the fluke biomass —— the total weight of all of the fluke off the East Coast —— is projected to fall short of the 204 million pounds the law requires by 2013.

New Jersey —— and the Monmouth and Ocean County area in particular —— would be hard hit by a closure, putting party boats, charter captains, marine retailers and even some restaurants at risk of bankruptcy.

While fisheries management laws help maintain fish stocks to insure a healthy fishing industry, the Magnuson—Stevens Act hamstrings federal regulators who have no flexibility in applying the rebuilding targets. Attorneys hired by the

Pew Charitable Trust —— a funding source for various national environmental groups —— have sued to maintain the inflexible nature of the law, claiming federal regulators must strictly adhere to rebuilding targets.

Rep. Pallone said Monday that he hopes to help change the law to make it more flexible.

“I have put together a bill that we are going to try and introduce this week,” Rep. Pallone said. “It will provide the secretary of NOAA [National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration] authority to apply flexibility to rebuilding deadlines.”

Rep. Pallone explained that the law would allow fisheries managers in the National Marine Fisheries Service [NMFS], the branch of the NOAA which sets regulations and applies rebuilding laws, to take into account everything from population levels to predator-prey relationships in reaching a rebuilding target for a certain species of fish.

“What we’re saying [in the bill] is that there are a lot of things that contribute to whether or not a stock is rebuilding, and we want these types of things to be a basis for flexibility,” Rep. Pallone said.

Rep. Pallone’s bill would allow flexibility in setting the target date to reach the required biomass levels set in the Magnuson—Stevens Act, inuring a healthy stock and a viable commercial and recreational fishery at the same time.

If the bill were to be signed into law by the president, regulators could begin applying flexibility to rebuilding targets the following season.

‘A long haul’

Though Rep. Pallone will sponsor the bill in the House of Representatives, it will need widespread bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate to be sent to the Oval Office to be signed into law.

“It is going to be a long haul,” Rep. Pallone said, after the cheers over his announcement subsided. “We’re up against plenty of powerful interests who don’t want this to happen, but I believe if you get a lot of support from the fishing community, this will be done.”

Rep. Pallone said grassroots support from the fishing community is important, since the Magnuson—Stevens Act was reauthorized in 2006, and it would be unusual for Congress to reopen discussion on such a recently reauthorized law.

State Senator Sean T. Kean [R—11] also spoke at the rally, cheering on Rep. Pallone’s bill and pledging his legislative support from the state level.

Sen. Kean said he and Sen. John Adler [D-6] would co-sponsor legislation in the Senate to send a joint resolution from the New Jersey Legislature to Congress urging the passage of Rep. Pallone’s bill. Sen. Kean said Assemblyman Dave Rible [R—11] would sponsor the corresponding legislation in the New Jersey State Assembly.

“We will send it to Congress as a statement about how the people of New Jersey, through their legislature, feel about [this] issue,” said Sen. Kean.

But even if the efforts to pass the bill in Congress are successful, federal regulators will need evidence to apply the allowable flexibility to fluke in New Jersey.

The Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund is hoping to raise enough money to hire scientists to conduct fair and unbiased surveys of fluke stocks, in hopes of proving government figures —— as well as the figures of environmental groups —— wrong.

A question of science

According to Ray Bogan, legal counsel for the fund, commercial fishermen in the past have funded efforts to dispute what they saw as inaccurate scientific data obtained by regulators. When the government’s data was eventually proven wrong by privately funded scientific efforts, regulators admitted their mistakes and granted the commercial fishermen relief from regulations based on the flawed data. The fund is hoping to be able to engage in a similar effort to obtain updated and accurate scientific figures on fluke stocks and present them to government regulators who may be able to apply flexibility to recreational fishing interests if Rep. Pallone’s bill becomes law.

Mr. Bogan said that since science can prove fluke stocks are at record levels, the case can be made to regulators that the rebuilding process is trending upwards, and size limits can be raised to support a more successful recreational fishery.

“As long as the stock is in better shape, as long as the stock has shown a trend towards rebuilding, we argue that we should be allowed to catch enough fish so that people can earn a livelihood and have reasonable access to the resource,” said Mr. Bogan. “We need federal legislators to know that the legislature of New Jersey supports this concept.”

“The way the law is written, the science is the law, and law has no ability to recognize that the science is inexact,” said Capt. Tony Bogan, whose family owns a fleet of party boats that sail from Brielle and Point Pleasant Beach.

“They claim [the fluke fishery] about halfway to being rebuilt,” Capt. Bogan said. “In the 77 years that my family has been in the Manasquan Inlet, no one can recall seeing fluke fishing the likes of which we see now. And this is something that is repeated from Massachusetts to North Carolina and from offshore to the back bays.

“The science says ‘All those fluke you see, you’re only halfway there.’ In other words, we have to double the amount of fluke in the ocean by 2013, before they will consider us to be rebuilt,” Capt. Bogan continued.

Capt. Bogan said the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund was considering working with the Partnership for Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Science, a group which conducts scientific surveys on fish stocks it believes the government has poor scientific data on to help correct the data.

“Our basic premise is that either that target [204 million pounds by 2013] is such an unrealistic number to assume it can be reached, or their estimates that we are only halfway there are off,” Capt. Bogan said.

Already, there are scientists who support such a premise. On Dec. 5, the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Oceans —— of which Rep. Pallone is a senior member —— held a hearing on the Magnuson—Stevens Act.

Dr. Michael Sessenwine, a visiting scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Marine Science Consultant, testified at the hearing that “it is not reasonable to expect that the rebuilding to an uncertain estimate… can be achieved on a schedule with a high degree of certainty.”

Local impact

For the coming season, the fluke quota, the amount of fish allowed to be taken from the ocean, has already been cut. That translates into heftier size regulations for anglers, which means more fish will have to be thrown back than kept. This poses a threat to party boats, who may be run out of business if people cannot keep the fish they pay to catch.

Realizing the impact that fluke regulations have on the local economy led the Brielle Chamber of Commerce to donate $500 to the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund.


Mr. Higgins said local party boats, tackle shops, even gift shops, restaurants and liquor stores, could face a drop in business if the influx of recreational anglers into the area dries up.

“If they can’t catch fluke, they’re not going to come down,” Mr. Higgins said of some summer visitors. “When our organization looked at this, we realized it’s not just a fishing issue and that all of the small businesses in Brielle could be impacted negatively.”

Mr. Higgins said he hopes other local chambers of commerce follow the lead of Brielle.

“You’ve got towns like Belmar that spent a lot of money to build that beautiful marina,” said Mr. Higgins. “There are seven or eight head [party] boats there, if they can’t go out and catch fluke, it was all for naught.

Dave Arbeitman, owner of The Reel Seat bait and tackle shop in Brielle and one of the founder of the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, said a closure of the fluke fishery would have a “dramatic effect” on the entire area.

“I know that if they closed the fishery as is expected in 2009, that somewhere by either the end of 2009 or no longer than halfway through 2010, I’ll be closing my doors,” Mr. Arbeitman said. “There are other tackle shops in this area that would close within months.”

[Green Machine]

Push to Close Flounder Fishery Nothing but a Scam
app.com

Environmentalists who are pressuring government to gradually close the summer flounder fishery are running the biggest fisheries scam in the nation's history.

The movement has been carefully orchestrated through a system that relies on big money, sophisticated legal and media participation and the cooperation of people who know very little about fishing.

The aim is to stop fishing entirely, but this objective has been disguised until recently by rhetoric about increasing the number of fish in the sea.

The tipoff came a few years ago when a biologist on the West Coast was hired by The Pew Charitable Trusts' Environmental Group. He proceeded to announce that all fish stocks would be collapsed by 2040.

This pronouncement was immediately plugged into the media network that feeds on sensational doom and gloom, and the message soon reached Congress. Commercial fishing interests and a handful of recreational activists fought back weakly.

Lost in the discussion was the fact that U.S. fisheries are more carefully managed and the stocks in better shape than anywhere else in the world. The stocks are not on the brink of collapse.

The summer flounder was carefully chosen as the environmentalists' target because its numbers were down from the 1980s and it is the most popular fish — to eat and to catch — in the Mid-Atlantic area.

The campaign gained momentum as lawyers began shearing the head of the sleeping giant. Samson snored while Delilah snipped.

Now the big fellow is awake with a crewcut. He turns to the National Marine Fisheries Service for help and is told the agency can do nothing. It is bound by the law that Congress wrote.

He appeals to Congress and is informed that the National Marine Fisheries Service drew up the plan, set the rebuilding target and manages fisheries.

Supporters of the campaign to shut down the summer flounder fishery point out that the law was written by Congress, which represents the will of the people. This is democracy in action and we are a nation of laws.

The antis fail to point out that they had enormous influence in writing the law. Their impact was far greater than their numbers because of the wealth behind the agenda and the seafood-eating public was not involved.

Further clouding the congressional landscape was the presence of the catch-and-release mentality, the segment of the recreational fishing community that includes some prominent national fishing organizations, whose members may or may not catch fish to eat.

This element ignores the fact that the next step of antis, as demonstrated in Europe, is to prohibit all fishing with barbed hooks.

Congress, plodding along in ignorance of the general public's desires, the needs of recreational and commercial fishermen, and swayed by the pressure of environmentalists, wrote a law last winter that gave fisheries officials no flexibility in managing the summer flounder fishery.

It is doubtful if a single congressman who voted for the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act would ever say he intended to hurt tens of thousands of people when he voted for the 10-year rebuilding scheme.

What congressman would say: "I'm really proud that I passed a law that caused $3 billion in social and economic damage to the nation to double the size of a fluke biomass that is already at an historical high?"

That is the damage that adherence to a 10-year plan with no flexibility will do in the case of summer flounder.

Some environmentalists have no problem with inflicting pain on people - as long as it is not themselves - to protect fish. Biologists who arbitrarily pick a rebuilding target, and fiercely defend it, will get paid, even if there is not another fluke landed for the next 20 years.

[Misconduct]

Great article, Green Machine,

That just goes to show ya what fishermen, both recs. and comms., are up against.


It pisses me off that these asshole enviro's can get a fishery closed, basically because they feel like it. Without any decent proof.


As was said before, this is about ideology, not biology.

Check out www.ssfff.net

[Capt. Brian Daley]

Great article, Green Machine,

That just goes to show ya what fishermen, both recs. and comms., are up against.


It pisses me off that these asshole enviro's can get a fishery closed, basically because they feel like it. Without any decent proof.


As was said before, this is about ideology, not biology.

Check out www.ssfff.net

Remember one thing you can be mad or crazy just like these enviros groups
and peta but if you have the money in your Orig. you can lobby againist anything you want

[Green Machine]

Science Update from the SSFFF. If you have not yet done so, please visit www.ssfff.net to learn more about how the flounder problem and the Magnuson Act will be affecting you and how you are allowed to fish!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund has hired Dr. Mark Maunder as it's first step in dealing with the "Scientific" aspect of it's goals and mission statement.

Dr. Maunder (who is already working with SSFFF) has just completed his initial review of the current Summer Flounder Stock Assessment.

Dr Maunder is recognized internationally as a leader in the development of methodology for fisheries stock assessment and population dynamics modeling. He has been the team leader or participant in numerous stock assessments. Dr Maunder has been a main developer for three general stock assessment models used by several organizations worldwide. He has taught several courses in stock assessment and ecological modeling, including a graduate course at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Dr Maunder is currently a senior scientist at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. Through his company, Quantitative Resource Assessment LLC, Dr Maunder has served as a consultant for several national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations. He has been an invited speaker on many occasions, reviewed stocks assessments for several national and international organizations, has over 30 peer reviewed publications, numerous reports, attended many international conferences and workshops on fisheries, ecology, and statistics, and has obtained substantial external funding as lead or co- Principle Investigator. Dr Maunder’s research focuses on the development of statistical methodology for fisheries stock assessment, protected species, and ecological modeling.