Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

Conservationists Call for Positive Resolution
to Summer Flounder Problem

WASHINGTON, DC – Recent changes in summer flounder management have left recreational anglers and other conservationists concerned over the future of one of the most popular marine species on the East Coast. Because fisheries managers were not sufficiently conservative when setting annual harvest quotas, the summer flounder population may not be able to recover by the statutory deadline. As a result, anglers and commercial fishers may face severe harvest cuts in 2007.

"Managers have repeatedly insisted on setting the annual harvest levels at the highest levels permitted by law,” says Richen Brame, CCA’s Atlantic States Fisheries Director. “Their refusal to take a more conservative approach, to create a margin for error or unanticipated events in the fishery, led directly to today’s problems. The question we now must all address is whether the citizens should be made to suffer for the managers' errors."

There is little question that the summer flounder recovery has hit a snag. Recent fisheries-independent surveys all show that the population has declined or, at best, remained steady at roughly half the biomass of a recovered stock. Overfishing has also been endemic, with 2005 seeing fish harvested at a rate nearly double the biologically acceptable maximum. In addition, spawning success has been poor for a number of years, with recruitment in 2005 the worst since 1988. Thus, some reduction in harvest is probably indicated. What is not clear is whether the 70% cut proposed by NMFS is needed, or even required by law.

“There is a growing body of data suggesting that, as the summer flounder population grows, the growth rate of the population slows,” notes Charles Witek, state chairman of CCA New York. “If that is the case, it may be a biological impossibility to recover the population within 10 years, no matter how drastically harvest is slashed. The law contains a provision to permit longer rebuilding periods when biologically justified, and that may be the course that should be followed here.”

CCA is working with fisheries managers to craft measures that bring a reasoned approach to the summer flounder problem, in an effort to avoid working an unnecessary hardship on anglers and related businesses while assuring that the legal structure needed to properly conserve and manage our nation’s fisheries remains intact.

“A 70 percent reduction in summer flounder harvest would work a very severe hardship on anglers and angler-dependent businesses. Before we could agree to such a cut, we would have to be convinced that it was biologically justified,” states Brame. “However, we fully support all measures that are truly needed to restore and conserve the summer flounder fishery. Chronic overfishing must be halted, and the recovery put back on track.”

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