SSFFF Update

[Gerry Zagorski]

I attended the SSFFF meeting last night and figured I'd pass along an update for you all.

For those of you not familiar with the Save the Summer Flouder Fishery Fund, you can read more about it here www.ssfff.net. In a nutshell, its an organization comprised and funded by the for hire and recreational fishermen as well as fishing industry related businesses, that have a vested interest in the Fluke fishery. Rather then use the funds to influence the fishery from a political perspective, the funds are used to pay for improved science behind stock assessments.

So with that being said, we got an update on the progress being made to improve the science behind stock assessments. There are 2 parts of the assessment. The research part which gathers data, in this case Fluke being caught recreationally and the model which takes the data and assess the stock.

On the research side, Rutgers and Cornell have been very busy fishing with for hire boats from RI to MD and all points in between gathering data. As of now they have landed 2100 Fluke with 1650 of them being discards which means throw backs. They record size and sex. When the season closes in September they will have the results which can be fed into the new model.

The current model uses Fluke ages soley to assess the stock. The new proposed model uses age, sex and length. It is well known that Females live longer and grow faster then males and the vast majority of Fluke over 19 inches are female yet this information was not being taken into account to access the stock and set regulations.

The data collection is slighted to end with the close of the fishing season in September so by October the data will be available to be put in the new model. That new model and the data will then be presented to the Fisheries Management Commitee for consideration and hopefully to do a better job setting regulations.

Thanks to everyone for supporting this effort. There is still a long way to go but we are getting closer to the goal of having better science to assess stocks so we have regulations that make sense.

[PeteyHD]

Thanks for the update Gerry. I won't post my opinions as it may be too political to comment.