I try following your logic and believe you to be an intelligent person, but your posts and insatiable obsession with science can do no wrong has me perplexed as well as your theories without facts to support them, the same scenario you criticize others of.

Maybe summer flounder left southern regions because of the first chart. NC and Va make up and have made up between 50% - 60% of the commercial summer flounder harvest for years. First chart reflects commercial harvest for the years '80 - '17 from 66th stock assessment and the 70's were even worse regarding NC's and Va's combined percentage of the overall commercial harvest. In 1979, 26 million lbs of the 39 million lbs commercially harvested were by NC and Va. In 1980 21 million of the 31 million lbs and in 1984 22 million of the 38 million lbs came from those two southern states. Maybe what appears to be a northerly migration of the southern biomass is in fact an obliteration of it due to over harvest by commercial fishing efforts no different than what happened in NJ years ago to whiting, ling, mackerel and cod as commercial efforts destroyed the local fisheries and the stock appeared to moved north.

What proof is there that southern stocks moved north due to changes in water temperatures......NONE. Is it more plausible to believe the two states that have 50-60% of the commercial harvest, two of the largest commercial fleets on the east coast decimated the summer flounder fishery biomass in their own local southern waters, in my opinion it is.

Large fluke migrate north seeking out colder water is your theory. Guess ling, sea bass and porgies which are all colder water species with east west migration patterns comparable to fluke don't have those same problems. Guess that's also why when the first wave of fluke come in they seek out skinny warmer water in back bays because they love cold water so much.......lol! Guess we get a surge in July, August and September of bigger fish when the water warms up because summer flounder prefer colder temperatures, all facts that contradict your position

I'd love for you to share which part of the science you're so enamored with. The part that gave us the second and third charts about recreational catch now based on "FES" Fishing Effort Survey or new MRIP versus "CHTS" Coastal Household Telephone Survey or old MRIP which cost us dearly in catch quotas for 2019 and will for foreseeable years if changes aren't made. And most of the incremental catch is said to be from shore based efforts, imagine that Look at the numbers, they're off the charts. Has anyone taken the time to review the newly improved mail order form being used. Attached link has it.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/recre...-effort-survey

Half way down under "Supporting Documents" click on FES Sample Survey and it will show you a 2-part PDF form. Aside from the bizarre questions being asked, there's not one question concerning actual fish landed or discarded. Net result is recreational anglers are being assessed almost 7 million lbs. more a year because of a new data collection process as speculative as the old.

Or should we bow down to science which has reduced relative recruitment strength for over 30 years, or science which has reduced spawning stock biomass and the biomass in general over the last 17 years or should we honor science which due to size increases has removed the recreational communities fishing access to approximately 30% of the biomass which commercial operators now exclusively harvest as a result of our discards along with the 60% share of the catch quota they already benefit from. And let's not forget the science which just dished out a 40% increase to the commercial quota for '19. Or maybe we should honor science which due to regulations appears to have destroyed age classes 0-2 of the biomass due to increases in recreational size limits over the last twenty years. There's sufficient NMFS data which I've shared with the board to support each of these facts.

So please enlighten us with how science has benefited this failed fishery for the last two to three decades because quite frankly the data, THEIR DATA, paints a completely different picture.

As I've said we need science, but we need accurate data from scientific efforts and we need intelligent decisions being made based on that data. Not decisions based on legislation adopted 43-years ago not addressing the issues causing a prolonged and substantial decline to the fishery.

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