[Rocky]

I am posting this for a friend and I totally agree with him100%!


This fishery has been declining for more than a decade. Reason is obvious, recruitment is down. And recruitment is down for two reasons, regulations have the commercial sector today harvesting the breeding stock during the spawn impacting the efficiency of the spawn. Number of surviving recruits compared to the spawning stock biomass , a relative measurement, has declined over the last two decades by 80%. For example, if the spawning stock was 2,000 metric tons and recruitment when we were harvesting immature age groups was 2,000 new fish added to the stock, today it's 400 new fish. Add to that the spawning stock over the last decade, both males and females, has declined by over 60 million fish because the regulations have both sectors targeting larger mature age groups. And in the pursuit of larger age groups by the commercial sector and required harvest of larger age groups by the recreational sector, waste through discard mortality has reached epic levels. Now add to that the fishery is said to lose 25% from natural mortality on top of all that. Now someone please explain to me how this fishery survives.

We lost the southern Chesapeake stock some time ago and are now witnessing the loss of the Mid-Atlantic "MA" biomass which is where almost 80% of the commercial quota comes from, right in our backyard. Commercial operators are saying the stock is moving further north and northeast. My opinion is as the regulations continue to destroy the local "MA" biomass in our backyard, commercial operators are being forced to steam further to fill quotas and fishing a different biomass which is the Southern New England / Gulf of Maine biomass. Last biomass for fluke. Expansion, in my opinion no. Just a body of fish until now which has had less commercial pressure because of the biomass locally. As that biomass becomes the focus of commercial harvest, it will officially mark the beginning of the end of this fishery.

Are there fish in the bays and shallows due to water temperatures colder in the ocean? Absolutely. If they were there in the numbers they should be, every party, charter and private boat would be fishing the bays and reporting limit catches every day. Look at the reports, they're dismal at best.

One thing and one thing only at this stage because of complete inaction and unwillingness to read the data correctly by NMFS saves this fishery. Close the fishery to commercial harvest during the spawn to maximize recruitment which the data suggests would increase by 200% - 400%. So instead of 30 million new recruits a year, maybe we're looking at closer to 80 - 100 million.

Anything short of that, we're all looking at another dying fishery due to complete incompetence by management.