Seabass Update 2026 and 2027

[Gerry Zagorski]

I patched into to the Seabass meeting today and some very positive news that we're headed the right direction..

Short version is, right now the committee has approved a 30% increase in harvest for the recreational sector for 2026 and 2027. However we don't know yet how that will impact our measures until Nov after the 3rd quarter wave of reporting comes in. That could mean anywhere from status quo to a 40 % increase in our measures. Certainly a move in the right direction and then depending on what we finally get, we and our state decides how to carve it up.

Long version and some meeting notes.
- All public comments were read and reviewed and accounted for. 99% of were from us here in NJ and a large percentage of that came from the copy and paste form letter we put up here. Great Job!
- In the future be sure to not just copy and paste what I put up because I get the feeling they weigh the same copy and paste comments less then they do personalized ones
- Total fish landed including mortality for discards was 35% commercial and 65% recreational.
- The commercial guys have not met their quota for several years now, this is due in large part to the overabundance of fish being brought to market which leads to declining prices in the market. Those falling prices makes it less economical to fish for them.
- Discard mortality on the recreational side is a huge issue for us and there was a lot of discussion on that topic. We're wasting a lot of fish and being held accountable for them so would a decrease in size limit be considered? If we lower the size limit so we can fill our bag limits with smaller fish and not have to throw them back.
- There was also a lot of discussion about the doom and gloom the Science Center report as far as future lower Biomass. The councils pushed them hard and they were asked to dig into to predictions given their past reliability and they changed that to our favor.

To be continued in November when the 3Q data comes in and in the late winter when the NJ Council gets to decide our regulations based on what we're given.

Stay tuned here for updates and thanks to all of those who got up off their asses and did something rather then sit on the sidelines and watch!