The turnout was a bit disappointing, only 20 people showed (not including council members) if you count the one media outlet that was there to cover the meeting. About half gave public comment. The major groups in attendance were the The Recreational Fishing Alliance, Jersey Coast Anglers Association, Hi-Mar Striper Club, Manasquan Fishing Club, Bay Head Shores Fishing Club and the Newark Bait & Flycasting Club. If I missed anyone I am sorry…going by memory.

Some very good feedback and suggestions were made for changes to the addendum in regards to the reference point changes. All that gave comment were against Issue I, any increase in commercial quota and in favor of Issue II, the reference point change.

Basically the reference point change is a good thing. It will allow the council to take immediate action if for three years in a row there is recruitment failure. ‘Under this option, recruitment failure would be defined as a value that is below 75% of all values in a fixed time series appropriate to each juvenile abundance index.’

For NJ the council decided to drop the data for 1980-1985. The reason being they were really just learning where the fish were after spawning and what they thought was extremely poor recruitment was really their inability to find the juvenile fish and figuring out methods and means to do the young of the year survey in the Delaware.

With dropping these few years of the data set it is basically lowering the juvenile abundance index (JAI). In doing so what was once thought to be fair or good recruitment years for 2002 and 2006 now fall below the index value of 0.89 and qualify as recruitment failures. Which at the end of the day means that we have a lower threshold and the council will be quicker to act on protecting the stock if recruitment failure does occur.

Public written comment is being accpeted until October 1, 2010.

This is the link to Draft Addendum II to Amemendment VI

Info on submitting public comment is below, you can either e-mail, call, fax or mail public comment.

Email: nmeserve@asmfc.org
Phone:  202-289-6400
Fax:  202-289-6051      

Mail: Nichola Meserve
Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
1444 ‘Eye’ Street, NW, 6th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005

Meeting Today Results in longer Black Sea Bass Season

Recreational Fishing Alliance

Contact: Jim Hutchinson, Jr. / 888-564-6732
For Immediate Release

May 4, 2010

BLACK SEA BASS SEASON TO DOUBLE IN LENGTH ASMFC Votes to Increase Fishing Days – The Recreational Fishing Alliance Legal Defense Continues

In a vote supported by all member states of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board today, states will now have the option to liberalize the 2010 black sea bass season in state waters by an additional 90 days. The proposed new season will run from May 22 through October 11, with an additional open period of November 1 through December 31. The proposal would keep the size and bag limit the same of 12-1/2 inches and 25 fish per angler.

“The Recreational Fishing Alliance representatives have worked tirelessly on the 2010 black sea bass season since last summer, when drastic cuts to fishing days were first proposed,” said Capt. Adam Nowalsky, chairman of the Recreational Fishing Alliance’s New Jersey chapter (The Recreational Fishing Alliance-NJ). Nowalsky attended the ASMFC meetings this week in North Carolina longside fellow The Recreational Fishing Alliance-NJ board member and United Boatmen representative Capt. Tony Bogan, and said perseverance has been the key to seeing the sea bass opportunities open up again for recreational anglers along the Mid-Atlantic coast. “In December, we were faced with a 60-day season for 2010, and now we are closing in on a near 200-day season,” Nowalsky added.

The increase in fishing days became possible after the recent release of 2009 black sea bass landings. Projected 2009 landings had been mandating a 44% reduction in landings for 2010, but the updated data showed that only a 21% reduction was needed, allowing for the liberalization. For the new regulation to go into effect, individual states will have to implement the new proposal, but given the unanimous support of the states for the motion, implementation is expected.

The Recreational Fishing Alliance representatives have attended and advocated at every ASMFC and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council meeting impacting the recreational black sea bass fishery since last August to ensure that the recreational sector is treated fairly by regulators and has the best opportunity possible to enjoy this healthy fishery. “When our state Marine Fisheries Council meets again back home at the Atlantic County Library in Galloway on May 13th at 4 p.m., this sea bass season increase should be on the agenda,” said Nowalsky. “This is good news for all our coastal states from Massachusetts down through North Carolina, everyone who enjoys this healthy and robust sea bass fishery,” he said.

NOAA Fisheries released a proposed rule last week that specified an opening date of May 22 for the fishery in federal waters with no firm end date for 2010; NOAA Fisheries did not oppose the ASMFC proposal today. When NOAA Fisheries abruptly closed the recreational sea bass fishery last October without any opportunity for public comment, the The Recreational Fishing Alliance immediately began working on a legal challenge to fight the closure. The The Recreational Fishing Alliance, United Boatmen and a coalition of industry allies (the “Plaintiffs”) filed suit on November 4, 2009 in New Jersey Federal Court arguing that the sea bass closure should be declared unlawful and set aside for being arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with law pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act.

The Plaintiffs also allege that NOAA Fisheries violated numerous provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act for closing a recreational fishery in reliance upon the fatally flawed Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS) and for failing to adequately assess the impacts of the Emergency Rule on small business entities such as party and charter boats and bait and tackle shops.

“The emergency closure of the recreational sea bass fishery was unprecedented for a fishery that is not ‘overfished’ and where ‘overfishing is not occurring’,” said Jim Donofrio, The Recreational Fishing Alliance Executive Director. “This case is about more than just sea bass; it’s about taking a stand against a federal agency abusing its power and hurting individuals and small business owners. If NMFS gets away with using MRFSS data to shut down the sea bass fishery this time it will be tough to stop them from doing it in other fisheries.” Donofrio said that a legal win with this case would help set a precedent for anglers to ensure that NOAA couldn’t make similar closures in other regions in the future.

On January 22, NMFS filed the Administrative Record for the case, submitting all the documents the Court will consider in making its decision. “We carefully reviewed the Administrative Record to determine whether further documents existed that should have been, but were not, submitted by the government,” said Herb Moore, Jr., The Recreational Fishing Alliance co-counsel on the case. “Surprisingly, we discovered that NMFS failed to submit the minutes of the December 2008 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which is the meeting where the 2009 sea bass measures were debated and voted on only to be preempted roughly ten months later by the emergency closure,” Moore said.

According to the The Recreational Fishing Alliance‘s legal team, the government would not consent to adding these materials to the Administrative Record so they filed a motion to supplement the record on April 23 which they expect will be decided sometime after May 17. “Thirty days after we have a decision on this motion to supplement, we will go ahead and file a motion for summary judgment and expect NMFS to file a cross motion for summary judgment after that,” Moore said, adding “We expect this case will ultimately be decided on these cross motions for summary judgment.”

As of May 4, 2010, $26,470.27 has been deposited into the The Recreational Fishing Alliance Legal Defense Fund for ongoing efforts to challenge NOAA Fisheries’ decision to close the black sea bass fishery. “Tackle shops, party and charter boat captains, fishing clubs and captains organizations and hundreds of individual anglers have contributed to our campaign to ensure that NOAA Fisheries never does this again,” said The Recreational Fishing Alliance Managing Director, Jim Hutchinson, Jr. “This battle to reopen our sea bass fishery and the ongoing legal challenge to protect anglers against future arbitrary closures has been all grassroots so far, but I’m hoping that some of our friends from the national tackle industry who rely on a healthy sea bass fishery will contribute to the angler efforts to keep our folks fishing,” Hutchinson added.

Learn more about the The Recreational Fishing Alliance and the The Recreational Fishing Alliance Legal Defense Fund at www.joinrfa.org

I just got off the call for the ASMFC meeting today.  It took over 1.5 hours for me to even get into the call.  So I missed the presentation on black sea bass and the public comment as well.  Apparently they only had available seats for 50 callers in the conference call.  After Tom Fote, the Governor’s Appointee to the ASMFC, was also kicked out of the call they suspended the call and increased the available seats. 
 
They then re-opened the floor to public comment in favor for a motion to close black sea bass.  The motion to close the remainder of the 2009 black sea bass season was overruled 7 votes against and 4 for.
 
There was no motion on the floor for scup or summer flounder.
 
There were several states that asked questions as to how the projected landings were calculated and there were some very concerning answers given.  The projections were calculated on the 2008 seasons, bag limits and minimum sizes.  If any of the states had put in place shorter or longer seasons, changed bag limits or minimum sizes those regulations were not used in the projections.  Most states have changed seasons, bag limits and minimum sizes on summer flounder in particular, sea bass has pretty much remained unchanged over the past few years.
 
The ASMFC had acknowledged they had problems and this was one of their first webinar and conference calls but they were pleased with the amount of callers and attendees to the webinars and that they had more people on the conference call than have ever attended a board meeting.  They hope to continue with this forum and look to work out the kinks to be able to provide more opportunity for the public to be involved with the process.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS
May 5, 2009

CONTACT: Tina Berger
(202) 289-6400

Winter Flounder Board Approves Addendum I to Initiate Stock Rebuilding of Inshore Stocks

It hasn’t been set in stone yet by NJ but it looks like ASMFC will not completely close winter flounder. With a two fish recreational bag limit they believe we will achieve about a 50% reduction in harvest with a 50 pound commercial possesion limit is estimated to achieve a 65% reduction.

OK, here is the skinny…tables below are minimum size, bag limit, season start – season end. The below information is take from the ‘Report by the Peer Review Panel for the Northeast Data Poor Stocks Working Group’. The complete document can be found by clicking here. NY is on page 50 and NJ on 52.

Not sure I really like any of them, i was really hoping for a slot limit on fluke, something like two fish at 14-16.5″ and two fish at 18-24″ and a trophy fish-one at over 24″. Whatever they decide we will comply, actually last year we made very few fluke trips. Due to several reasons, one the cold water temps early in the season, there were still good sized striped bass around and then when fluking was picking up we were running to the mud hole after bluefin tuna. Later in the season the sea bassing was hot so we really never dedicated more than about five trips to fluking.

2008 Regulations: 18” size limit, 8 fish possession limit, open season May 24 to September 7

Table A. 2009 NJ Summer Flounder Options that meet Board approved motion that at least 50% of the required reduction should come from a closed season. Seasons were calculated using the 1994 – 1998 Weibull distribution.

18.0 8 June 6 – Sept 7
18.0 6 June 1 – Sept 7
18.0 4 May 31 – Sept 7
18.0 8 May 23 – Sept 1
18.0 6 May 23 – Sept 4
18.0 4 May 23 – Sept 3

Table B. 2009 NJ Summer Flounder Options developed using adjusted percent reduction.

18.0 8 June 17 – Sept 7
18.0 6 June 13 – Sept 7
18.0 4 June 8 – Sept 7
18.0 8 May 23 – Aug 26
18.0 6 May 23 – Aug 28
18.0 4 May 23 – Aug 31
18.0 8 June 1 – Aug 29
18.0 6 May 30 – Aug 31
18.0 4 May 29 – Sept 2
18.5 8 May 9 – Oct 4

Table C. 2009 NJ Summer Flounder Options meeting the Board approved motion that at least 50% of the required reduction should come from a closed season and the Technical Committee recommendation that the closed season should come from the wave of highest harvest. Seasons were calculated using the 1994 – 1998 Weibull distribution.

18.0 8 May 23 – July 20 & Aug 3 – Sept 7
18.0 6 May 23 – July 20 & Aug 3 – Sept 7
18.0 8 May 20 – July 20 & Aug 3 – Sept 9
18.0 6 May 20 – July 20 & Aug 3 – Sept 12
18.0 8 May 15 – July 20 & Aug 3 – Sept 13
18.0 6 May 13 – July 20 & Aug 3 – Sept 16
18.0 8 May 23–Aug 2 & Aug 10-Sept 7
18.0 6 May 23–Aug 2 & Aug 10-Sept 7
18.0 4 May 23–Aug 2 & Aug 10-Sept 7
18.0 8 May 22–Aug 2 & Aug 10-Sept 9
18.0 6 May 19–Aug 2 & Aug 10-Sept 11
18.0 4 May 19–Aug 2 & Aug 10-Sept 11

NJ again requests to have a 1-day opening on Sunday, October 4, 2009; area specific to Island Beach State Park; for the annual Governor’s Surf Fishing Tournament.

Note: Other options may be developed after consultation with Summer Flounder Recreational Advisors and the New Jersey Marine Fisheries Council. These options will be developed using the same methodology as above.

Well let’s start with the good for a change. We in NJ are status quo for striped bass for 2008! The current 2007 regulations will remain in effect. We are well above the mortality rates, the spawning stocks were low but the young of the year looked really good especially in 2003 and not too shabby for 2006 so we are in good shape. Actually we are well above the point of action for the spawning stock, 30.9 million pounds is the point of action and we are at 55 million!

The bad news is NJ did not come into compliance with the tautog regulations and we now face drastic cutbacks. And rumor are flying around of one fish per person per season. We will just have to wait and see how the ASMFC rears its ugly head next.

1. 17 1/2″ June 28th to Sept 8th 2 fish
2. 17 1/2″ July 4th to Sept 2nd 8 fish
3. 18″ May 25th to Sept 8th 8 fish
4. 18 1/2″ May 17th to Oct 17th 8 fish

The Summer Flounder Board will look at them on Thursday and if approved then the NJ Marine Fisheries Council will be holding an advisories meeting to receive comments and then discuss and vote on it at their March 6th meeting.

I hope to get an update at the conclusion of the ASMFC Summer Flounder meeting in Alexandria on Thursday.