Posts Tagged ‘NJMFC’
Public hearing for Draft Addendum II to Amendment 6 for striped bass
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010The 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
NJMFC Sept. 3 Meeting Update
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009I just received an update from Tom Fote about this weeks NJMFC meeting about sea bass, scup and summer flounder.
…Tom McCloy sent out the notice below in maroon telling us that these agenda items have been removed from this Thursday’s NJ Marine Fisheries meeting.
Tom Fote
Greetings,
Just completed the conference call of the ASMFC Summer Flounder, Scup, Black Sea Bass Board to discuss emergency closures in the summer flounder, scup and sea bass recreational fisheries for the remainder this year, 2009.
Even though the projections are that ALL fisheries will be over the harvest target (significantly for scup & sea bass) the Board failed to approve any action for an emergency closure this year.
Therefore, there will be NO action required by the Council at the Sept 3 meeting on these species.
Be advised that management measures for these species could be extremely restrictive in 2010.
Please note that NJ’s recreational summer flounder fishery is projected to exceed our target harvest by 29%.
Tom McCloy
