Threatened restrictions on the commercial harvest of bluefish in New York State have been abandoned

112215_jpirro_zeldin_1280Threatened restrictions on the commercial harvest of bluefish in New York State have been abandoned after lawmakers urged federal regulators to take action to salvage the 2016 season. In an order this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined bluefish are “not overfished or experiencing overfishing.” The order allows for more than 1.5 million pounds of quota to be shifted among states and the commercial sector, allowing New York’s harvest to reach the previous year’s levels of some 500,000 pounds. The move salvages a commercial fishing season that state officials said would have been “devastated” by a closure. Last month, NOAA had threatened to close New York’s commercial fishery for bluefish after the annual harvest of 360,000 pounds was reached. “It looks like our advocacy paid off and they took a second look at the data which we called out for being outdated and wrong,” U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin’s office said in a email. Read the rest here 12:44

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