Floundering with the Fishcrats
Right now just three miles from Long Island’s beaches boats are dragging fluke, or “summer flounder”, as is their official title. These boats are from several regional states, among them New York. Most are fishing under Southern state “flags”, as it were, as these states have the biggest quota shares and therefore the biggest daily limits. Each boat will have to steam to a port in the state of the landing permit it is working under to off load and sell the catch. This fishing here has been going on this way for many decades, but it hasn’t been until recent years that boats had to sail the flatfish hundreds of miles to sell them. Bringing them within New York’s boundaries constitutes a serious violation of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Law, with potential felony convictions with huge fines, loss of license and vessel, and jail time. click here to read the story 09:02
The Virginia quota you are complaining about works out to 76 pounds a day. The previous North Carolina quota that ended September 30th worked out to 34 pounds a day.
The quota in NY is based mostly on boats that came from out of state not NY boats. If it wasn’t for those boats you would have a lot less to fish on. The two entities to blame for NY’s problem with fluke they are the DEC and NY fishermen who would not put up their records to fight this problem.
NC has 230 permits about half as many as NY to qualify you had to land a certain poundage in 2 out 3 years. In contrast NY you had to have a food fish license. If NY had used NC criteria most of the complainers would not have a fluke permit.
Mark Phillips