Tag Archives: fluke
North Carolina Sports target commercial fisheries – example #3 in 2022
Flounder, fluke, and flying by the seat of your pants – Bob Mone’s life as a fish broker.
The origins of Vineyard Co-op go back to a guy named Steve Boggess, who around 1970 ran Boggess Seafood out of Woods Hole on the pier over where the ferry shuttles back and forth to Naushon. Trip Barnes, who did trucking for Boggess, described him as “a college guy, kind of a yuppie. But he had a mind like a steel trap.” But the Steamship Authority, which owned the dock where Boggess’s office was located, put the squeeze on Boggess and forced him to leave. So Ralph Packer agreed to build a dock next to his gas tanks on Vineyard Haven harbor and Boggess moved his business to the Vineyard. Around 1975 Mone answered an ad looking for a manager at Boggess Seafood. At the time he was driving a milk truck on the Island and the only thing he knew about fish was that you buy them at a fish market. photo gallery, >click to read< 10:59
Coronavirus: Pop-up seafood market at Jersey Shore helps fishermen hurt by restaurant closures
A pop-up wholesale seafood market is helping to keep the fishing industry afloat in an Ocean County municipality. Point Pleasant Beach’s Shore Fresh Seafood Market is collaborating with the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative to sell the catch — brought ashore on the docks directly behind the business — on its outdoor patio on Channel Drive.,, The next wholesale market is set for this Thursday through Sunday, 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. Offerings include sea bass, fluke, porgies, monk fish and sea scallops. more info, >click to read< 13:49
Climate Change Is Sending This Fluke Fight to Court
Disputes over fish quotas are not new, and the $25.2 million East Coast market for fluke—although a reliable bread-and-butter fish—is not particularly lucrative. And New York has sued to alter the quota before. But this lawsuit is being watched closely because it introduces a new factor into the decades-old quota system: the impact of climate change. Quickly warming waters have reshaped the entire fishing industry on the East Coast, moving the fluke dramatically to the north. The lawsuit argues that now 80% of all fluke catches occur within 150 miles of Long Island and that state allocations need to be updated to reflect the fishes’ evolving location. >click to read< 08:17
New rule allows NB and Southern NE fishermen to stop throwing away fish
The change, which is also expected to be made in Rhode Island and Connecticut, will allow fishermen to make one trip and then return to the three states and offload their catches without going back to sea after every offload,,The conditions are that they must have licenses to catch fluke in the states where they offload, and the states must be open for catching fluke. “We just want to go from state to state and not kill fish unnecessarily. Anyone who thinks fishermen don’t care about fish is wrong,” said Tony Borges, owner and captain of Sao Paulo, Photos, >click to read< 14:12
Advisory: 2019 Commercial Fluke Trip Limit to Increase on November 1st
Effective November 1, 2019 through the end of the year, all commercial closed fishing days for summer flounder days will be eliminated thereby allowing commercial fishermen to fish for, possess and land summer flounder seven-days per week and the commercial trip limit will be increased to 1,000 pounds for all gear types (Declaration Notice). This will allow vessels fishing offshore to have greater access to the state’s remaining 2019 commercial summer flounder quota (about 240,000 pounds). >click to read< 15:37
Judge tosses NY’s lawsuit over fluke quotas
A federal judge has dismissed New York’s lawsuit seeking to challenge the state’s relatively small portion of the East Coast commercial fluke quota as a congressman called for local fishermen to not comply with the restrictive allotment. With little fanfare, U.S. District Judge Sandra Feuerstein on July 30 issued an order dismissing the case, allowing the state 10 days to file a notice to reargue its claims by next April Court records showed no such filing had been made. New York’s original complaint was filed Jan. 14 Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo first threatened to sue over New York’s low quota at an event in Montauk in 2013. Meanwhile, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) on Friday recommended that New York commercial fishermen go out of compliance with the fluke quota system in what would be a clear signal to Washington of their frustration with the process. >click to read< 19:37
Rep. Zeldin Blasts NY’s ASMFC Delegates for Failure to Deliver for NY Fishermen
Today, Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) blasted New York’s delegates to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) following the conclusion of this month’s spring meeting, during which no progress was made in rectifying New York’s already inequitable quotas for species across the board, including Black Sea Bass, Striped Bass and Fluke. >click to read<19:10
More fluke could be coming for Connecticut fishermen
Last week, the MAFMC and the ASMFC increased the annual coastwide commercial quota for summer flounder for 2019-21 to 11.53 million pounds. While states will continue to receive allocations based on their historic landings up to 9.55 million pounds, landings after that will be divided equally among mid-Atlantic and southern New England states.>click to read<10:33
NYDEC halts commercial fluke fishery for about two weeks, sets harvest limit
New York State will close its commercial fishing grounds, a staple of the Long Island fishing fleet, for about two weeks effective Sunday. The closure, which applies to fishing in state waters up to 3 miles from shore, will last until month’s end, when it reopens with a harvest limit of 50 pounds per day. Local commercial fishermen, who dealt last month with a similar closure of another plentiful staple in New York waters of black sea bass, say the closure is another blow to their livelihood at a time of pricing stresses and amid state pressure to ease federal restrictions. “It really hurts us,” said Phil Karlin,,, >click to read<13:46
New Jersey Lawmakers Calling on Feds to Lift Strict Limits on Fluke Fishing for This Season
The State Assembly is asking the federal government to suspend a 40 percent quota reduction that enters its second year until a new fluke stock assessment is completed and new rules can be established based on those findings. “NOAA recommendations for the 2017 and 2018 seasons were based on flawed data collected from inconsistent sampling and methodology,” said Assemblyman Edward H. Thomson (R-Monmouth/Ocean), who sponsored the resolution to freeze limits to 2015 levels.,, “New Jersey desperately needs Washington to stop relying on flawed numbers and bad science and complete newer, more precise stock assessments so we can accurately assess the health of our fluke stocks while protecting our fishermen’s livelihoods,” >click to read<12:55
New York State petitions feds demanding more equitable fluke quota
New York State on Friday filed a petition with the federal government to demand a more equitable distribution of the commercial fluke quota, saying current rules put “unreasonable limits” on the state industry.,, “The stringent limits on commercial landings of [fluke] in New York ports have made [fluke] fishing no longer an economically viable choice” for New York fishermen, because the “limited revenue generated by a trip often cannot offset the costs, including fuel, time, and vessel wear-and-tear.” >click to read<18:21
Fisherman’s case yields complicated evidence trail
The federal trial of Thomas Kokell features a trail of evidence including hand-scrawled freight tickets and fishing-trip reports. Stacks of paper slips have cluttered a U.S. courtroom in Central Islip over the past two weeks, a multicolored trail of evidence in the first major criminal trial of a Long Island fisherman charged in a probe of alleged illegal fishing.,,, The charges stem from a five-year federal probe of an auction program that let fishermen harvest beyond their quotas. The investigation has netted seven guilty pleas and prison or home-detention sentences for five other people. One of the men who pleaded guilty is Mark Parente, a fish dealer from New Jersey,,, >click to read<11:16
What the tags tell us: one fluke’s life reveals a lot
How long does it take a fluke to grow a 1/4 of an inch? The answer: about seven months. At least that was the data collected on a fluke that was tagged and released in Narragansett Bay last June and recaptured in January near the Hudson Canyon. The angler Daphne Forster released the fluke on June 15 about 4 ½ nautical miles south of Sakonnet Point, Rhode Island. The fish was then netted Jan. 24 by the Evening Star, a commercial dragger that was fishing in 300 to 400 feet of water. The Evening Star offloaded the fluke in Beaufort,,, >click to read< 09:23 
Report detailing enforcement abuses barred from fisherman’s trial
The first criminal trial of a Long Island fisherman charged in connection with a federal probe of a controversial fish-auction program is set to begin, but a report detailing fisheries enforcement abuses by the government has been barred from the trial. Lawyers for Northport fisherman Thomas Kokell, charged in a multi-count indictment with overharvesting fluke, argued in pretrial motions that a 2010 federal inspector general’s report detailing abuses and “overzealousness” by the National Marine Fisheries Service was vital to the defense. >click here to read< 21:35
More fluke, less sea bass, but no difference for frustrated CT commercial fisherman under 2018 quotas
East Coast fishermen will be allowed to catch more summer flounder and not as much sea bass as last year, under new quotas proposed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. But Stonington fisherman say the effects of the changing quotas will be nominal, and they will continue to advocate for an overhaul of the quota system, which they say has been unfair for decades. click here to read the story 21:54
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
Fishermen urge state to sue Feds over Fluke fishing limits
Several dozen fishermen, women and lawmakers last week urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to make good on a promise to sue the federal government over New York’s disproportionately low share of the fluke fishery. At a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall last Wednesday, the gathering of fishing interests sought to unify their agenda before a meeting with top state officials scheduled for next month. The commercial fishery for fluke was shut down in September for the first time in recent memory. It reopened Oct. 1 with a 50-pound daily limit. New York gets 7.6 percent of the commercial fluke quota, while North Carolina and Virginia get more than 20 percent each. click here to read the story 07:37
Strained Fluke Quotas, Hurricanes and Safe Harbor
Less than a month after a bill granting vessels safe harbor in New York was signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, a fishing vessel bound for North Carolina carrying 6,000 pounds of fluke has tested the new policy, straining New York’s federally designated fluke quotas. The F/V Rianda S., which has long been a part of the Montauk fleet, was in transit to land its fish in North Carolina, where it has fishing licenses, on Sept. 17 after fishing in federal waters when it encountered the rough seas generated by Hurricane José and requested safe harbor in Montauk. New York’s fluke fishery is closed for the month of September, due to banner fluke landings this summer that strained the state’s already low federally mandated quotas. click here to read the story 08:25
Jim Lovgren – Fishery managers responsible for Summer Flounder mismanagement
Earlier this year the state of New Jersey was found to be out of compliance by the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission [ASMFC] in regard to the proposed recreational catch specifications for Summer Flounder, [fluke].The ASMFC which jointly manages summer flounder with the Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council, [MAFMC] had recommended an increase in the recreational size limit for Summer Flounder to 19 inches for New Jersey. New Jersey fishery management representatives balked at that proposal and instead presented an alternative proposal that would keep the size limit at the present 18 inches but with a shorter season which would still meet the conservation goals as the Commission’s plan. The Commission denied this alternative and declared New Jersey out of Compliance, an action that would result in the shutdown of the Summer Flounder fishery, both recreational and commercial sometime later this summer. Unfairly this shutdown would have occurred after the recreational season was over, and would only impact New Jersey’s commercial fishermen, who are already struggling with a 50% cut back in the quota over the last two years click here to read the story 11:32
Fluke-catching quota costing fishermen thousands
Dozens of commercial fishermen say they are losing out on pay after they reached their state-imposed limit on how many fluke they are allowed to catch. Captain Roy Diehl says he and dozens of other commercial fluke fishermen are docked because they caught their allowed quota for the July-August season just two weeks after it opened. He says he blames the 30 percent quota reduction set by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission for this year. “What it does is it takes seven weeks of income out of everybody’s paycheck for the year,” says Diehl. “It’s pretty tough because there’s a lot of fluke out there and we can’t have them.” Video, read the story here 22:51
Trump administration steps in on fishing limits, and the implications could ripple
“The commission is deeply concerned about the near-term impact on our ability to end overfishing on the summer flounder stock as well as the longer-term ability for the commission to effectively conserve numerous other Atlantic coastal shared resources,” Douglas Grout, the commission’s chair, said in a statement. “New Jersey makes a compelling argument that the measures it implemented this year, despite increasing catch above the harvest target, will likely reduce total summer flounder mortality in New Jersey waters to a level consistent with the overall conservation objective,” Chris Oliver, assistant administrator of fisheries at NOAA, wrote the commission in a letter on behalf of Ross. The move infuriated commissioners and fishing officials throughout the area, as well as the region’s NOAA officials. “Ross was brilliant in his decision,” said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance in New Jersey, which represents thousands of recreational fishermen across the country. “The Trump administration has challenged a broken fishery management system in this country, and I applaud them for doing it.” click here to read the story 10:10
A little story about my day at sea yesterday
So we leave to go fishing at 0330 with an observer that the government forces us to take. Now the young man is a likable enough guy who I have no problem with. The problem is we are forced to take these people with no exception. When they tell you they are going to put one on your boat you either take them or you deal with the wrath of NOAA law enforcement. So we go out with the plan of going to catch some scup, fluke and sea bass to unload in Connecticut. We had some nice scup the day before and figured we would get CT’s allowance which is a whopping 1200 pounds of scup, 75 lbs. of fluke and 10 sea bass in count. So we make a couple of tows and come up a bit light on the scup but have the fluke and sea bass. We go and unload ion CT. and on the way there, which happens to be a 2 hour+ steam each way I am informed that the scup that we landed the previous day which had been paying around 60 cents per pound had dropped to 10 to 15 cents per pound. Not even worth the fuel to catch. WONDERFUL. So we go all the way to CT. , unload our catch and head back another 2+ hours for home. After we get back to our dock, I and my crewman are cleaning up the boat and we notice someone on the dock with a camera taking pictures of us as he walks by. No big deal.,,, Click here to read the story 10:24
NJ asks feds to drop limits on summer flounder
With their rows of sharp buck teeth, their downturned mouths, and both eyes on one side of their curiously flat bodies, summer flounder might seem beautiful only to one another. But this delicately flavored flatfish is the pinup girl, the heart’s desire, of thousands of New Jersey’s recreational fishermen — and has long been the source of many millions of dollars in tourism revenue each summer. For that reason the state has petitioned a federal commission to reverse its new restrictions on catching summer flounder in state waters in 2017. click to continue reading the story 07:06
Measuring flounder a complex undertaking with a big impact
It’s likely few people have written more about summer flounder than Mark Terceiro. Terceiro has published a 44-page journal article about the science, politics and litigation surrounding the species from 1975 to 2000. A 32-page follow-up covered the period from 2001 to 2010, and another article regarding developments in recent years is in the works. But it’s Terceiro’s summer flounder stock assessment update, released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in December, that has him in the crosshairs of New Jersey politicians and recreational fishing leaders. Terceiro, a research fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said a lot of information goes into a stock assessment. “The catch is, from both commercial and recreational, very important — that it be accurate,” Terceiro added. “We try — the government, the states — (to) go to great lengths to make sure the catch reports are as accurate as they can get.” continue reading the article here 09:20
N.J. lawmakers ask Trump’s new commerce secretary to stop flounder cuts
It’s not clear how much Wilbur Ross knows about fishing or the complex world of marine regulations. But some members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation hope Ross, who was sworn in as secretary of commerce Tuesday, will step into an intense fight over summer flounder catch guidelines. The delegation wasted no time in appealing to Ross, who now oversees the agencies tasked with regulating the fishing industry. A bipartisan letter sent Tuesday and signed by 12 New Jersey lawmakers, including both U.S. senators and U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd, asked the former billionaire businessman to considering putting approved flounder reductions on hold. Last month, a federal regulatory commission voted in favor of an option to cut fluke limits for recreational and commercial fishermen by 28 percent to 32 percent for 2017. continue reading the story here 15:06
NJ Fluke Fishing Industry in Flux
After a decision made last week aimed at protecting the Atlantic Ocean’s primary cash fish, New Jersey anglers now believe their industry is in dire straits. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), a federally regulated authority that oversees fishing management for the 15 states along the Atlantic Coast, has decided to increase regulations on summer flounder for 2017. “With what they’re proposing, it’s going to be the final nail in our coffin,” said Ron Santi, a head boat captain based out of Atlantic Highlands. “When looking at recreational and commercial fisheries on a whole, it seems as though for 20 to 30 years, we’ve been fishing at a higher level than the resources can sustain,” said Kirby Rootes-Murdy, a senior fishery management plan coordinator with ASMFC. Between recreational and commercial fishing, fluking generates nearly $2.5 billion for the state’s economy, according to the NJ Department of Environmental Protection. Continue reading the story here 08:00
Could N.J. defy summer flounder cuts?
It didn’t take long after the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to slash summer flounder harvest quotas for the rumblings of anglers calling for New Jersey to defy the regulations to pick up. The ASMFC ordered the harvest cut by 40-percent based on science that indicates the fish is declining in abundance and survey data that reports anglers overreached their quotas last year. The science and angling surveys are at the center of the issue. Many lawmakers in New Jersey and its environmental chief have expressed concern about its accuracy because it relies on random sampling. “We understand the long-term impacts of overfishing a species. But we also know for a fact that fluke are abundant and the population is stable off New Jersey,” said Bob Martin, the Commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. Video, Read the story here 16:25
N.J. fishermen, officials demand feds back off of proposed flounder limits
In a unified show of support, New Jersey officials and leaders of the state’s fishing industry said Friday they are demanding the federal government abandon plans to cut the amount of fluke to be harvested this year. Insisting the proposed new limits will devastate an industry important to New Jersey’s economy, the government and industry representatives said they’re prepared to mount a legal fight, if necessary, to fight “ridiculous” limits that were based on “flawed” data. Jim Lovgren, a fishing boat captain and director of the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative, said fishermen already experienced a 30-percent reduction in limits last year and face yet another 17- or 18-percent cut next year. The Point Pleasant Beach cooperative he heads pulls in about 2 million pounds of flounder annually. “Taking 30 percent of that last year hurt. It hurt me economically. It hurt everybody over there. It hurt everybody here,” he said to the crowd. Photo gallery of 21 images, Read the story here 16:54
Governor Cuomo And Attorney General Underwood Demand Changes To Unfair Federal Fishing Quotas
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood today submitted comments to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and demanded that the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council repeal and replace the unfair state-by-state allocation of the annual commercial quota for summer flounder, also known as fluke. The need for equitable distribution of fluke is critically important to New York’s fishing industry and the state’s overall ocean economy. >click to read<17:27
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