rlington, VA – The Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board approved Draft Addendum XXVI for public comment at the Joint Commission/Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council meeting in Baltimore, Maryland earlier this month. Draft Addendum XXVI proposes alternate management approaches for the 2015 summer flounder recreational fishery, including regional management options that are intended to provide more equity in recreational harvest opportunities along the coast. The states of Massachusetts through Virginia will be conducting public hearings on the Draft Addendum throughout January. The details of those hearings are attached.
Draft Addendum XXVI was initiated to consider the continuation of the adaptive regional management approach for the recreational summer flounder as established in Addendum XXV, which allowed for the use of regional management for the 2014 fishing season only. Regional management measures required states within a region to utilize the same size limit, bag limit, and season length. Addendum XXV was developed to address a growing concern that summer flounder management measures prior to 2014 were not providing recreational fishermen along the coast with equitable harvest opportunities to the resource. Its adaptive regional management approach was designed to allow the management program to adjust to past, current, and future changes to the resource and the fishery.
Under the provisions of Addendum XXV, the Board also approved the continuation of ad-hoc regional management approaches for the 2015 recreational black sea bass fishery. Addendum XXV allowed for the Board to extend the ad-hoc regional management measures by northern (Massachusetts-New Jersey) and southern regions (Delaware-North Carolina (north of Hatteras)) utilized in 2014 for up to one year. This approach has been used since 2011 and offers some advantages over coastwide regulations, which can disproportionately impact states within the management unit. The Technical Committee will work with the states to develop regional management measures for Board consideration and approval at the Commission Winter Meeting in early February. Under the stipulation that the northern region states implement management measures to account for overages in previous years and constrain harvest to 2015 recreational harvest limit, the Board and Council approved federal waters management measures for recreational black sea bass that include a 12.5-inch TL minimum size, a 15 fish possession limit, and an open season of May15-September 21 and October 22-December 31.
Fishermen and other interested groups are encouraged to provide input on Draft Addendum XXVI either by attending state public hearings or providing written comment. The Draft Addendum is available on the Commission website (www.asmfc.org) under Public Input. Public comment will be accepted until 5:00 PM (EST) on January 23, 2015 and should be forwarded to Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, 1050 N. Highland St., Suite 200 A-N, Arlington, Virginia 22201; 703.842.0741 (fax) or at krootes-murdy@asmfc.org (Subject line: Draft Addendum XXVI). For more information, please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy at krootes-murdy@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.