Arlington, VA – Members of the horseshoe crab and whelk industry from the Chesapeake Bay Packing, LLC, Bernie’s Conchs, LLC, LaMonica Fine Foods, Southern Connection Seafood, Inc., Sea King Corp., and Spot’s Fish Company have collectively pledged $15,000 to support the Horseshoe Crab Trawl Survey for 2011. Combined, the biomedical industry and whelk and horseshoe crab processors and dealers have contributed more than $115,000 to conduct the survey this year. Rick Robins, who coordinated the additional financial support for the survey, stated, “The Commission deserves credit for putting the Delaware Bay regional horseshoe crab population on a solid path to…
Press Releases
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Arlington, VA – The biomedical companies Lonza Walkersville, Inc., Associates of Cape Cod, Inc., and Charles River Laboratory have together pledged over $100,000 to support the Horseshoe Crab Trawl Survey for 2011. The survey, which has been administered by Virginia Tech since 2002, is the only survey designed to sample the horseshoe crab population in coastal waters. Its data are a critical component of the coastwide stock assessment and the new Adaptive Resource Management (ARM) framework, both of which were endorsed through an independent peer review in 2009. The ARM framework includes modeling that links management of horseshoe crab harvest…
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Virginia Beach, VA – The Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) initiated the recreational fisheries specification process for the 2011 summer flounder, scup, black sea bass seasons. The Council and Board adopted the use of conservation equivalency (state-by-state measures) to achieve the 2011 recreational harvest limit for summer flounder. The harvest limit (11.58 million pounds), approved in August by the Council and Board, represents a 33% increase relative to 2010. Conservation equivalency allows states to develop and implement state-specific management measures (i.e., possession limits, size limits, and seasons) to achieve the harvest limit for their state. The Board…
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Charleston, SC – The Commission’s Spiny Dogfish and Coastal Sharks Management Board (Board) approved a 20 million pound quota with a maximum possession limit of 3,000 pounds for the 2011/2012 fishing season (May 1 – April 30). As specified under Addendum II, the quota will be allocated with 58% to states from Maine through Connecticut, 26% to New York through Virginia, and 16% to North Carolina. Prior to setting the spiny dogfish quota, the Board approved new reference points based on information from the latest stock assessment. They include a target biomass of 351.23 million pounds (159,288 mt), a threshold…
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Coastal Commercial Quotas Remain Unchanged; Juvenile Abundance Index Management Trigger Improved
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Charleston, SC – The Commission’s Atlantic Herring Section has approved Addendum II to Amendment 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Sea Herring. The Addendum modifies the process to set specifications and the definitions (and associated acronyms) used by the Commission in setting Atlantic herring specifications. It also establishes quota overage accountability measures. These changes were made in order to complement the New England Fishery Management Council’s Amendment 4 and will not affect the overall management scheme which allocates a total quota to Areas 1A, 1B, 2, and 3. The Section agreed to distribute the 2011 Area 1A…
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Portsmouth, NH – The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section approved a 136-day fishing season for the 2010-2011 northern shrimp fishery. The season was reduced from last year’s season of 180 days to account for a smaller population of northern shrimp. The Section also agreed to assess the pace of the fishery in late February to evaluate where the total landing are relative to the target harvest level of 4,000 mt. If necessary, the Section may adjust the closing date to prevent an overage of the target or extend the season to ensure sufficient opportunity to harvest the…
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Philadelphia, PA – The Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) have established the 2011 total allowable landings (TAL) limits for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. The Commission’s actions are final and apply to state waters. The Council will be forwarding its recommendations to NOAA’s Northeast Regional Administrator for final approval. The table below summarizes those actions/recommendations (TALs and recreational harvest limits are in millions of pounds): TAL Commercial Quota Minimum Fish Size (TL) Mesh Size Recreational Harvest Limit Summer Flounder 29.48 17.69 14″ 5.5″ 11.79 Scup 20 15.6 9″ 5″ 4.4 Black Sea Bass…
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Alexandria, VA – The 2010 peer-reviewed stock assessment for Atlantic croaker indicates that the resource is not experiencing overfishing. Although model estimates of spawning stock biomass (SSB) were too uncertain to be used to precisely determine overfished stock status, biomass has been increasing and the age-structure of the population has been expanding since the late 1980s. Atlantic croaker are considered to be a single stock on the Atlantic coast. The previous stock assessment divided the stock into Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic regions and assessed only the Mid-Atlantic region. This assessment used data from both regions to produce a single, coastwide…
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