Scup

Scup are one of four species jointly managed by the Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC). Scup are managed under Amendment 13 to the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan (August 2002) and its subsequent Addenda (Addenda IX – XXXVI). The management program divides a total annual quota between the recreational fishery and the commercial fishery. Recreational fishery management measures include a combination of minimum size limits, bag limits, and fishing seasons. Since 2003, the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York have formed a northern region when setting their recreational regulations. This regional approach enables greater consistency between the states where fishermen from different states are often fishing alongside each other in the same waters.

Addendum XXIX (2017) shortens the length of the commercial scup summer period and extends the length of the winter II period to allow for the better utilization of the commercial quota, which was under-harvested in recent years. The following new quota periods were implemented beginning in 2018: Winter 1, January 1‐April 30 (120 days); Summer, May 1‐September 30 (153 days); Winter II, October 1‐December 31 (92 days).

Addendum XXXI (2018) expands the suite of tools available for managing summer flounder, scup and black sea bass, and reduces inconsistencies between state and federal regulations. Further, through the Addendum, the Board recommended NOAA Fisheries implement regulations to allow transit through federal waters in Block Island Sound for non-federally permitted vessels in possession of summer flounder, scup and black sea bass.

In 2021, the Board and Council jointly approved changes to the commercial and recreational allocations of summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass (Amendment 22). These changes are intended to better reflect the current understanding of the historic proportions of catch and landings from the commercial and recreational sectors. The Board and Council developed this amendment in response to recent changes in how recreational catch is estimated by the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), which resulted in a revised time series of recreational data going back to the 1980s. This created a mismatch between the data that were used to set the allocations and the data currently used in management for setting catch limits. Amendment 22 allocates 35% of the acceptable biological catch to the recreational fishery and 65% of the ABC to the commercial fishery based on historical landings from 1988 through 1992.

In June 2022, the Commission’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program Policy Board (Policy Board) and the Council approved a new process for setting recreational measures (bag, size, and season limits), referred to as the Percent Change Approach, as well as modifications to the recreational accountability measures for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. The Policy Board adopted these changes through Addendum XXXIV to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP and Addendum II to the Bluefish FMP. The Council and Policy Board also agreed to continue to work on developing an improved approach to setting recreational measures for summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. The Percent Change Approach was implemented in 2023, and will sunset at the end of 2025.

In April 2025, the Policy Board and Council adopted Addendum XXXVI to the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass FMP and Addendum III to the Bluefish FMP, which made further modifications to the process for setting recreational measures and accountability measures for these four species. The changes, which include modifications the Percent Change Approach based on lessons learned over the past few years, will be implemented in two phases.

The first phase of changes aims to better account for stock status when setting measures and will create more opportunities for stability in management measures. The current system uses three biomass categories to guide whether measures should change; the revised approach adds a fourth category for stocks near their biomass target and establishes a separate process for overfished stocks. These changes will take effect starting with the 2026 recreational measures for summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass. The Council and Policy Board delayed the implementation of these changes for bluefish until 2028 to allow time for development of an appropriate methodology for evaluating the impacts of measures on bluefish harvest and discards. The bluefish stock has been under a rebuilding plan since 2022, and recreational measures will continue to be set based on the rebuilding plan until the stock is declared rebuilt.

The second phase of modifications, which will be implemented for setting 2030 recreational measures and beyond, will update the process to use a catch-based target. Unlike the current process – which focuses on achieving a specific level of predicted harvest – a catch-based approach aims to achieve a target level of total dead catch, including both harvest and dead discards. This approach will allow for more explicit consideration of how measures affect discards. Some advisors and members of the public raised concerns about the potential for this change to create greater instability in management measures. After extensive discussion of each approach, the Council and Policy Board delayed the transition to a catch-based target until 2030 to allow time for additional analysis on the potential impacts to measures.

The Board and Council have set new specifications for 2025. The 2025 commercial quota is 19.54 million pounds and the recreational harvest limit (RHL) is 12.31 million pounds. No changes were made to the commercial or recreational management measures for the 2025 fishing year.

The 2023 management track stock assessment indicated the stock is not overfished nor experiencing overfishing. SSB estimated at 426 million pounds in 2022 is over two times the target of 173 million pounds.

Since 1984, recruitment (e.g., the number of fish entering the population) estimates are influenced mainly by the fishery and survey catches-at-age, and were estimated at 106 million fish in the terminal year of the assessment (2022). The 2015 year class is estimated to be the largest of the time series, at 569 million age 0 fish. Below average recruitment occurred in 2017-2022. Stock biomass is projected to further decrease toward the target unless more above average year classes recruit to the stock in the short-term.

Scup are highly sought after by commercial and recreational fishermen throughout Southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Scup support commercial fisheries from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

Commercial landings peaked in 1960 at 48.9 million pounds, and then ranged between 8.8 and 21.7 million pounds until the late 1980s. Landings increased to 15.6 million pounds in 1991, then dropped to the lowest landings measured in the fishery in 2000 at 2.7 million pounds. Starting in 2001, landings increased to about 15.0 million pounds in 2011. Since 2011, commercial landings have varied between 12.1 million pounds (2022) and 17.9 million pounds (2013). In 2022, commercial landings were 60% of the commercial quota. Since 1979, commercial landings have largely come from Rhode Island (38%), New York (26%), and New Jersey (14%). Commercial discards have been highly variable during most of the past 3 decades, averaging 26% of the total commercial catch during 1981-2022. In absolute terms, discards reached their highest level in 2017 recording 10.4 million pounds. The time series low of approximately 1 million pounds of discards occurred in 2003.

The recreational fishery for scup is significant, with anglers accounting for 12 to 75 percent of total annual catches from 1981-2022. Prior to 1996 when the Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council adopted the Scup Fishery Management Plan, recreational landings ranged from 2.3 million pounds and 14.2 million pounds. After the FMP was approved, recreational harvest remained low for a few years around 2-4 million pounds, which helped lead the way for spawning stock biomass (SSB) to recover in the early 2000s. Since the regional recreational management approach was introduced in 2003, recreational landings have averaged 11.2 million pounds annually. In 2022, recreational anglers harvested 17.4 million pounds, with the majority of the harvest coming from the northern states Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.