Summer Flounder

The Commission approved the first Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Summer Flounder in 1982, followed by a similar FMP approved by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) in 1988. Since then, both agencies have made significant revisions to the plan, increasing the protection of juvenile fish and ensuring the maintenance of an adequate spawning population. This increased protection has been implemented through larger minimum size limits across all sectors, increased mesh sizes, and decreased recreational possession limits. Cumulatively, these changes have contributed to conserving the resource while maintaining important commercial and recreational fisheries.

Recreational management has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. Under the current process, the Board and Council annually determines whether to implement coastwide measures or enact conservation equivalency. Conservation equivalency allows recreational management measures in federal waters measures to be waived, and instead requires recreational anglers to abide by the measures of the state in which they land their catch. In 2018, the Board approved Addendum XXXII which established an annual specifications process for developing recreational management measures under the conservation equivalency process. The Board approve regional measures in early spring each year, based on technical committee analysis of stock status, resource availability, and harvest estimates. Public input on specifications is gathered by states through their individual public comment processes. The specifications process provides the Board more flexibility in adjusting measures, if necessary, to constrain harvest to the annual coastwide recreational harvest limit (RHL). Further, the process enables the Board to consider a host of factors, including: regional equity; regulatory stability; species abundance and distribution; and late-breaking recreational harvest estimates.

In 2019, the Board and the Council jointly approved the Summer Flounder Commercial Issues Amendment. The Amendment revises the management program’s goals and objectives specific to summer flounder and implements new state-specific commercial allocations. The revised management program’s goals and objectives focus on ensuring biological sustainability of the resource, supporting and enhancing development of effective management measures, and optimizing social and economic benefits from the resource. These revisions were made to reflect current priorities in sustainably managing the resource.

In 2021, the Board and Council jointly approved changes to the commercial and recreational allocations of summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass. 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. Additional information about this amendment is available here. 

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 2024, the Board and Council jointly approved modifications to two exemptions from the summer flounder commercial minimum mesh size requirements, which require a minimum mesh size of 5.5-inch diamond mesh or 6.0-inch square mesh to retain more than 200 pounds of summer flounder from November through April, or 100 pounds of summer flounder from May through October. The Small Mesh Exemption Program provides an exemption from these requirements for authorized vessels fishing in a designated area from November 1 through April 30. Through this action, the Board and Council agreed to expand the exemption area by moving the boundary of the northern portion of the area approximately five miles west, then connecting the western boundary to the southern scup Gear Restricted Area. The Board and Council also voted to implement a tiered monitoring approach for the Small Mesh Exemption Program. Finally, the Board and Council approved a revised definition of the term “flynet” as it relates to the flynet exemption from the summer flounder commercial minimum mesh size requirements. The revised definition encompasses similar high-rise net types which have very large mesh in the wings, with mesh size decreasing through the body of the net. These nets are not designed to catch flatfish and generally catch small amounts of summer flounder. 

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 summer flounder, scup, black sea bass, and bluefish. 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 has set new specifications for 2024-2025 with a commercial quota of 8.79 million pounds and an RHL of 6.35 million pounds for both years. The 2024-2025 acceptable biological catch of 19.32 million pounds per year represent a 42% decrease compared to the 2023 acceptable biological catch. 

The 2023 management track stock assessment indicates that summer flounder is not overfished, but is experiencing overfishing. Spawning stock biomass (SSB) is estimated at 90.4 million pounds, approximately 83% of the SSB target of 109.3 million pounds. Fishing mortality is estimated to be 0.464, approximately 103% of the fishing mortality threshold of 0.451. Recruitment was estimated at 38.4 million fish at age 0, below the time series average of 50.8 million fish at age 0.

Data analyzed by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center for the assessment indicate that projections from the previous assessment in 2021 were slightly overoptimistic, underestimating fishing mortality and overestimating biomass. The 2023 assessment indicates that recruitment values for summer flounder have been below average over the past decade. Additionally, the assessment noted decreasing mean length and weight at age and decreasing maturity over the past decade.

Summer flounder are one of the most sought after commercial and recreational fish along the Atlantic coast, with total landings at approximately 21.2 million pounds in 2022. Using baseline data from 1980 to 1989, the current plan allocates the summer flounder quota on a 55/45 percent basis to commercial and recreational fisheries, respectively.

Two major commercial trawl fisheries exist — a winter offshore and a summer inshore. Summer flounder are also taken by pound nets and gillnets in estuarine waters. Throughout the 1980s, commercial landings ranged from 17.9 to 37.7 million pounds. In 1993, the coastwide quota was implemented for the first time. Commercial landings (which are limited by the quota) have ranged from 5.8 million pounds to 17.4 million pounds since 1993. Commercial landings reached a time series low of 5.8 million pounds in 2017, but have since increased to 12.5 million pounds in 2022. Commercial discard losses in the otter trawl and scallop dredge fisheries are estimated from observer data, and an 80% commercial discard mortality rate is assumed.

Summer flounder are also highly prized in the recreational fishery. Anglers catch summer flounder from the shore, piers, and boats with hook and line. From 1981 through 2004, recreational landings varied widely from a high of 36.7 million pounds in 1983 to a low of 5.7 million pounds in 1989. Starting in 1993, harvest limits were implemented for the recreational fishery. Recreational harvest in 2022 was 8.6 million pounds, an increase from the prior year’s harvest of 6.8 million pounds.