Photo: Winter Flounder It’s the end of March, and my boat should be in the water. At one time, it would have been. Despite cold and wind, I’d have been waiting for the weekend, because March 17—St. Patrick’s Day—was the unofficial start of the winter flounder season. I, and a horde of other anglers all […]
Top Photo: Striped Bass, by John McMurray Fisheries management is a complicated endeavor. Before issuing regulations that will prevent overfishing and maintain healthy fish populations, managers need to consider multiple factors. They must estimate the size of fish populations, and decide whether such populations must be rebuilt. They must determine how many fish are lost […]
If there is one constant in mid-Atlantic fisheries management, it is that restrictions on the recreational summer flounder harvest will always be controversial. That is particularly true in 2017, after six years of below-average recruitment—the number of young fish entering the population—has caused the population to decline to just 58% of the target level, forcing […]
Fisheries management is not an exact science. Although biologists are constantly refining their stock assessments and population models, there are still many sources of uncertainty. Some of them fall into the category of “scientific uncertainty.” Such scientific uncertainty applies to all of the important parameters, such as stock size and the number of young fish […]
Top photo courtesy John McMurray Whenever fishery managers propose regulations that restrict anglers’ landings, someone will always complain that such rules are not needed, and challenge the data on which they are based. While biological data, such as stock assessments, receive some criticism, most anglers’ rancor is reserved for the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) […]
Science is not static. Instead, it is a continuing act of discovery, in which even long-established truths may be questioned, modified and sometimes abandoned altogether as new knowledge comes to light. Yet, in order to assure that research is revealing new truths, and not providing false and misleading information, each purported new discovery must be […]
Many fisheries conservation advocates were dismayed when, in October 2016, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) decided that it would not develop a management plan for shad and river herring, fish that some thought should be included as stocks in the Atlantic mackerel, squid and butterfish fisheries. Although I would have preferred to see the […]
I was attending the November meeting of New York’s Marine Resources Advisory Council when the topic of lobsters came up. The southern New England stock of American lobster has collapsed, and a state biologist was doing her best to explain just how far abundance had fallen and what the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) […]
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