I recently read an editorial in a local angling newspaper that criticized the way summer flounder are managed. It was written by Nick Cicero, a founding member of the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund (SSFFF). Back in the late 1980s, summer flounder abundance bottomed out, and overfishing was so bad that it was hard […]
Summer flounder management gets a lot of publicity, and has for the last fifteen years, even though the management of that species has been very successful. But there is another closely related fish, the southern flounder, which gets far less publicity, although its management hasn’t been very successful at all. Summer flounder are managed by […]
In April 2010, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) American Lobster Technical Committee issued a report entitled “Recruitment Failure in The Southern New England Lobster Stock”, which shocked lobster fishermen in the southern New England and mid-Atlantic regions when it stated that “Since the release of the 2009 Assessment, additional monitoring information has been […]
People who attempt to push controversial measures through Congress aren’t fans of straight talk. They rarely set out their goals in plain black-and-white language, preferring words likely to appeal to the public while cloaking their true intent. And then they garnish those words with assurances that their efforts are “reasonable” and merely “common sense.” Recent […]
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which governs all fishing in federal waters, is an extremely long and complex statute. However, no part of the law is more important than the ten so-called “National Standards” which set forth the principles that shall govern its implementation. Those national standards are brief, and go into no […]
The fishing season for summer flounder, locally known as “fluke,” has just opened up here in New York. The waters are cooler than they should be in mid-May, so the fluke were still pretty sluggish, but even so, opening day saw anglers catch a reasonable number of fish. In New York, fluke less than 18 […]
On January 1, 2014, the European Union’s amended Common Fisheries Policy went into effect. The policy requires that, during the next five years, “catch limits should be set that are sustainable and maintain fish stocks in the long term.” It appears that European fisheries managers are finally adopting the concept of “maximum sustainable yield.” As […]
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