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PO Box
1118 • West Babylon, NY 11704 |
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New York anglers come up short against stacked deck “Conservation equivalency” leaves state no good options on summer flounder WEST BABYLON, NY —Holding a bad hand and with no hole-cards left, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued final summer flounder regulations for the 2009 season that are severe and will likely disappoint many anglers. However, despite of the severity of the regulations, CCA NY commends DEC staff for the time and labor that it expended in its efforts to craft the most palatable set of rules that would still meet the conditions imposed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). For the 2009 season, anglers fishing New York waters will be limited to just two summer flounder no less than 21 inches long and will be given only a short, split season that will be open from May 15 to June 15, and again from July 2 to August 17. “The restrictive limits and short season are going to badly hurt both anglers and angling-related businesses,” noted CCA New York President Bill Raab. “But after the Council and ASMFC rejected coastwide management measures, and ASMFC imposed a requirement that at least half of New York’s harvest reduction had to come from a shortened season, the DEC’s hands were tied.” The diverse nature of New York’s fluke fishery makes setting regulations extremely difficult. The North Fork of Long Island enjoys a run of large fluke in May, while fishing in western Long Island Sound might not heat up until June. July and August are productive months throughout the state, but parts of the South Shore may have good fishing that runs late into the fall. “We think that the DEC was dealt a very bad hand, and that they played it as well as they could,” said Scott Emslie, CCA NY’s state chairman. “There was no way for the DEC to draft regulations that everyone would be happy with. The very best that we could have expected them to do was to adopt regulations that gave everyone, wherever they live or fish, a fair chance to take home a couple of fish, and to spread the pain as widely as possible. CCA NY believes that the DEC achieved that goal.” Currently, fluke are not managed on a coastwide basis, but pursuant to a “conservation equivalency” scheme that assigns each state a fixed share of the recreational harvest. New York’s share is just 17.5 percent. “There is no escaping the fact that no one is happy with the 2009 rules, and that they are going to hurt a lot of people,” explains Brian O’Keefe, CCA NY’s Government Relations chairman. “But it is also undeniable that the DEC was put in a box by the Council and ASMFC, and their insistence on state-by-state management. So long as ASMFC continues to grant New Jersey almost 40 percent of all recreational landings, the plight of New York’s anglers and related businesses isn’t likely to improve.” |
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March 26, 2009