Feds may reduce Fluke catch by 20-30%

The recent announcement that the National Marine Fisheries Service is seeking a 20- to 30-percent cutback in the fluke harvest next year has anglers asking where the biologists are coming from.

Obviously the biomass must be in good shape if landings are up and there is a huge abundance of small fish that cannot be retained.

Thomas P. Fote, legislative chairman of the Jersey Coast Anglers Association, believes that the answer lies in the system.

"They say that we're overfishing when everyone knows that there are more fluke around than we've seen in years," he said. "We expected to go to a 32-million-pound quota next year, instead, they want to cut us back."

Fote, who until a few weeks ago was one of New Jersey's representatives on the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission, said the system was created to reach a goal that may not be possible.

"They're talking about rebuilding to the levels of the 1920s and 1930s," he said. "That may be unrealistic given the fact that we no longer have the wetlands, the natural environment that the juvenile fluke need when they are inshore in the summer."

Fote reminded that the wetlands have been filled and developed, pollution has increased enormously, and the entire ecosystem has been vastly altered since the '20s and '30s.

"We're no longer able to build the stocks to the point they were at 60 or 70 years ago," he said. "The National Marine Fisheries Service is adhering to a rebuilding schedule that may be unattainable, and further restrictions are going to be a hardship on anglers and the party and charter boat industry."

Fote is not optimistic about the chances of fishermen persuading NMFS to ease off on draconian measures in 2006.

"We can scream and yell — and we will — but they are going to defend their decision based on the biological reference points of their system," he said. [Published in the Asbury Park Press 08/5/05
BY JOHN GEISER]