Atlantic states brace for new flounder limits

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BALTIMORE – Recreational fishermen on Maryland’s Atlantic coast and the businesses that serve them already are chafing under state restrictions on catching summer flounder.

“We’re hurting now,” said Bob Gowar, a fishing boat captain from Ocean City. “If it gets any worse, it’s going to be tough.”

Last week, it got worse – and not just in Maryland.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates coastal fishing in state waters from Maine to Florida, agreed to reduce the annual catch limit on summer flounder by 13 percent to prevent the species from being overfished.

The commission was responding to a threat by the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, to ban fishing for summer flounder in federal waters if the states didn’t lower quotas for their waters, which extend three nautical miles from shore.

NMFS has cracked down on summer flounder fishing since losing a lawsuit last year to four environmental groups. The groups convinced a federal court that the federal agency’s previous, higher quota for summer flounder wouldn’t prevent the species from being overfished.

Eric Schwaab, one of Maryland’s representatives on the commission, said this week’s decision would force the state to reduce the summer flounder catch in its waters.

That could include an earlier end to this year’s season, some temporary closures in midseason or an increase in the minimum size the fish must reach before fishermen can keep them.

Schwaab, who also is director of fisheries for the state Department of Natural Resources, said he hopes Maryland’s new policy will be formulated within a month.

Summer flounder is among the most popular targets of recreational fishermen in Maryland, especially near Ocean City, Schwaab said.

“This is a huge issue for Ocean City and some of the surrounding resort areas,” Schwaab said. “It has tourism implications as well.”

Lynn Jarmon, who runs an Ocean City bait shop, agreed.

“They’ve done enough damage as it is,” he said.

The economic impact of summer flounder fishing in the mid-Atlantic region has been estimated in the past at more than $150 million a year.

Just last month, Maryland authorities announced a delay in the start of this year’s summer flounder season from April 15 to May 20 and then raised the minimum catch size from 15.5 to 16 inches.

Those restrictions were imposed to meet a previous, less stringent quota from the fisheries commission.

“We’ve already had to make some changes for the current year, and this will just go a step beyond that,” Schwaab said. “I think there’ll be a lot of concern about this.”

Sean Harman owns Bahia Marina in Ocean City, with a fleet of 36 boats that he rents to recreational fishermen.

He said more than a third of his business comes from summer flounder fishing.

“We recognize there has to be something done to preserve the fishery for the future,” Harman said. “We just don’t believe what they’ve done is exactly correct.”

He said Maryland should consider reducing its daily catch limit of eight summer flounder per person instead of shortening the season even more. Most fishermen don’t come close to catching eight summer flounder a day, he said.

The president of the Atlantic chapter of the Maryland Saltwater Sports Fishermen’s Association agreed with Harman.

“Give us four fish, but don’t back us up almost to the end of the month of May,” Henry Koellein said.

Koellein said surveys among his organization’s members show summer flounder are not being overfished in Maryland.

But a Department of Natural Resources biologist, Harley Speir, said it’s incorrect to judge fish stocks by looking at individual states instead of the whole Atlantic region because fish are a migratory, shared resource.

Recreational fishermen in Maryland brought in 394,000 pounds of summer flounder in 2000, an 11 percent decrease from the 1999 total of 445,000 pounds, Speir said.

But in the entire Maine to Florida region, recreational fishermen landed 13.5 million pounds of summer flounder last year, a 61 percent increase from 8.4 million pounds in 1999, Speir said.

This year’s quota, set this week by the commission, is just 7.2 million pounds.

Recreational fishermen in the Atlantic states have exceeded their quota on summer flounder every year since 1996, Speir said.

A spokeswoman for the Washington-based Ocean Law Project, one of the groups that successfully sued NMFS, said the service’s own scientists found that the summer flounder population has fallen to less than 50 percent of its healthy level.

“We need to let them grow back to a healthy population level,” Heather Weiner said. “I think this is a balanced approach to let fishermen continue to fish, just at a slightly reduced level.”

If steps aren’t taken now, Weiner said, fishermen might face a ban in the future.