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Based on mid-year estimates, recreational anglers will catch more than 20 million pounds of summer flounder this year, almost three times yearly harvest.

Environmental groups ask
for halt to flounder season

Four prominent environmental groups have called for emergency action to close the recreational season on summer flounder, a mainstay of sports fishing, because the groups say overfishing by anglers is preventing recovery of the depleted species.
The National Audubon Society, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Marine Conservation urged the Marine Fisheries Service and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission on Sept. 16 to immediately close the recreational season from Maine to Florida until measures are adopted to control overfishing of summer flounder by sports anglers.
Flounder populations crashed in the late 1980s because of overfishing by commercial and recreational fishermen. Catches dropped from almost 70 million pounds in 1980 to 15 million pounds in 1990. Aggressive recovery measures, which included size and bag limits, had begun to turn the tide, but scientists think it will take 10 years to rebuild the stocks to healthy levels.
The environmental groups say, however, that commercial and recreational fishermen routinely exceed the harvest limits. Overruns of commercial quotas are subtracted from subsequent years' quotas, though commercial fishermen are usually successful in getting their harvest limits extended through petitions and lawsuits. Overruns of recreational catches are not subtracted from future targets.
Recreational fishermen on the East Coast caught more than 7 million pounds of flounder over the quota in 1996 and 1997, the environmental groups say. Based on mid-year estimates, recreational anglers will

catch more than 20 million pounds of summer flounder this year, almost three times the yearly harvest.
"Successful recovery depends upon compliance with catch restrictions in both commercial and recreational sectors," said Carl Safina, the director of the National Audubon Society's Living Oceans Program. "We are simply kidding ourselves that we can rebuild these populations unless we constrain both commercial and recreational catch to acceptable levels."
Emergency closures are unusual but not unique. The National Marine Fisheries Service in September halted the recreational season on red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico after similar overruns were detected.