Is anybody officially investigating this???
Preliminary estimates for 2022 indicate that the harvest of 143,000 lbs of southern flounder by the recreational sector will keep them under the harvest quota. However, the estimated releases of 2,500,000 fish will translate to roughly 250,000 dead discards, which will count against the rec sector. The only question now is what mass will the Division assign for these fish? At 2 lbs/fish, 500,000 lbs of dead discards shuts the public out for ~3 years. At 0.5lbs/fish, 125,000 lbs of discards would give the public a VERY SHORT season in 2023.
So, let's see if we still have this story straight - Southern flounder have been overfished for decades, with commercial harvest accounting for over 70% of the total harvest historically. (During the 20-year time frame, 1981-2001, the commercial harvest of Southern flounder accounted for 80-100% of the total harvest in the years leading up to the first Southern flounder stock assessment that indicated for the first time that the stock was overfished.) So, with only 30% of the Southern flounder quota, the fishing public exceeded its allowable catch in 2022, which means a shortened season this year (likely two weeks) due to the rebuilding plan, and no access to ocean flounder species. But commercial harvest will continue on Southern flounder this fall, and they can catch almost 3 million pounds of summer flounder in the ocean. But none for the fishing public.
Recently, DMF Director Rawls approved a pound net request in which 8 of 11 proposed sets for flounder in West Bay were granted. According to her office, they were approved because she had no legal means to deny them. That's curious because as Director, she has pretty wide ranging proclamation authority. Either way, how does it make sense to expand the commercial fishery for southern flounder while it is depleted and being rebuilt?
Welcome to North Carolina.
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