Chairman Wise began the meeting at 2:02 p.m., explaining that the bulk of the meeting will be dedicated to the review of legislative bills dealing with marine resources that are currently being considered by the New York State Legislature. Bills re-filed from previous years on which the Council has already taken a position will only be reviewed on the request of one or more councilors.  Bills new in the 2007 legislative session, or bills re-filed in the 2007 session on which the Council has no previous position, will be the primary focus of the Council's attention.

Mr. Gordon Colvin, Director of Marine Resources for DEC, made several announcements regarding fluke.

1.  A final decision has not been made regarding 2007 recreational fluke regulations.  At the March 2007 Council meeting, the Council recommended that DEC institute the following recreational measures in 2007: 4-fish possession limit; 19.5" minimum size limit; year-long season.  DEC will promulgate the 2007 recreational fluke measures through emergency rule-making, which requires a sign-off by the Commissioner and Commissioner Pete Grannis is expected to sign the order shortly.  Mr. Colvin informed the Council of a recent meeting held by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's (ASMFC) new industry advisory panel with members from summer flounder, scup and black sea bass interests.  He noted that this panel will get very involved in providing advice to the Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) on Amendment XIV to the interstate fishery management plan for summer flounder, scup and black sea bass.  Mr. Colvin asked anyone with an interest in these fisheries and that have any ideas, views, or an opinion that you would like to share on how they should be managed in the future, to contact one of the New York members of this advisory panel; they are: fluke advisors - Tony Dilernia, Bob Busby, Norman Edwards and Charlie Wertz;   scup advisors - John Richie, Paul Forsberg, and John Davi' black sea bass advisors: John Goncharuk, Dennis Kanyuk, and Mark Hoffman.

2.  Although New York's commercial fluke fishery was closed in January, 27,000 lbs of commercial landings in that month had been counted against New York's 2007 commercial fluke quota.  It appears that most of these reported landings were actually from other states and were wrongly assigned to New York.  This leads to speculation that this probably has happened in prior years and, quite possibly, concerning other species as well.  The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) will probably raise New York's commercial fluke quota in 2007 slightly to accommodate this mistake, but Mr. Colvin thought the Council should be informed of this occurrence.

3. Three weeks ago, NMFS published 207 federal regulations for fluke management, which stipulated using the state-by-state conservation equivalency approach, under which state regulations are approved by ASMFC for each state individually.  However, the notice in the Federal Register described what the alternatives were.  Mr. Colvin noted that one of the alternatives that New York supports is a single, coast-wide set of management regulations.  What NMFS reported as the required coast-wide regulation was a 19” size limit and a one fish possession limit.  However, this is wrong.  A number of alternative options had been approved by the ASMFC Fluke Technical Committee for coast-wide implementation that were considerably less restrictive than 1 fish at a 19" minimum size limit, e.g., an 18 ½” size limit, a 5 fish possession limit and a no closed season.  DEC and many other industry representatives sent comments to NMFS, pointing out that their decision to select the state-by-state conservation equivalency option based on a comparison of what regulations might be in place under that vs. this 19" minimum size, 1-fish possession limit was a flawed comparison. DEC also pointed out to NMFS that the scientific findings surrounding survey data is a flawed way of computing recreational management measures when these data are disaggregated on a basis other than a large region, such as “by state.”    The DEC contended that the best available scientific information on which to base fluke regulatory decision-making is regionally-aggregated data, not the state-specific recreational harvest estimates.  NMFS has acknowledged that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed.

The draft minutes of the Council's 13 March 2007 meeting were approved as written.

 

 

Page last modified Thursday, May 10, 2007 by George E. Carroll