Campaign to Save Summer Flounder Bearing Results
By: John Gieser -- Asbury Park Press -- February 24, 2008

The efforts of the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund and the Recreational Fishing Alliance to keep fluke fishermen in business are being rewarded.

Politicians and scientists are beginning to come on board, and the opposition is finding itself increasingly hard pressed to claim the stocks are in trouble.

The National Marine Fisheries Service knows now that assumptions and guesses will no longer serve as the "best scientific information" simply because they were made by scientists.

There are scientists getting involved who have the credentials to examine and dispute, if necessary, the work the government has been doing.

Fishermen had to pay to get this kind of scrutiny. It should have been done by the service's biologists, but it was not.

When commercial and recreational fishermen said there were more fluke around than they had ever seen before, management officials should have started thinking about ways to increase the harvest not lessen it.

Instead, they thought about even greater numbers, and, cheered on by radical environmentalists, the biologists set a goal that may be unattainable for years unless the fishery is shut down.

The SSFFF has already been able to raise enough money to hire Dr. Mark Maunder, one of the top fisheries scientists in the world, to conduct research on the summer flounder fishery. Maunder's research focuses on the development of statistical methodology for fisheries stock assessment, protected species and ecological modeling, and he is reviewing the current summer flounder stock assessment and methodologies.

In addition, the Partnership for Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Science, a group started three years ago, is studying the fluke data, models and routes taken by government scientists to get where they are today.

The Partnership lost a key scientist recently when Dr. Brian J. Rothschild, co-director of the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute, resigned and became chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council's expanded scientific and statistical committee, but he remains engaged in the search for truth in his new capacity.

The council, in fact, is increasingly aware of the need for more reliable scientific scrutiny of the summer flounder situation since SSFFF and the RFA began exerting pressure, and has broadened the membership on its scientific and statistical committee through an increase of numbers from 12 to up to 20.

All of this scientific effort may not bring fluke fishermen the liberal fishing regulations that they seek in the short run, but there will be a new transparency in the management process.

Tony Bogan, president of the United Boatmen of New Jersey and New York and a founder of SSFFF, put it fairly when he said the Fund did not hire Maunder to arrive at the conclusion the Fund wants.

"We're in this to obtain the best possible science," Bogan said. "We think we know what's going on with fluke, but we'll accept the results whatever they are."

The Pew Foundation once hired Maunder to work for them, and hoped he would produce a result they wanted. He came up with a different scenario ??? the truth ??? one they did not like, and he was dismissed.

Pew had been able to hire other scientists that produced results that they did like, including one who arrived at a doomsday prediction that all of the world's fish stocks would be gone by 2040.

James A. Donofrio, executive director of the RFA, said he is pleased with the work Maunder has done and is doing.

"We're on the right track now," he said. "The SSFFF hired the best and I think it's going to pay off."

Donofrio said the RFA also is making progress on the political front, and backing for Rep. Frank Pallone Jr.'s, D-NJ, bill to introduce flexibility into the management plan is growing.

"The SSFFF is supporting us on the political side, and we're getting more and more congressmen on board," he added. "We expect to see a companion bill introduced in the Senate any day now."