THE drastic cuts that anglers face for the 2007 summer flounder season have a number of fishing groups leading the charge to find a solution to prevent many in the recreational fishing business from losing a substantial part of their income.
The United Boatmen of New York and New Jersey (UB) and the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) headed up a rally on Monday in Brick, N.J., with the hopes of gathering input from members of the recreational fishing community to develop a strategy to address this serious problem.
Summer flounder historically is one of the most economically and socially important fish targeted by recreational anglers from Massachusetts to North Carolina, states Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the RFA. The economic impact generated from expenditures including bait sales, tackle sales, rods/reels, boat fuel sales and other fishing business makes summer flounder critically important to the coastal economies. This illustrates how severe these unprecedented cuts will be.
The problem we are facing with summer flounder is directly related to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Magnuson law requires that overfished stocks be rebuilt in 10 years, a provision the RFA and many others strongly opposed because there was very little flexibility attached with this time frame.
The summer flounder population has been rebuilt to the highest size ever recorded, yet the Magnuson law dictates we must continue to rebuild the resource and it must be done by January 1, 2010.
RFA and UB have outlined a plan of attack focusing on two topics: contacting key legislators, namely Rep. Jim Saxton (N.J.) and Rep. Wayne Gilchrist (Md.), Chairman of the House Fisheries and Oceans Subcommittee, in mass asking them to recognize the need for flexibility in the Magnuson Act and funding an independent science program to investigate the validity of the current rebuilding targets for summer flounder.
Now is the time that recreational anglers need to join RFA and aid the efforts of tackling this and other important fisheries issues.
The importance of a well-written Magnuson Act cannot be understated as the future of all federal managed species are at stake. All recreational anglers need to reach out to their member of Congress, Saxton and Gilchrist. Form letters are posted on the RFA Web site, http://www.joinrfa.org, and can be printed, signed and mailed. The recreational fishing community must unite on this critical issue.