During the run-up to a June 17 public hearing about southern flounder management, several members of the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission asked that the meeting be held in Raleigh. Their chairman, Sammy Corbett, rejected their requests, and the meeting was held in New Bern.
The reason for the request was that most of the public hearings the Commission holds are in the eastern part of the state, where commercial fishermen rule the roost. However, N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ data show southern flounder have been overfished the past 23 years, with netters landing 82 percent of the catch. So several Commission members wanted recreational anglers to have a better chance to speak.
That makes sense. NCDMF statistics from 2013 show 308,888 residents, 161,646 non-residents, 9,210 military and 256 students at schools in North Carolina held 480,000 recreational saltwater fishing licenses. Commercial fishing license-holders totaled 6,699, with only 2,536 netters reporting landings on 2,695 trip-ticket licenses.
After the Raleigh meeting was ruled out, a Commission member spoke to someone who blogs on a saltwater-fishing website. According to the blogger, the Commission member said that Sammy Corbett, along with Dr. Louis Daniel, executive director of NCDMF, and the Commission member, were on a conference call during which Corbett and Daniel said the meeting would be in New Bern because southern flounder “have greater use for the commercial fishermen than to recreationals, and these proposals affect commercial fishermen most … so it’s only fair the meeting be convenient to the people that have the greatest vested interest in the fish.”
A source with ties to the Commission later said, “It wasn’t a conference call” and “The statement didn’t make sense because recreation flounder fishing was worth $40 million more than netted flounder.” The source also said the cash-strapped Commission couldn’t afford a Raleigh meeting. “It would have cost $6,000 to hold the meeting in Raleigh.”
Happily, the New Bern meeting was well-attended, and both sides received fair hearings.
Next comes an August meeting where Commissioners will be forced to vote for or against proposals to reduce southern flounder harvests by 25 to 60 percent. Choices include changes for pound nets, gigs, net mesh sizes, fish size and creel limits and closing all seasons from Nov. 1-Dec. 31 or Dec. 1-31.
“They should do like New Jersey and close flounder fishing for two years,” the source said. “At first, New Jersey guys complained, but now they say it’s the best thing their state ever did.”
Recreational anglers likely would support a two-year moratorium by buying out netters with hook-and-line license money, based on the netters’ last two years of individual trip-ticket receipts. What would the netters say?
