THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 20, 1994 TAG: 9412200310
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Federal officials and commercial fishermen reached an out-of-court settlement Monday in Norfolk allowing the harvest of an additional 3 million pounds of summer flounder next year along the Atlantic coast.
The agreement, however, does little to clarify or even end the dispute over government regulation of the lucrative flounder industry, which stretches from the Carolinas to Massachusetts.
Indeed, it seems to illustrate the difficulty of managing fish that are seafood market favorites.
Consider:
The National Marine Fisheries Service believes that the number of summer flounder continues to dwindle along the coast - so much so that officials want to cut deeply the amount of flounder that commercial fishermen can catch in 1995.
But Monday, these same officials agreed to allow watermen to harvest 3 million more pounds next year - even though experts say they need to better protect the species.
Actually, the officials had no choice.
In October they lost a lawsuit, filed by commercial fishermen, whose lawyers persuaded U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar to rule that the 1994 flounder quota of 16 million pounds was based on incomplete science and too strict.
A new 1994 limit was set by the court at 19 million pounds. But individual states, including Virginia, did not recognize the new quota.
Fishermen blamed federal authorities for the lapse and called Raleigh Schmidt, assistant U.S. administrator of fisheries, into federal court in Norfolk on Monday to explain why the quota was not being implemented.
Instead of a hearing, lawyers from both sides announced that an agreement had been hatched over the weekend, allowing the additional 3 million pounds of flounder to be caught beginning Jan. 1.
``We couldn't have caught that much fish this late in the year, so we're happy we'll get it next year,'' said Waverley L. Berkley III, a Norfolk attorney representing commercial fishermen and other seafood interests.
Although the 3 million pounds seems like a significant gain, it actually will be added to the 1995 quota, which is tentatively set at 11.6 million pounds. That would limit the watermen's harvest to 14.6 million pounds, compared with 16 million pounds this year.
As if that's not complex enough, lawyers for watermen have not ruled out filing a lawsuit challenging the 11.6-million-pound quota as too restrictive.
While watermen were generally pleased with the agreement reached Monday, some Virginia officials said individual states may no longer have the right to impose their own flounder restrictions.
Jack Travelstead, director of fisheries for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, pointed to a small provision in the agreement that calls unconstitutional the specific restrictions that states impose on their own flounder fisheries.
In Virginia, for example, a 2,500-pound-per-day limit takes effect whenever fishermen reach 85 percent of the commonwealth's share of the coastwide quota.
That rule, however, is no longer legal, according to the agreement signed by Judge Doumar, meaning Virginia may have to drop this added protection against overfishing.
``I'm about to lose my mind with all this,'' Travelstead said. by CNB