THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 18, 1994 TAG: 9410180305
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The commercial flounder fishing industry says it's foundering, and it blames the federal government for setting quotas that don't accurately reflect the flounder population in the Atlantic Ocean.
The federal government defended itself Monday in Norfolk's U.S. District Court against a suit filed in April by fishing companies with flounder boats operating from North Carolina to Massachusetts.
The fishing companies - including Wanchese Fish Co., which has operations in Hampton and Wanchese, N.C. - want the court to overturn the 1994 quota. That would allow them to try to make up some of their losses before the end of the year.
It's the second year that Department of Commerce's National Marine Fisheries Service set a quota for flounder. Restrictions were invoked because of the diminishing flounder numbers.
The 1994 quota set a limit of nearly 26.7 million pounds to be split between commercial and sport fishermen. At its recent meeting, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council recommended a 1995 quota of 19.4 million pounds to be divided between the commercial and sport fisherman. That's 27.3 percent less than the 1994 quota.
The council is a state and federal government body that recommends quotas.
Fishing companies challenged the quota last year, but a federal court in Washington threw out that challenge as moot because the case wasn't heard until December, when the season was almost over.
This year the fishing companies argue that the government failed to use the best available data in its statistical modeling to determine the flounder population and the 1994 quota, according to the suit.
The government in turn argues that the flounder quota was set based using standard statistical modeling for fisheries management. The staff of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council called it a ``risk averse strategy that will benefit the resource and the fishermen.''
But the fishing companies said the decision was based on ``unreasonably pessimistic assumptions about the summer flounder fishery and its recovery from a 1988 through 1990 decline,'' according to the suit.
The fishing companies have the burden of showing that the government set the quota in an ``arbitrary and capricious'' manner, said U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar, who will rule on the case.
According to the suit, the quota has brought economic hardship on the fishermen and shoreside employees of the fishing companies. Wanchese Fish Co. operates 30 boats in Virginia, 40 in North Carolina and 30 in Massachusetts and employs 500 people in processing jobs ashore. It depends ``in significant measure'' on the flounder fishery.
Other parties to the suit include Fisherman's Dock Cooperative Inc. and Belford Seafood Co-Operative, both of New Jersey, and the Seafarers International Union, which represents unionized fishermen in Massachusetts and New Jersey. by CNB