THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160584
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 35 lines
A federal judge this week ordered the U.S. Commerce Department to explain in court why it has failed to install a new quota system allowing commercial fishermen to catch more summer flounder along the Atlantic coast.
The Dec. 13 order from District Judge Robert Doumar sets a court date Monday in Norfolk for what will be the latest chapter in the bitter dispute over government regulation of flounder stocks in waters from the Carolinas to New England.
David Frulla, an attorney for fishermen who claimed the old quota was too strict, said he hopes to win an order Monday that forces the Commerce Department to tell states they must allow more fishing - especially in New York and Massachusetts, where flounder fisheries are closed.
In Virginia, such an order would give watermen the ability to take 648,976 more pounds of summer flounder by Dec. 31.
But Wilford Kale, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said he doubts Virginia fishermen will catch their limit under the old quota, let alone the new, more lenient quota.
The dispute has been boiling since October, when Doumar ruled that a government quota along the coast of 16 million pounds was ``arbitrary and capricious,'' and instructed federal officials to raise the catch ceiling by 3 million pounds.
While the fisheries service published notice of the new rules, individual states have yet to recognize the relaxed limits. by CNB