THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 29, 1996 TAG: 9602290286
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
North Carolina's commercial flounder season will close Sunday.
State regulators said Wednesday that they are shutting down the commercial flounder fishery because 70 percent of the state's quota for the year has been caught and they want to save some landings for a fall fishery.
Watermen trawling for shrimp or other species will still be allowed to keep up to 100 pounds of flounder per trip as a bycatch. But fishermen relying on flounder for their income will have to turn to other types of fish until state regulators reopen the season - probably sometime this fall.
``That's gonna paralyze the whole damn fishing fleet. At least 50 or 60 boats will be put out of business - with three or four guys to a boat,'' said Billy Carl Tillett, who runs Moon Tillett Fish Co. in Wanchese. ``There's a whole lot of flounder out there - more than anyone realizes. There're as many flounder as I've ever seen in that ocean. It just goes to show you how sorry fisheries management is.''
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's Mid-Atlantic Council allocated 3 million pounds of the flat food fish to North Carolina this year. Last year, watermen were allowed to land 4 million pounds of flounder - and the season stayed open until May 7.
Commercially caught flounder have to be at least 13 inches long. But there has been no limit on the number of pounds that can be brought in per trip.
Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts already have shut down their commercial flounder seasons this year. Maryland has a 5,000-pound per trip limit.
Since state officials control waters only up to three miles off their shores, the rules apply only to landings - not to catches. So even if a state shuts down its fishery, watermen can keep catching flounder more than three miles off those shores and take their haul somewhere else.
In an attempt to reduce the efforts of out-of-state trawlers, the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission began requiring a special flounder-landing license in the fall of 1995. These licenses, which are free, can only be obtained by watermen who can prove they sold at least 1,000 pounds of flounder in North Carolina over two of the last three years.
State fisheries officials said they issued 116 flounder landing permits this year. But they didn't know how many of those went to out-of-state boats. North Carolina's moratorium on commercial fishing licenses does not limit the number of unloading permits that can be sold.
``Our closure is based on the total amount of flounder landed. We don't differentiate between fish landed by local or out-of-state boats,'' North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries spokesman Jess Hawkins said. ``Some of our boats have been fishing for flounder off Virginia and Georges Banks, too.''
Local watermen said there were fewer New England vessels landing flounder in North Carolina this year than in 1995. But they blamed the quick flounder closure on other fisheries management policies.
In April, for example, the state made it illegal to fish flynets south of Cape Hatteras in an attempt to allow watermen to keep commercially catching gray trout along the northern North Carolina coast. So most fishermen who used to fish flynets rerigged their boats to catch flounder this fall.
``At least 13 North Carolina flynet boats have caught 410,000 pounds of flounder since January,'' Tillett said Wednesday from his Outer Banks fish house. ``If those boats had been doing what they normally did, there'd be enough flounder left to let all the regular flounder boats keep fishing through April. Now, everybody's gotta go fishing for sea bass or croakers.
``It all has a ripple effect,'' said Tillett. ``Even the gillnet boats will be affected by this because all the watermen will be forced to catch the same species. It's gonna drive the market down. In about a week and a half - mark my words - the whole market will go to hell. And we'll all get nothing for everything we catch.''
Jerry Schill, who leads the North Carolina Fisheries Association and represents more than 1,000 commercial fishermen, agreed. ``This is what happens when you put rules into place without considering surrounding issues like how it will affect other fisheries and fishermen,'' said Schill. ``Everyone has to make a living. And when they can't fish for one species, they have to go for another.'' ILLUSTRATION: NEW RULES
At 12:01 a.m. Sunday, it will be illegal to land commercial
catches of flounder on North Carolina docks.
However, watermen will still be allowed to sell up to 100 pounds
of flounder per trip as a bycatch caught while fishing for other
species.
For more information, call Dennis Spitsbergen at the North
Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries, (800) 682-2632 or (919)
726-7021.
by CNB