SOUTHEASTERN NC — Recreational fishermen have been barred from catching the state’s most valued finifish, the Southern flounder, this year because they exceeded last year’s quota. But anglers say this season’s cancellation reflects a larger management issue at the state level.
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The Division of Marine Fisheries, part of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, announced the cancellation of the season, set for two weeks in September, on May 23.
Calculations from the 2023 season indicate the recreational catch of Southern flounder exceeded the quota allowed under the stock rebuilding plan set by the state in 2022.
Over two decades ago, state researchers determined Southern flounder were overfished and overfishing was occurring. The two terms carry different meanings: overfished is when a population is below a level needed to sustain itself, and overfishing means they are actively being caught at an unsustainable rate.
Limits were put on recreational and commercial anglers with the goal of rebuilding the flounder population. Per the current management plan, commercial fishermen are allocated 70% of the stock while recreational anglers get 30%, based on the proportion of flounder historically caught by commercial and recreational fishermen. However, the goal is for the groups to reach parity in 2026.
According to NCDEQ, the 2023 recreational quota was 114,315 pounds, but the estimated catch for 2023 was 241,609 pounds, resulting in an overage of 127,294 pounds.
The plan stipulates one year’s overage be subtracted from the next year’s quota; when the math was completed this year, no quota was left. It will be the first year recreational fishermen cannot fish Southern flounder, while the commercial sector will still maintain its season.
Commercial fishermen have a larger share of the flounder take, along with better tools to track catches. However, recreational licenses outnumber commercial fishermen, who have been on the decline since the ‘90s. As of April 2023, there are an estimated 1.5 million recreational licenses in North Carolina and between 18 and 20 million recreational trips leaving from the coast annually. There are less than 6,000 commercial licenses, half or more inactive, while recreational fishermen have been bringing in more fish than commercial in recent years.
This perceived inequity between commercial and recreational fishermen has caught the eye of one local lawmaker.
Rep. Frank Iler (R-Brunswick) sent an open letter to NCDEQ on July 10 denouncing the cancellation and the state agency’s management of the flounder fishery.
“I hate to compare this to the Covid lockdown, where the scientists and bureaucrats shut down the economy based on sketchy data and selective science. However, it is hard not to, at least on a smaller scale,” Iler wrote.
Iler warned of the effects the cancellation will have on charter fishing and the marine industry, which draw visitors to local coastal communities whose economies rely on tourism dollars.
Port City Daily talked to several recreational fishermen, including two local guides, Capt. Jot Owens and Capt. Seth Vernon; both said they are shifting around their business model to adjust to the season cancellation.
Last year, Owens had 28 trips booked across the 14-day season, planning to run doubles every day to meet his clients’ demand for flounder fishing. This year he’s had to book more doubles throughout the year to make up for the loss of flounder charters.
Vernon told PCD he’s lost some charters from die-hard flounder fishermen. He added when reductions are put on a species, despite the good intentions of rebuilding stock, that effort is displaced onto similar species — in this case, redfish, sheepshead, black drum, cobia, bluefish, Spanish mackerel and king mackerel.
However, recreational fishermen are also being barred from two other species of flounder, summer and gulf, though they are not under a management plan. The Division of Marine Fisheries are prohibiting these catches to prevent the accidental taking of Southern flounder, as any captured summer and gulf flounder will be subtracted from next year’s quota.
Though the three flounder species look similar, Vernon told PCD recreational fishermen should be trusted to discriminate between Southern flounder and its other relatives, just like the same state agencies trust them to discern the differences in other animals, such as the black duck versus a mallard.
Vernon and Owens, along with Coastal Conservation Association Executive Director David Sneed, said the state should never have allowed the flounder population to be endangered to the point where the public couldn’t utilize the resource.
Sneed said the state knew of the Southern flounder problem dating back to the late 90s, when the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act was passed mandating fisheries management plans to end overfishing and create sustainable fisheries.
“Southern flounder is really the poster child for the mismanagement of our fisheries in North Carolina coastal fisheries,” Sneed said. “This really, this goes way back. And I know a lot of people were kind of taken aback by the announcement that there would be no recreational harvest season this year, but it’s really been like watching a train wreck in slow motion.”
The Division of Marine Fisheries’ 2005 plan reported it was likely that overfishing occurred every year since 1991 and the percentage of spawning stock was well below the percentage necessary to sustain most stocks.
Adopted in 2006, the plan indicated fishermen needed to reduce take by 17.2%; the plan imposed a 15.1% reduction for the commercial fishery and a 30.5% reduction for the recreational fishery. The recreational size limit was raised to 14 inches and a bag limit of eight was set.
While fish mortality improved in the following years, the 2009 stock assessment found flounder were still struggling.
The 2013 plan, however, did not place further sanctions on the commercial sector but increased the minimum size limit for the recreational fishery to 15 inches.
The commercial sector agreed to accept measures required to reduce sea turtle interactions — the endangered animals get caught in gill or trawl nets — as the commercial contribution to reducing Southern flounder mortality.
The nets, which many states have moved to ban or restrict, are designed to trap species like Southern flounder, but if that is not the target, bycatch of the fish can contribute to the population decline. Trawling in particular can be doubly harmful in upstream estuarine habitats that are disturbed when the large net drags across the seafloor. This not only disrupts the species directly affected, but the larger food chain as a whole.
According to NCDEQ, the 2023 estimate of dead discards of Southern Flounder in the commercial gillnet fishery was 6,898 pounds, and the estimate of dead discards in the recreational fishery was 41,559 pounds.
Calculating per 100 fishermen in both groups according to the rough number of active licenses, commercial fishermen have a bycatch of 114 pounds per 100 people while there are 2.77 pounds per 100 recreational fishermen.
“The Division continues to address by-catch in its fisheries by implementing gear
restrictions, season and area closures, requiring by-catch reduction devices in shrimp trawls, and discouraging the targeting of southern flounder outside the recreational season,” NCDEQ spokesperson Tricia Smith said to PCD.
According to public comment periods at the Marine Fisheries Commission’s meetings over the last few years, many fishermen are in favor of restricting the use of these fishing tools, if not banning them outright.
The commercial sector’s agreement to limit use of the nets, accompanied with no other action, didn’t help solve the flounder problem. The 2019 assessment found a reduction of 72% was needed to rebuild flounder stock, thus ushering in the seasonal timeframe and quota system in 2022.
To PCD, the fishermen described what they see as deeply flawed operations. NCDEQ maintains stock assessments are the only way to track recovery, but some recreational fishermen think the state relies too heavily on stock assessments, which, in their view, includes unreliable data that’s years out of date.
A new fishery management plan often isn’t implemented until three to four years after a stock assessment is completed. The assessment itself also takes several years to complete. The Fisheries Reform Act mandates species stock be recuperated on a 10-year timeline; the rebuilding of Southern flounder is going on 26 years.
So, real-time data that can reflect the frequently changing conditions of nature is scarce and anecdotal. In addition, the data that is brought in isn’t giving the full picture, especially in the recreational sector, according to the fishermen.
Catch tracking is done through the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), a state, regional, and federal partnership. The Division of Marine Fisheries surveys recreational anglers throughout the year by mail, telephone and in person. According to NCDEQ, staff typically collect well over 15,000 in-person surveys annually at fishing access sites, such as boat ramps, marinas, beaches, and piers up and down the North Carolina coast.
The surveys include information on where an angler fishes, how many fish were released, and what fish were harvested, as well as biological information about the harvested fish, such as length and weight.
However, these estimates are not available immediately. NCDEQ spokesperson Tricia Smith told PCD providing daily, or even monthly, estimates of what is caught is currently impossible.
In Vernon’s view, the state is putting an arbitrary percentage on what the angler catches per season or year.
“They’re assuming that we have the same success over time, regardless of weather, seasons, tides, days and angler ability — which is fallible, right?” Vernon said.
Commercial fishermen, on the other hand, use the Trip Ticket program; it works with a fish entered into the system upon being sold to a merchant. Trip Ticket doesn’t capture any commercial fish sold off the books or not sold at all. At the end of the day, both commercial and recreational ventures are largely based on an honor system.
In 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that would require commercial fishermen to report all catches and recreational fishermen to report some species, including flounder. Issued fines would begin Dec. 1, 2025.
Both Sneed and Vernon said any improvements in data collection would need to be backed up with more resources for enforcement.
“There’s not enough law enforcement to put any teeth into it on either side,” Sneed said. “There’s just no way that people are going to get checked enough.”
Until recently, Sneed said the Coastal Conservation Association has gotten little response from legislators on reforming the division’s management. So, he’s taken the battle to the courts.
CCA filed a lawsuit against the state in 2020 to “hold the state accountable for the destruction of our public-trust coastal fisheries resources from the State’s failure to manage them properly.”
The lawsuit claims the state has allowed for the for-profit exploitation of coastal fisheries by fewer than 7,000 citizens supplanting the public rights of 11 million. The lawsuit does not directly blame law-abiding commercial fishermen for the decline of the fisheries, but claims the state has become “co-opted to serve the commercial interests they are charged with regulating.”
Apart from any specific regulation, the Division of Marine Fisheries’ tallest task might be rebuilding trust with the fishing community.
Vernon described a “difference in culture” between Marine Fisheries and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which manages hook-and-line fishing in joint waters with the Division of Marine Fisheries along with inland waters. Vernon said he felt like it was never above the Wildlife Resources Commission for wardens to provide hands-on assistance when needed, something he sees lacking at Marine Fisheries.
Last week, the Wildlife Resources Commission announced it would allow a four-day Southern flounder season. The commissioners voted on a temporary rule to allow one fish per day, a minimum size of 15 inches, Sept. 1-2 and again Sept. 7-8, in the waters it manages.
The commission initially indicated it would follow suit with the Marine Fisheries division, but decided to compromise on a 10-day reduction in response to public feedback.
As reported in Coastal Review, commissioners found the “closure of the flounder season for 2024 is an unbalanced allocation issue. If that data suggested that closing the season was necessary as a conservation issue, the [Marine Fisheries Commission] would also close the commercial season.”
Owens said his opinion was the two divisions merge under a unified leadership.
North Carolina can also look to other states on their successful strategies. For example, Florida and South Carolina have different management tools for different sectors of the coast based on carrying capacity.
“So, how many fish can this part of the resource hold? That’s obviously going to be different around major metropolitan cities like Tampa on the West Coast than it is going to be in the Everglades,” Vernon said.
The practice could be used here, where the growing Cape Fear region’s population density is much higher than other parts of the coast.
The fishermen offered up other ideas for better management, but as Rep. Iler made clear in his letter to NCDEQ, if the division continues on the current path, its power to do anything could be threatened.
“If our DMF cannot come up with a better fishery management plan at least by 2025, perhaps we need to go to the floors of the N.C. House and Senate, hear from citizens and objective experts, and come up with a plan for them,” Iler states in his letter.
The next meeting of the Marine Fisheries Commission will take place Aug. 21–23.
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