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The Pew study finds that’s rebuilding summer flounder, black sea bass, butterfish and bluefish populations to federally mandated targets by 2007 would have generated an additional $570 million per year in direct economic benefits. Hutchinson noted however that the scientific targets keep changing, which should mandate more flexibility in the management process. “In 2007, the scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service were mandating a 197-million pound target for rebuilt summer flounder stocks, until a
new best available science target of 132 million pounds was set using 2007 data,” Hutchinson said, adding “Pew loves funding their own science, but these guys are dangling a carrot on a stick that never gets any closer, primarily because of the foundation’s own ideological conclusions and goals.”
John Mantione, owner of J&J Tackle in Patchogue, NY and a representative of the

New York Fishing Tackle Trades Association (NYFTTA) said he wishes his anglers were given more opportunity to fish for fluke back in 2007, as he notes that’s the year that business started really tailing off in response to rising gas prices, economic instability and loss of access to a healthy fishery. “I’m down 20% in June of this year over June of 2008,” Mantione said, adding “my distributors are telling me that business in the marine district today is bleak.” For Mantione and others who rely on a business model of opportunity, the lack of access is destroying the industry. “These folks at Pew don’t
have to tell me how much money their uncompromising attitude is costing our coastal economy, I can see it with my own eyes and so does my family,” Mantione said. “In 27 years of business, we weathered plenty of storms before, but we’ve never had decreases like we had this past June during the fluke closure in New York.”

While the research itself shows that denied opportunity is costing business owners dearly within the marine district, the RFA points out issues with the study, charging Pew with treating all facets of the fishery in absolute, inflexible terms. “It makes some broad assumptions,” said RFA research scientist, John DePersenaire. “During extremely low fishing mortality, the size of the commercial and recreational fishing industry remains constant with no attrition, while the amount of fish seems to be more important to the study than the actual access to the fishery in terms in economic activity. We know for a fact that these two assumptions are false,” DePersenaire added.

Daniel Furlong, Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) pointed out that bluefish was considered rebuilt in 2007, and explains that the best available data on black sea bass shows that fishery is also fully rebuilt. “No doubt there will be some more economic benefit accruing to the Mid-Atlantic when butterfish and summer flounder are fully rebuilt, but I seriously doubt it will equate to $570 million inasmuch as our most valuable fisheries (surf clams and ocean quahog) generate only $60 million annually,” Furlong said.

“Quite frankly, I would have to argue that the recreational bluefish fishery was more economically valuable when it was overfished in the 80’s and early 90’s compared to now when it is fully rebuilt,” DePersenaire added. Dave Arbeitman, owner of Reel Seat Bait and Tackle in Brielle, NJ and a founding member of the Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, said he sees where efforts to rebuild summer flounder stocks have already been successful, but the federal law won’t allow his customers access to healthy stocks. “These groups have been trying to stick with too radical of a rebuilding process, and if we had stuck with their model of rebuilding over the past few years we would’ve already been forced out of business,” Arbeitman said.

“The longer the public is denied access, the more likely they’re going to leave the fishery and leave the sport for good,” Arbeitman said, adding “These groups aren’t taking into consideration the fact that many anglers might just never return after having been denied access for so long.” The RFA points out that legislation sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to incorporate limited flexibility into the Magnuson-Stevens
Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the primary law governing most United
States ocean fisheries, would help provide recreational anglers more open access to rebuilding fisheries while providing the economic opportunity that the Pew study reports is currently being lost.

“The arbitrary and unnecessary deadlines are based on emotional policy decisions, not science,” said Jim Donofrio, Executive Director of the RFA. According to Donofrio, there is limited flexibility language written into the Pallone/Schumer legislation which would help put fisheries management decisions back on track with scientific commitments at the federal level while allowing recreational anglers opportunity to access healthy and rebuilding fisheries. “RFA agrees with the Obama administration and (NOAA) Secretary Lubchenco that fisheries must be managed under science,” said Donofrio, while adding “all non-scientific rebuilding provisions must be removed from Magnuson.”

The RFA is charging the Pew Environment Group as using their own newly purchased scientific study specifically to lobby against the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009 legislation promoted by Rep. Pallone and Sen. Schumer. Lee Crockett who heads Pew's effort to reform fisheries policy has been arguing against legislator’s plans to lengthen the rebuilding deadlines in instances where a fish stock is on a healthy, rebuilding trend, saying "The sooner they get rebuilt, the better from an economic perspective and a biological perspective." The problem according to the RFA is that from a biological perspective, there are some scientists who claim that some of these fisheries are already rebuilt.

Dr. Bob Shipp, chair of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama has been recognized as one of the foremost authorities on red snapper for the past three decades, and recently co-authored a paper on population dynamics which presents a very different conclusion than the one by scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). In a recent interview for Angler Magazine, Dr. Shipp said his studies indicate that unprecedented the increase in habitat from manmade reefs and the oil and gas industry has had a dramatic positive impact on the population of red snapper,
which is not recognized in the current assessment due to its flawed methodology.

“My feeling is that the stock is neither overfished nor is overfishing occurring, but rather, as offered in my paper, we are working toward an unrealized harvest potential,” Dr. Shipp said about the red snapper fishery. “I think the term ‘rebuilding’ is a misnomer, since it implies returning to an earlier stock level. There is little doubt we’ve gone beyond that.”
Dr. Shipp said he understands why it’s so hard to build mainstream scientific support these days for any optimistic fisheries news. “We do live in a culture that has witnessed terribly abusive overfishing practices, so it is understandable why there is resistance to ideas that are contrary to that culture,” Dr. Shipp said, adding “I would simply offer that NMFS has developed guidelines, based on Magnuson, that interpret the Act to require that we rebuild stocks to current potential, even if this exceeds historical or even virgin levels. I wonder if that was really the intent of the authors of the Act, especially given the negative socioeconomic impact of these guideline goals.”

While Southeast anglers are now rallying for support of the Pallone/Schumer legislation in an effort to suppress an imminent closure on the red snapper fishery, Crockett recently told the Asbury Park Press of New Jersey "the bill doesn't help those groups" because the closures are imposed to control overfishing, he said. According to the RFA, that statement isn’t accurate either. “The legislation will most certainly help our southern groups if we as a community start to demand better science, and that’s precisely why Mr. Pallone and Mr. Schumer are calling for this rework of the federal fisheries law,” said Donofrio. “The environmental community likes to trumpet their own gloomy studies when they’re trying to kick us off the water, but whenever we point to independent research showing other views, the Pew folks are quick to throw around the ‘overfishing’ word.”

Donofrio said the term overfishing is statutory, and is used by fisheries managers to describe how different fishing activities reduce stocks below an acceptable level. “NMFS recognizes several different types of overfishing including growth, recruit and ecosystem, and some levels of statutory overfishing are acceptable when you apply biologic or economic reference points,” Donofrio explained. “Pew and the rest of the environmental business community just likes to say ‘overfishing’ because it scares the hell out of people, and that provides a good return on investment for these scientific studies they’re buying.”