SAVE THE SUMMER FLOUNDER FISHERY FUND HAS POSITIVE
IMPACT ON THE ASSESSMENT OF SUMMER FLOUNDER!
The
Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund (SSFFF), through the work of internationally recognized fisheries biologist Mark Maunder,
Ph.D., has affected a major change to the Summer Flounder Stock Assessment.
By attending the Stock Assessment Workshop (SAW)
for Summer Flounder in June 2008, Dr. Maunder, working with scientists from PMAFS and the National Marine Fisheries Service,
was able to identify significant issues with the natural mortality figures used in assessing Summer Flounder. As a result
of the work done by Dr. Maunder, along with the supporting efforts of scientists from Rutgers and Cornell Universities working
through PMAFS, the resulting change in the assessment not only stopped the downward trend in quotas for Summer Flounder, but
resulted in an increase of some 3 million pounds to the 2009 TAL!
Further issues and questions surrounding the assessment were identified,
and SSFFF, through Dr. Maunder and working closely with the RFA and PMAFS, are now working on projects to address those concerns
and answer those questions.
The following is a summary of just one of the scientific projects that
SSFFF is working on:
Development of a fully sex-specific and region specific model that can be used in the next stock assessment of summer
flounder; literature review to determine the source of the estimate of M (mortality) used in previous assessments; simulation
analysis that will determine if the natural mortality can be reliably estimated from the currently available data; literature
review to determine steepness values used for similar stocks; Simulation analysis to determine if the steepness can be reliably
estimated from the available data; and theoretical work and simulation analysis will be conducted to determine appropriate
proxies if steepness is determined to be too uncertain to reliably estimate maximum sustainable yield (MSY) related quantities.
