MFC Meeting Recap
The North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC) met last week in Raleigh for their quarterly business meeting. This is a quick recap of what happened.
Blue Crab
The same basic information was presented to the MFC by Division of Marine Fisheries (Division) staff. The Division essentially doubled down on the “declining trends of the stock” using their 1994 timeline, which so happens to start with the 6 highest years of landings of blue crabs in NC history.
In fact, if you remove those abnormally high landing years and look a little further back, you can see we are in a similar natural pattern of decline of landings for a few years followed by an increase just like we have seen in 2023, 2024, and we are already trending higher again for 2025.
The Division did not provide any new adaptive management options for the MFC to consider but they continue to say that additional options will be made available for the vote scheduled to take place at the next MFC meeting in November.
Regardless of any management options presented, there would not even be enough time to analyze the results before the next Amendment process begins. The process has already informally started; Director Rawls announced that the Division has hired two new stock assessment scientists and they have begun developing plans for a new blue crab benchmark stock assessment.
Atlantic Bonito
Motion was made by Tom Roller and seconded by A. Hobgood to “Ask the DMF to bring proposed rulemaking language for a five-fish recreational bag limit per person for Atlantic bonito to the MFC at its November 2025 business meeting.”
Motion passed 6-0-3.
Sheepshead
The Division presented information about the current trends in the sheepshead fishery “emphasizing concerns related to increased fishing pressure”. A series of public meetings to gather stakeholder input will be scheduled for this fall.
Black Drum
There seemed to be no overwhelming management or biological concerns with this fishery.
Southern Flounder
The MFC made the final vote to expedite the 50/50 quota allocation shift one year ahead of the Amendment 3 schedule. This 25% increase in recreational quota will not be used for harvest in 2025; the recreational season will still only be two weeks with one fish per day. Instead, the increase in recreational quota will be used to cover recreational discards in the hopes to prevent overages.
Two former senior-level Division employees wrote an extensive comment letter outlining multiple paths to increase harvest of southern flounder.
They clearly said that even if NC had a complete moratorium, we could not meet the rebuilding requirements of the NC Fisheries Reform Act statutes that were added in 2010 (by the CCA)!
Read their comment letter at this link: August MFC Meeting Comments
Their comment letter was politely discussed by a few MFC members and essentially brushed aside to continue down the same old broken path of an unachievable 72% reduction. Hopefully more of the public will read their comments and demand better.
Striped Bass
The biggest change in Striped Bass management is the sunset of the gill net closure above the ferry lines in the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers. Data was presented to the MFC that showed the gill net closure was not effective at increasing Striped Bass abundance.
The areas above the ferry lines in the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers will reopen as soon as a proclamation is issued declaring such.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments please reach out.
Thomas Newman
Fisheries Liaison
