Fisheries Director Increases Mechanical Oyster Harvest Limit in Pamlico Sound

MOREHEAD CITY – Fishermen will see a change in mechanical oyster harvest limits in the Pamlico Sound for the Thanksgiving holidays.

The daily trip limit will increase from 15 bushels to 20 bushels starting this Thursday and running this Friday and next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries Director Louis Daniel said his intent this year is to raise the harvest limit for one week before Thanksgiving, one week preceding Christmas and one week before the Super Bowl.

“These are times when, historically, there is high market demand for oysters,” Daniel said.

Daniel issued a proclamation Monday implementing the first increase. The daily mechanical harvest limit in the bays will remain at 10 bushels per day.

The action comes as a result of a supplement to the Oyster Fishery Management Plan, adopted by the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission earlier this month, which gives the director of the Division of Marine Fisheries authority to set the daily trip limit for mechanical harvest in Pamlico Sound up to 20 bushels per day.

The supplement gives the director authority to increase or decrease the daily mechanical harvest trip limit based on abundance of oysters and other factors. It also instructs the director to close harvest in an area when the number of legal-sized oysters in an area declines to 26 percent of the live oysters sampled.

Bay Scallop
Also at the Nov. 3-5 meeting, the commission adopted an amendment to the Bay Scallop Fishery Management Plan that implements a new way to determine when to open waters to bay scallop harvesting. The amendment sets up progressive management triggers based on sampling data from 1984-85, prior to a red tide event in 1987-88.

Every year, division biologists sample the abundance of bay scallops in different water bodies. Prior to this amendment, bay scallop season opened only if the annual sampling showed the abundance of bay scallops in a water body was at 100 percent of where it was in 1984-85.

Under this new management method, the division director will open a water body to limited bay scallop harvesting when sampling indicates bay scallop abundance is at 50 percent of the level it was in 1984-85. Trip limits and fishing days will progressively increase if sampling shows bay scallop abundance is at 75 percent or 125 percent of 1984-85 levels.

Southern Flounder
The commission also tentatively approved a draft amendment to the Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan to send to the secretary of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Joint Legislative Commission on Seafood and Aquaculture for review.

The draft amendment calls for increasing the recreational minimum size limit to 15 inches and decreasing the daily creel limit to six fish per person.

The draft amendment is an update to the N.C. Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan adopted by the Marine Fisheries Commission in 2005. That plan was developed after a 2004 southern flounder stock assessment found the stock was overfished and overfishing was occurring.

A 2009 stock assessment found that while the southern flounder stock has improved since 2005, it is still overfished, and further harvest reductions of 20.5 percent are needed to end overfishing and achieve sustainable harvests within legally required timeframes.

The proposed size and bag limits are projected to reduce the recreational harvest by 20.2 percent.

No changes are proposed for the commercial fishery because existing commercial fishing regulations on southern flounder, implemented this past summer to protect sea turtles, are projected to result in an overall commercial southern flounder harvest reduction of 22.2 percent.

Spotted Seatrout
The commission also tentatively adopted a fishery management plan for spotted seatrout that includes the following measures to address sustainable harvest:

• A 14-inch size limit for both commercial and recreational fishermen
• A recreational bag limit of six fish, with a maximum of two fish over 24 inches
• A Dec. 15-Feb. 28 season closure.

However, the commission plans to readdress this issue at a meeting at 1 p.m. Monday at the Crystal Coast
Civic Center in Morehead City.

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