The state of North Carolina wants flounder. Not to eat, though. To research. The Department of Environmental Quality is asking recreational fishermen to donate their catch for that purpose. The request comes as the flounder season begins Tuesday in North Carolina and lasts for two weeks. Charlton Godwin will be doing some of that flounder research. He is a biologist with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. He joined WFAE's Marshall Terry.
Marshall Terry: What do researchers hope to learn from these donated flounder and how exactly does it work?
Charlton Godwin: The division has placed freezers at designated sites — tackle and bait shops — across coastal areas to allow anglers to donate filleted fish carcasses. The information gained from these carcasses, such as the age, size, and reproductive potential of the fish, is vital to help assess the health of the fish stocks. Age information about fish are collected by analyzing fish scales or other hard parts like spines and otoliths, which are a fish's ear bones. Under a microscope, biologists look for the presence of annual growth rings. These growth rings look like the annual growth rings of a tree and, by counting them, tell us the fish's age.
This information is then used in stock assessment and fishery management plans to help officials better manage the fisheries' resources of the state. A great recent example of how a carcass donated by a recreational angler has led to a greater understanding of southern flounder is from a donation last year of a fish that was harvested near the Cape Fear River. That southern flounder turned out to be 12 years old. The previous oldest southern flounder observed on the East Coast of the United States was 9 years old, which also was from a southern flounder from North Carolina.
Terry: What do we know about how the state's flounder are doing?
Godwin: So the last stock assessment for flounder was a 2019 coastwide southern flounder stock assessment. It found that southern flounder is overfished and overfishing is occurring throughout the entire range of southern flounder, which is North Carolina through the east coast of Florida.
North Carolina law mandates that fishery management plans include measures to end overfishing within two years and to rebuild the stock size to achieve sustainable harvest within 10 years of adoption of the fishery management plan. North Carolina implemented the current management framework in 2020. Division stock assessment staff conducted an interim analysis of southern flounder stock indicators in North Carolina waters.
The results indicate the portion of the southern flounder population in North Carolina appears to have responded to management in a positive way and as we have heard from the public, the results indicate there has been an increase in the abundance and size of southern flounder in North Carolina waters. However, these gains are modest.
Terry: Why is there a designated flounder season in North Carolina? Can you explain what it is and the limitations put on fishermen during this time?
Godwin: Right, so the current flounder harvest seasons are selected based on the requirement that North Carolina reduce total southern flounder removals by 72% from 2017 levels. This equates to an annual harvest quota of 532,352 pounds in total allowable southern flounder landings. That quota is split evenly between the commercial and recreational sectors. The recreational season, from Sept. 1 through Sept. 14, is expected to result in approximately 266,000 pounds of harvest, about equal to the recreational quota.
Terry: How big is the commercial flounder industry in North Carolina, and how much does this fish matter for recreational anglers?
Godwin: The southern flounder resource is extremely important to both commercial and recreational sectors in North Carolina. For the commercial sector, southern flounder was for many years one of the largest fisheries in our estuarine waters. For the recreational sector, flounder has traditionally been one of the top five most sought-after and caught fish in our estuaries and nearshore ocean.
