The nation’s largest scallop industry organization has found NOAA’s approach to assessing the status of yellowtail flounder to be virtually worthless and urged the agency to scrap its commitment to “computer models” in favor of “field research.”
The four-page, single-spaced letter to Bill Karp, the newly appointed director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, by attorneys for the Fisheries Survival Fund includes a harsh, detailed analysis of government’s effort to determine the status of the stock.
A staple of the groundfishing fleet and bycatch in the scallop trawls, the yellowtail founder is essential for different reasons to the region’s leading commercial ports, Gloucester and New Bedford.
The 13 July letter to director Karp by attorneys Drew E. Minkiewicz and David E. Frulla, with the Washington, D.C., office of the firm Kelley Drye & Warren, repeatedly emphasized the intent was not to pressure the government for a larger allocation of yellowtail.
