Grant to Study South Fork Fish Catches
(11/12/2009) It may have been a long time coming, but a $30,000 grant from Suffolk County, along with $1,500 from the Southampton Town Trustees, promises to provide a more accurate figure of the fish that were
 Durell Godfrey
|
brought in to Montauk and Shinnecock, the state’s largest commercial ports, during a period that was used to determine quotas.
Coastwide species quotas, as well as the share of those quotas individual states have received, have been based on landings in the 1980s. For years, Long Island fishermen have argued that they have been penalized by the way they ship fish. Unlike fishermen elsewhere, whose catches are counted when they are sorted by species to be sold at auction or placed in boxes on land, fishermen here generally box their catch at sea.
As a result, National Marine Fisheries Service port agents have been faced with closed cartons, which often contained a mix of species, and forced to estimate quantities. The industry claims that fluke and porgies were especially under-reported during the 1980s, and State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo took up the cause last year, bringing suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service for its New York State landing figures.
Several years ago, Brad Loewen, an East Hampton Town Councilman who has served on the town’s Fisheries Consultancy and Committee, asked County Executive Steve Levy for help. He established a recreational and commercial fisheries task force, whose work led to the grant.
The East Hampton committee is to receive the $30,000, with half coming from the Suffolk Industrial Development Agency and a matching amount from Mr. Levy’s office. The money will be used to pay Eric Braun, a former fisheries service port agent who is an East Hampton resident, to find a more accurate account of the 1980s landings by studying fishermen’s logs and the records of Fulton Fish Market dealers.
Mr. Loewen said yesterday that Mr. Braun’s findings would be handed over to Mr. Cuomo’s office and to the State Department of Environmental Conservation. “We will let them take it to the feds so we can get a better quota, either that or sue them,” he said. “Massachusetts did it in their scup [porgy] fishery. Their quota was adjusted. And also in the tilefish fishery. There was a mistake, and the fed corrected it. We’re pretty confident,” Mr. Loewen said.
Mr. Loewen has served on the fisheries committee as a member of the East Hampton Town Board. With his term about to expire, a $15,000 stipend had been put in the tentative 2010 budget to fund a paid position for Mr. Loewen.