The Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Partners will meet in Setauket on November first to decide the fate of Long Island fishermen who catch porgy and fluke, but by then it may be too late to be of any consequence this year. Attendees will include Gordon Colvin, director of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, and representatives from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Local authorities, such as East Hampton Town councilman and commercial fisherman Brad Loewen, and East Hampton Town Fishery Advisory Committee director Arnold Leo, have also been invited to attend.

Local officials such as Loewen and Leo have been asked to attend the meeting because they have voiced concern over methods used to determine the necessity of the abrupt ban on Fluke and Porgy fishing put into effect over the summer. The ban was considered an emergency measure in reaction to rapidly declining numbers of Porgy and Fluke, only three years before the end of the DEC’s proposed ten-year-long conservation plan. The plan was meant to replenish the deteriorating stocks of Porgy and Fluke in New York State, but so far it had been determined to be a grand failure, due to the low numbers of fish counted in scientific trawling nets this year. However, many Long Islanders, including local officials, disagree with these findings, and have taken actions to protect the interests of the local economy by requesting that the daily fish count be raised. Local fisherman have cited imprecise data-collection methods as the cause for the alleged miscount, as gauges such as trawling surveys which count the number of fish in certain parts of the ocean cannot possibly serve as the basis for fishing limits.

As a result of a letter from East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill McGintee, written to Mr. Colvin in August, the daily limit on Porgy catches was raised from 60 pounds to over 1,200 pounds on October first. However, Mr. Loewen has stated that the increase came too late as Porgy schools are already starting to leave Gardiner’s Bay.

Although the East Hampton Town Department of Natural Resources’ plan to remedy the over-fishing crisis by releasing farm-raised flounder and blowfish into the ocean has been met with opposition from the Department of Environmental Conservation, healthy, non-genetically-modified fish bred from local, wild-caught specimens will continue to be released until the D.E.C. officially bans this conservation strategy.

As delicious, dependable fish that have made the waters surrounding Long Island many fisherman’s favorites, Porgy and Fluke have also sparked some of the largest controversies over whether protecting these species for future generations entails preventing fisherman from making a living. Hopefully, the resolution to this conflict of interest will be found at the November meeting to the benefit of both fish and fisherman.