article on the winter flouder population crash

[Pt.JudeJoe]

This is an article someone posted in the RISAA (snesa} mail. I found it very interesting and informative in that warmer winters promote shrimp growth which eat the flounder larvae. So it's not all overfishing, seals,and cormorants .However , Brayton Pt power plant's thermal discharge warming the water cannot be a good thing. Anyway I found it a good read. http://www.gso.uri.edu/maritimes/Tex...t/Jeffries.htm

[basswipe]

46yrs of laborious study would certainly lend credence to that study.

A very informative read.

[RIROCKHOUND]

The Shrimp thing came about a few years back with Sandra Whitehouse's Thesis.. Krangon, aka Thumb-Splitters or Sand Shrimp
Commorants are definetly a problem
Brayton Pt. hurts, BUT flouder spawn in other areas of the bay too, so the population should have just dented, not collapsed...
My guess is that it's a combination of things, maybe a few cold winters will help the young of the year get bigger and surrvive....

[Clammer]

Boston /Hull has somewhat rebounded // while here in the Bay ya could fish all day & not get Four ...
Does Boston area have the same amount of seals we do ????????????????????????

I know when I dig ==from October thru may /everytime a camorant [sp] comes up with food its always a eels or a winter flounder & I know seals actually can dig /soooo they ARE feeding on the same food

[bloocrab]

We used to have a very good amount of flounder in our local waters...Sakonnet/Taunton river....in our case, pollution put an end to that. Remember, flounder are a bottom fish....the environment definately hurts bottom dwellers in the upper rivers with settling pollution....unfortunately even strong tidal currents don't clean our bottoms enough....take a snorkel ride to the bottom, but bring a strong light cuz you ain't gonna see a choggy never mind a flounder in the Taunton river. Our rivers need an enormous flushing.

[RIROCKHOUND]

I'd argue that the bottom in most places is healthier than it was 30years ago; less metal manufacturing waste etc.. getting to the bay/river waters..
I truly think the cause is a combo of overfishing, commorants and warmer waters; be it global warming, local cycles or power plants, increased predation from Sand Shrimp and crabs stems from the warmer waters;

[1tym]

I wonder what a sand shrimp looks like

[striprman]

I remember going to Duxbury around the first couple weeks in April,
in 3 hours fishing you could catch a couple 5 gallon buckets of flounder all about 14-16 inches. Made for some great fish fries.
Oh well, lucky to catch a spider crab there now that time of year. Still catch a few (a very few) and a couple'togs, during the last couple weeks of April, first couple of May.

[Duke41]

When I was a kid in the 60"S my dad and I would fish Duxbury from a small runabout around Clarks Ilsand and Saquhish Head ,tons of striper and fluke. The water was so clean you could see this stripers swim under the boat. Not like that any more is it. Does anyone fish there from the board. I wonder what it is like?