The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) met alongside the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board (Board) on Wednesday, August 13 in Annapolis, MD to review 2026 fisheries specifications.
Among the primary species discussed at the group meeting, coastal anglers may be most excited about the black sea bass decision. After extensive discussion and review of the latest black sea bass stock, one which was noted specifically as being of “very high biomass” that regulators acknowledge is “2.84 times the target level in 2024,” the Council and Board voted unanimously to increase the recreational harvest limit from its current 6.27-million-pound threshold to 8.14 million pounds. These new specifications for black sea bass will be applied to the 2026-2027 fishery, but it’s not yet known what it means for season, size or bag limits.
Also approved by the management bodies was an increase in recreational harvest limit for summer flounder from the present 6.35-million-pound level to 8.79 million pounds. A subtle change in recreational harvest limits for porgy was also approved, going from approximately 12.3 million pounds this season to 13.17 million pounds in 2026, back down to 11.58 million pounds in 2027.
While the votes to increase recreational harvest limits for fluke and sea bass in 2026 and 2027 look promising, the final recreation harvest for 2025 through the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) will need to be tallied first for analysis; also in play is the new Harvest Control Rule and Percent Change Approach to recreational fisheries management aimed at smoothing out the “highs” and “lows” of recreational catch and effort.
This new method of managing recreational fisheries like fluke and sea bass is essentially a double-edged sword; on one hand when deep reductions might ordinarily be required based on a single season of MRIP data, the more stabilized approach doesn’t require a cut. On the other hand, when it was once possible to maximize effort based on lower MRIP data as an example, the angling community isn’t able to take full advantage.
