Blackfish management is once again under the microscope, and with potential regulatory changes coming as a result of the latest stock assessment, I think there is a basic question New York anglers should be asking: Are we drawing the management lines in the right places?
Tautog are currently assessed and managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in four regions: Massachusetts-Rhode Island, Long Island Sound, New Jersey-New York Bight and Delaware-Maryland-Virginia. Regional management exists for a reason. Differences in biology and fishery characteristics, along with the limited coastwide movement of tautog, make managing these fish on a regional basis more appropriate than treating the entire coast as one group.
For New York fishermen, however, one particular boundary deserves a closer look.
The Long Island Sound management region extends east to a line running between Orient Point, New York, and Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Once outside that boundary and around the East End, New York’s ocean fishery falls within the New Jersey-New York Bight management region.
Think about what that means geographically.
Blackfish caught west of that line in Long Island Sound belong to one management region. Head around Orient, through the eastern reaches of Long Island and toward Montauk, and those fish eventually become part of a management unit extending west along the South Shore and into the New York-New Jersey Bight.
Should a blackfish living around Montauk really be considered part of the same management population as one caught around western Long Island, New York Harbor or New Jersey?
I don’t know the answer, and that’s precisely the point.
Tautog aren’t striped bass or tuna making sweeping coastal migrations. They are strongly associated with structure and can display relatively localized movement. If limited movement helps justify regional management in the first place, it’s fair to periodically examine whether the boundaries of those regions accurately represent the fish we’re managing.
Anyone who spends time blackfishing around Long Island can understand why the question comes up.
Consider Montauk and the waters toward Block Island. It’s a fishery built around extensive rocky bottom, boulder fields, ledges, reefs and other natural structure. Now work west along Long Island’s South Shore, where much of the blackfish effort becomes increasingly centered on wrecks, artificial reefs, bridge structures and scattered pieces of hard bottom before eventually blending into the western New York Bight. That doesn’t prove they’re different biological stocks. But it certainly provides a reason to investigate their relationship.
How much mixing occurs between Montauk and Block Island tautog? How connected are those fish to blackfish farther west along the South Shore? Where does the eastern Long Island population transition into what we consider the New York Bight group?
Those are questions that tagging programs, genetics, age structure and movement studies could help answer.
This discussion becomes much more important because of what’s currently happening with tautog management.
The 2025 regional stock assessment found Long Island Sound was neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing. The New Jersey-New York Bight stock was also determined not to be overfished, but overfishing was found to be occurring.
That finding requires management action.
ASMFC’s Draft Addendum I is considering measures intended to give the NJ-NY Bight region at least a 50% probability of reaching its fishing mortality target by 2030. Depending on the final action and how individual states respond, that could mean meaningful changes for blackfishermen.
This isn’t an argument against those changes if the science demonstrates they’re necessary. Tautog are too valuable to the Northeast recreational fishery not to protect them.
But before fishermen from New Jersey through western Long Island and all the way out toward Montauk are asked to operate under measures stemming from the same regional assessment, shouldn’t we be certain we’re dealing with the same biological group of fish?
Perhaps New York’s tautog fishery would ultimately be better represented by three management areas: Long Island Sound, Eastern Long Island and the New York Bight.
The Long Island Sound region already exists. An Eastern Long Island region could potentially account for waters around the North Fork, Gardiners Bay and Montauk, with scientists determining how those fish relate to groups around Block Island and southern New England. The New York Bight region could then encompass the South Shore and western waters that transition toward New York Harbor and New Jersey.
I’m not suggesting we simply draw those boundaries tomorrow. I’m also not claiming that science has already demonstrated Montauk blackfish constitute a separate stock. It hasn’t. I’m suggesting we find out.
If tagging, genetics and movement studies show extensive mixing between Montauk, the western South Shore and New Jersey, then the current management structure has a strong biological justification. But if the science demonstrates a more localized eastern population with stronger connections to nearby eastern waters, management should be capable of recognizing that too. Regional tautog management already acknowledges that one approach doesn’t necessarily fit the entire coast. Maybe the current boundaries are exactly where they should be.
But with the NJ-NY Bight facing an overfishing determination and potential regulatory changes ahead, now is the appropriate time to take another look at eastern Long Island. Maybe New York needs two tautog regions. Maybe it needs three. Either way, I’d rather see tagging data, genetics and movement studies answer the question than rely solely on a line drawn on a chart. Before we decide how many blackfish anglers can keep and when they can keep them, let’s make sure we’re managing the right fish in the right region.
