September 6, 2017 — It was the busy Labor Day Weekend, and Southold Fish Market owner Charlie Manwaring had been forced to stock his popular East End restaurant and market with out-of-state fluke for the first time in recent memory.
“This is my backyard, and on a holiday weekend I have no fluke,” he complained to Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) at a meeting Friday morning with two dozen angry Long Island fishermen and women at the Mattituck fishing dock. “I have to rely on Rhode Island and Jersey and Massachusetts and Carolina.”
Late last month, state regulators, working with a limited New York quota from a multistate fishery council, shut down the commercial fluke fishery for September.
As a result, Manwaring and other local shop owners will “pay more, the fish will cost customers more, and they’ll be older,” said Bob Hamilton, a trawler operator out of Greenport, who typically sells his fluke to Southold Fish Market. “It’s just people in fisheries management who have no understanding of running a business.”
“The fluke paid our bills,” said Cindy Kaminsky, who fishes commercially out of Mattituck. “It’s hard to be just put out of business, and it’s a month out of a short fishing period. We don’t fish in winter and every year it gets a little bit worse.”