The Division of Marine Fisheries (MarineFisheries) has projected that the ASMFC northern states’ 2007/2008 spiny dogfish quota will be harvested by Tuesday, October 2nd. MarineFisheries is therefore taking action to prohibit the possession and landing of spiny dogfish by all fishermen (federal and state) effective 0001 hours on Wednesday, October 3rd through the end of the 2007/2008 fishing year (April 30, 2008).

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Spiny Dogfish Management Board approved a 6-million lb. quota for spiny dogfish for the 2007/2008 fishing year that assigned 58% of the overall spiny dogfish quota to “northern” states (CT through ME) with the remaining 42% assigned to states from NY south. This translated into roughly 3.1-million lbs. of spiny dogfish, after taking overages from the 2006/2007 fishing year into effect, available to commercial fishermen in the “northern states”.

Note, NOAA Fisheries approved a 4-million lb. federal quota split between Period I (May – October) and Period II (November – April). NOAA Fisheries closed the Period I fishery on August 14th. The Period II federal fishery is scheduled to re-open on November 1st. Only those fishermen landing in states from NY south will be eligible to land spiny dogfish at that time. The “northern states” have landed their regional share of spiny dogfish quota.