DATE: Tuesday, September 23, 1997           TAG: 9709230188

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY SONJA BARISIC, ASSOCIATED PRESS

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   68 lines

JUDGE ORDERS TRIAL ON FLOUNDER QUOTAS HE WANTS MORE INFORMATION BEFORE RULING ON FISHERMEN'S COMPLAINT

A federal judge asked Monday for more information before ruling on a complaint by North Carolina commercial fishermen that summer flounder quotas are unfair.

Attorneys for the North Carolina Fisheries Association and the Justice Department had asked Judge Robert Doumar to make a decision without a trial.

But Doumar said he wanted to hear evidence about the economic impact of quotas. He set the trial for Sept. 29.

Doumar said he believes there was ``a substantial impact'' on fishermen.

``I realize that you want to save fish . . . but the problem that scares me is, what do we do with the fishermen?'' the judge said during a four-hour hearing.

He also urged attorneys to try to reach a settlement.

Mark S. Davis, a lawyer for the fishermen, argued that the federal government did not take into account the economic impact on fishing communities when it set the 1997 quota.

Kelly Mofield, a Justice Department attorney, said the government did not have to consider the impact because the 1997 quota was the same as the 1996 quota.

The government began imposing quotas in 1993 to protect the summer flounder population, which dropped during the 1980s. Portions of the total quota go to each East Coast state.

The lawsuit by the fishermen's group and the state of North Carolina against Commerce Secretary William Daley asked the court to reinstate 1.1 million pounds subtracted from North Carolina's 1997 quota of 3 million pounds. Daley oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service, which sets the quotas.

The 1.1 million pounds includes 592,478 pounds that was fished in excess of North Carolina's 1995 quota. The fishermen's group contends the government shouldn't have subtracted those fish from both the state quota and the assessment of the Atlantic summer flounder population.

The 1.1 million pounds also includes a 1996 overage of 538,835 pounds that the federal government didn't assess against this year's quota until July.

Waiting that long to adjust the quota wiped out the fall fishing season, Davis said. The same thing happened last year, he said.

North Carolina gives 70 percent of its quota to trawlers that fish in the winter, reserving the rest for small boats that fish in the fall.

Summer flounder refers to a type of flounder. In North Carolina, the fish is caught in the fall and winter. The state's annual harvest is worth an estimated $26 million.

North Carolina contends it is being discriminated against because it is the only state in which the NMFS uses actual harvesting numbers rather than estimates to determine the quota.

``Other states are getting to continue to harvest and sell more fish than their quotas because the NMFS system isn't efficient at counting how many they harvest,'' said Daniel McLawhorn, special deputy attorney general for North Carolina.

The lawsuit also asks Doumar to order the secretary not to alter annual quotas after the first of each year to reflect overages from the previous year.

``It's like you're living on a $10,000 annual fixed income and two-thirds of the way through in the second year, you get a notice: `By the way, I'm changing your income from last year . . . to $6,000,' '' McLawhorn said after the hearing. ``Because of that, you've been writing bad checks for the last three months.'' KEYWORDS: FLOUNDER

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