Scup GRA

Utilizing Collaborative Strategies to Assess and Adapt Scup Gear Restricted Areas (GRAs) in Response to Climate Change

This project is funded by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC)

This project will implement a collaborative and comprehensive program that will analyze several current data sources using improved modeling approaches for Scup Gear Restricted Areas (GRAs) within the Mid-Atlantic region. We will use a combination of local and industry knowledge, along with economic and community data to translate the predicted spatial distributions of juvenile scup into social and economic outcome measures for alternative spatial closure scenarios. We will develop calibrated scenario analysis to quantify likely changes in fishing costs, catches, or shifts in distributions of fishery benefits arising from representative GRA policy scenarios. This project will also engage the commercial fishing industry with two multi-venue workshops, development of an interactive survey tool and dockside visits throughout the region to collect an all-inclusive industry opinion and fleet behavior relative to current and proposed scup management.

Final Report Summary

Our analysis approach was also guided by industry input provided at our two collaborative workshops and through the industry survey. This input helped to modify assumptions about our original approach. The Appendices show all of the statistical analysis results and the associated extensive mapping output from the analysis. In the narrative the reader is directed to specific pages in the Appendices to gain a more thorough appreciation and understanding of our spatial – temporal modeling. The Appendices provide a full presentation of all spatial – temporal modeling and results. It is particularly important to visualize this output as an annual series of mapping and statistical analysis results for each GRA based on each of our data sets.

The results presented in the Appendices are highly visual in order to provide spatial and temporal scup (Stenotomus chrysops) and longfin squid (Doryteuthis (Amerigo) pealeii) distributions, interactions, and co-occurrence and fishing fleet behavior, with respect to the physical locations and timing of the GRAs. The Appendices also provide additional detail on the fishing industry response and input. When used in this report, “squid” refers to longfin squid. Longfin squid is also known as Loligo squid (from its previous classification). We initially also included shortfin squid (Illex illecebrosus) but determined that the longfin squid fishery is more relevant to the GRAs.

Project Objectives

Objective 1 – Identify scup bycatch/discard hotspots and spatial patterns.

Objective 2 – Identify areas and times where reductions and/or changes in fishing effort could reduce impacts on juvenile scup.

Objective 3 – Improve our understanding of the regulatory and economic drivers of scup discards and how the GRAs or other management strategies might influence fleet behavior.

Objective 4 – Identify potential biological and socio-economic tradeoffs between management strategies to reduce scup bycatch and impacts on fishermen.

Objective 5 – Engage stakeholders.

Conclusions

The following are the conclusions of the project. Scup and squid distribution appear to be independent of each other and show densities that are variable by year and region. High scup CPUE and high squid CPUE do not appear to co-occur regionally. Consequently, high abundance of one species in the GRA rarely if ever occurs when the other species is abundant in the GRA. Since squid is not regularly abundant in the closed area, the GRAs only occasionally displace significant squid-target effort and fishing ports participate relatively consistently during the times when the GRAs open and close. Industry suggests that the GRA closures may be obsolete at current scup SSB levels and that the minimum fish and mesh size for scup may be the primary drivers of stock recovery. Fixed time-area closures may not be an effective approach for managing scup bycatch in the small mesh squid fishery. The modeling/mapping analysis support fishermen’s observations about the GRAs.

Last updated June 8, 2026