There hasn’t been much good news since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in February. But the Alabama Marine Resources Division had some last week, which brings hope for saltwater anglers in years to come.
AMRD released the first batch of southern flounder fingerlings spawned at their Claude Peteet Mariculture Center in Gulf Shores. Approximately 12,000 fingerlings were introduced into Wolf Bay and Josephine areas. These 1-inch fish are just one-fifth of their goal to stock 60,000 fingerlings annually in Alabama waters.
Ideally, other areas such as Bon Secour, Oyster Bay, and Dauphin Island would’ve been stocked if not for low salinity. Juvenile flounder develop best in salinites of 10-15 parts per thousand.
Across northern Gulf waters, southern flounder numbers are on the decline. Among the reasons are overharvest, accidental bycatch, and water temperature rise. Flounder sex (male, female) is determined at the larval stage, and is temperature dependent. Rising sea temperatures over the last decade have resulted in far more male than female flounder. Ideally, the reverse would be better.
Alabama is one of a few states either with a supplemental hatchery program, or in the stages of initiating such a program. AMRD Chief Marine Biologist Kevin Anson said that he hopes funding for a tagging program is available in the future to determine how many of the hatchery-raised fish enter the adult population (recruitment).
Hatchery manager Max Westendorf is confident that the lessons learned from this initial spawning will lead to better results in the future. For one, his team had to deal with getting broodstock flounder to eat consistently after captivity. Second, flounder don’t readily expel eggs in a hatchery, requiring the staff to strip-spawn the fish. But too many strip-spawns of the same fish resulted in deterioration of the egg quality.
Significant support from Alabama Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) made it possible for the hatchery to expand capacity for the next flounder spawn. What is now needed are tournaments for anglers to collect and bring in live broodstock. That – given the pandemic – may be awhile in coming.
