News

Atlantic chub mackerel is a small, pelagic, schooling, tuna-like species prevalent from Florida and recently all the way up to Rhode Island. They expand across the Atlantic and can be found in the Mediterranean well.
Chub mackerel aggregations are a fairly recent occurrence in the Mid Atlantic. In the last several years they have shown up in extraordinary numbers from Virginia up to New York, usually offshore of 20 fathoms. Such chub aggregations have become a forage source for billfish, tuna, mahi etc. In recent years chub have undoubtedly driven spatial and temporal offshore recreational fishing opportunities.
While large scale chub mackerel fisheries certainly exist on the other side of the Atlantic, there was, more or less, no commercial fishery for chub here until fairly recently. Industry went from catching close to none in 2008 to catching over 5-million pounds in 2013. An extraordinary escalation in a very short amount of time.
In response, the Mid Atlantic Council capped the commercial fishery at an average of the three most recent three years they had data for, 2010 to 2013, while allowing for a forty-thousand pound “incidental” limit to be caught after that cap was met.
That cap was intended to last three years after it went into effect (in 2018). During that time, the intent was for the Council to develop alternatives for longer-term management of chub mackerel fisheries to ensure sustainability, not simply from a yield perspective, but from an ecosystem on (i.e. making sure enough remained in the water for predators). Most interpreted that to mean adding chub mackerel as a stock in the Butterfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP) Mackerel, Squid, , so that it would be managed under the Magnuson Stevens Act.
Currently the Council is developing such an amendment, but is struggling with data gaps and a general lack of information on chub mackerel in the Mid Atlantic.
For a full species description and management history on the Fissues page for chub mackerel