PROVIDENCE -Beginning tomorrow - Saturday, December 11 - commercial fishermen will be allowed to possess 400 pounds of summer flounder, or fluke, at any given time. This change in the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries regulations gives commercial fishermen a 100-pound increase over the previously imposed 300-pound possession limit for summer flounder.

The Department of Environmental Management's Division of Fish and Wildlife filed the regulatory change as part of an ongoing effort to manage the annual allocation of summer flounder that the state receives from the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The move is designed to keep Rhode Island within its 1,740,000-pound commercial summer flounder quota, to ensure the availability of fish to commercial fishermen and consumers throughout the entire year, and to maximize the economic return to the fishing industry.

The increase in the possession limit from 300 to 400 pounds is a direct result of November's weekly landings, which were lower than anticipated. Lower landings may have resulted, in part, from unfavorable fishing weather conditions that occurred during the last two weeks in November.