August 8, 2014 — A judge has ruled that observer coverage is too low in the North Pacific Groundfish fisheries.
This comes as part of a ruling by the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, issued late on Wednesday, on on The Boat Company’s lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service. The judge’s central ruling stated NMFS violated the law when restructuring the observer program for the North Pacific ground fish fisheries.
“NMFS must prepare a supplemental EA [Environmental Assessment] that addresses the question of when data being gathered by the restructured Observer Program ceases to be reliable, or of high quality, because the rate of observer coverage is too low”, Judge Russel Holland wrote in his decision.
Read the full story from Undercurrent News