January 23, 2015 — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton and four other members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation want NOAA Fisheries to "revise and improve" the federal interim action that has blacked out cod fishing and severely restricted fishing for other species in the Gulf of Maine.
Describing the interim emergency measures as "a major step backwards" and a potential death-knell for the inshore groundfish fleet, Moulton and his colleagues want NOAA to strike a better balance between cod conservation goals and the economic needs of the communities dependent on a viable fishery.
"The closures resulting from the November 2014 Interim Action fail to achieve this balance and as importantly have a minimal impact on protecting the [Gulf of Maine] cod stocks from further decline," the congressmen stated in a letter sent Thursday to NOAA Regional Administrator John K. Bullard.
Last November, NOAA announced sweeping emergency measures it deemed necessary to protect the region's endangered and withering cod stock.
Those measures ended all cod fishing in the gulf for at least six months and instituted a rolling set of area and spawning closures designed to help bring the cod back from what the federal agency described as a highly imperiled state.
NOAA Fisheries instituted those measures after its unscheduled and highly controversial cod stock assessment last summer showed the gulf's cod to be in the worst state in the half-century it has monitored the stock.
The results of that assessment _ and its unpublicized scheduling _ infuriated fishermen and fishing advocates, leading them to hotly question the secretive nature of the survey and the science used to produce its dire conclusions.
The congressmen, in their letter to Bullard, also took aim at the science NOAA uses in its stock assessments.
"The extensive time-area closures set forth in the Interim Action will effectively terminate the inshore groundfish fishery," the congressmen stated, adding that the decision to enforce those closures is based on "insufficient scientific documentation of spawning activity" that is redundant to the current system in which hard catch limits are used to control cod mortality.
Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times