May 31, 2017 — The state Senate’s amended 2018 budget includes $185,000 to continue the industry-based cod survey that could help close the divide between commercial fishermen and regulatory scientists on the true state of the Gulf of Maine’s cod stock.
The survey funds now must survive the legislative conference committee formed to reconcile the differing budgets produced by the state Senate and House of Representatives before the final budget goes to Gov. Charlie Baker.
“This is really one of the rays of hope, that we can produce science that is credible and also acceptable to the people that have to live with it,” said Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr of Gloucester, who, along with Assistant Majority Leader Mark Montigny, a Democrat from New Bedford, pushed to include the money in the Senate budget.
Tarr said the House budget contains only $125,000 to continue the industry-based survey.
“We’re significantly higher, but obviously we’re hoping to get the larger amount,” Tarr said. “The governor is a strong proponent of collaborative research, so I would say the likelihood is very strong that he will continue to support this program.”
Researchers from the state Division of Marine Fisheries, working on commercial fishing boats, recently completed the first year of the random-area survey that was funded with federal fishery disaster funds.
The goal of the survey, begun last year at the behest of Baker following his meetings with fishing stakeholders, was to produce “credible scientific information that could be accepted by fishermen, scientists and fisheries managers” and used in future NOAA Fisheries cod stock assessments.
As with many elements of commercial fisheries management, agreement between fishermen and regulatory scientists on the data used to generate cod assessments has been hard to come by.
The release in April of the preliminary results of the survey — appearing in a Boston Globe story — set off a firestorm among commercial fishermen and prompted some backtracking by the Baker administration.
The initial results, according to the Globe story, were in direct line with the dire assessments of NOAA Fisheries scientists about the imperiled state of the Gulf of Maine cod stock.
Fishing stakeholders were incensed.
“We’re appreciative and supportive of the state’s work and very much want the work to continue,” Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, said at the time. “We’re not appreciative of the premature conclusions publicized by the scientists. It is this kind of scientific double standard that drives the loss of credibility of the science community in the eyes of industry.”