NEW BEDFORD — The promise from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke that he would consider revising catch limits for New England groundfishermen spurred Mayor Scott W. Lang's Ocean and Fisheries Council to furious activity over the past week.
A team of researchers, primarily from UMass Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology, responded to the challenge and this week delivered a report offering a scientific basis for increasing annual catch limits. Their findings were presented at a mayor's council meeting Friday at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
Steve Cadrin of SMAST explained that catch limits for each groundfish species are set below what is known as the ABC, or acceptable biological catch. The ABC, in turn, is set further below the "overfishing" limit. "The overfishing limit is estimated with uncertainty, so we're required to have a buffer, and for groundfish that buffer is 25 percent," Cadrin said, meaning fishermen can only target 75 percent of the allowable catch. Reducing that buffer, employing alternative methods to estimate the size of fish stocks and increasing the time line for rebuilding the stocks would all permit the catch limits to increase, according to the report.
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