July 7, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — New England has often been vilified as having some of the worst overfished species in US waters and has long had a contentious fight over fisheries management.
However, three stocks in New England are fully healthy: haddock, Pollock and redfish. Together the annual catch limit for these stocks totals more than 70,000 tons. Such a success in rebuilding fisheries is often lost in the attention paid to the failure of the Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine cod stocks to recover.
Now a client group led by Atlantic Trawlers of Maine, which is owned by Jim Odlin, and Fishermen’s Wharf in Gloucester, led by Vito Giacalone, have completed the MSC pre-assessment indicating that the fisheries will be able to meet the criteria, and have started the full assessment process.
The certification is being done by Acoura of Scotland, and the individuals who will carry out the assessment are Dr. Joseph DeAlteris, who recently retired from the University of Rhode Island and has many years of both Certification body and stock assessment experience in New England.
The other reviewer is Dick Allen. Allen has 45 years of experience as a commercial fishermen in New England, a Masters in Marine Affairs, and has been intimately involved in New England fishery management for decades.
The assessment is on a timeline to be completed by December of 2017.
The MSC certification will help expand the supermarket redfish programs, as well as support more sales of haddock and Pollock.
Currently, the harvests in these healthy fisheries are constrained by choke species, including cod.
For example, only around 9% of the Georges Bank Haddock Allowable Catch 51,000 tons was caught in 2016, while the Gulf of Maine haddock with an ACL of 2400 tons saw a catch rate of around 66%.
For redfish, the ACL in 2016 was 9500 tons, with a 43% harvest rate, and Pollock was 17,700 tons, with a 16.7% harvest rate.
The MSC certification is a step forward in further utilizing these fisheries, enhancing their markets, and explaining to customers that some New England and Gulf of Maine stocks are healthy and managed to global standards.
Jim Odlin says that the certification will be available to all companies who wish to contribute equitably to the costs of acquiring and maintaining the certificate, as per MSC policy.
This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.