The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) concluded that the information in the MFI report does not justify revision of the ABCs recommended by the SSC and adopted by the Council. However, the MFI report raised important issues and the SSC concluded that additional research on the following topics would be valuable:
•Characteristics of FMSY proxies with respect to risk
•Causes of retrospective patterns and the performance of alternative methods for mitigation of these
•Performance of alternative risk tolerance in the face of scientific (e.g. buffers between OFL and ABC) and management uncertainty, and
•Options for managing mixed stock fisheries that address trade-offs between net benefits for the Nation and protection of “weak” stocks.
Although not explicitly included in the SSC’s ToR, the SSC also discussed the economic analyses in the MFI report.
The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the New England Fishery Management Council was asked by the Council to review the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute report titled “Economic and Scientific Conditions in the Massachusetts Multispecies Groundfishery”, dated November 5, 2010 with the following terms of reference to help inform the Council about the use of best available science with respect to the proposals outlined in the report and in the future.
The Executive Summary of the SSC's report follows:
The report of the Massachusetts Fisheries Institute states that “Scientifically valid alternative references points have been identified which can trigger increases in annual catch limits (ACLs) without sacrificing conservation” specifically, if:
•Stock specific ‘direct’ estimates of FMSY had been used instead of ‘proxy’ estimates for FMSY,
•Several stock assessments had not been adjusted for retrospective patterns
•A “buffer” of 0.75 between estimates of OFL and ABC had not been applied. It suggested that ABCs would have been higher if the buffer was calculated to correspond to an agreed probability of ABC exceeding OFL (referred to as the p* approach).
The report argues that not doing the above implies that the allowable catches of some stocks are substantially under-caught because of low allowable catches and management restrictions on other stocks that are caught in the same mixed stock fishery.