January 27, 2020 — The New England Fishery Management Council is set to resume action on the contentious groundfish monitoring amendment next week, but the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition is questioning whether the council is rushing its own process and operating with incomplete information.
The council, scheduled to meet for three days next week in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, will return Wednesday to the arduous task of completing Amendment 23, which will set monitoring levels for vessels operating within the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery.
Those monitoring levels ultimately will dictate the magnitude of monitoring costs the industry will bear in future fishing seasons. The current draft of the amendment includes four alternatives that call for groundfish monitoring coverage levels of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.
The council, which has been working on the amendment for nearly three years, faces two pivotal tasks on Wednesday: It must approve a full range of monitoring coverage alternatives and it must approve a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) and accompanying analyses in advance of sending both out for public comment.