WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) Jan. 22, 2013 — On January 2, the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute (MFI), a partnership joining the University of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MADMF), convened a scoping meeting to examine the potential benefits of conducting an end-to-end review of the New England groundfish stock assessment system. MFI has released a report on the results of that meeting, including a plan for a series of three integrated workshops intended to form an end-to-end review and subsequent list of suggestions for improvement for groundfish science and fisheries management. The first workshop will be held later this winter, and they are expected to be completed by summer.
Mounting concerns for the validity of several recent stock assessments among industry members, academics, and scientific experts prompted the gathering. The meeting report observed, “Crisis management has become the norm in New England, which has a negative impact on the fishing industry as well as the scientific and management process. Resources are reallocated to address the crisis and are in turn diverted from other priorities. Managers, scientists and fishermen agreed that more stability is needed in the management process."
A recent statement from the Northeast Seafood Coalition helped to frame the problem and express the concerns of the fishing industry: “At some point everyone in the groundfish community – the scientists, managers and policy-makers need to accept the reality that the current process is just not working. We need to step back out of the weeds and look at the bigger picture. There are critical elements of the science, management and law that all need to be fixed. We cannot remain in the same box, performing the same rituals and expect a different result.”
In recognition of these problems, the need for an end-to–end review of groundfish stock assessments was identified by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and Congressman William Keating, whose district includes the port of New Bedford, the nation’s most profitable fishing port.
Seeking to provide both short and long-term suggestions, each workshop will examine both unique and corresponding issues currently hindering groundfish assessments. Among the central questions to be raised during each workshop, organizers intend to examine changes in fisheries science and management that may detrimentally impact stock assessment performance, possible improvements for such, and alternative methodologies and technologies that may be helpful in this endeavor. As NOAA Fisheries gears up to conduct their own systematic review of science programs on both a national and regional level, these workshops should serve as a complementary source of feedback, information, and recommendations to decision makers at NOAA and other relevant regulatory institutions.
The first of these workshops, titled “Incorporating Environmental Change in Assessments and Management”, will address the importance of incorporating within stock assessment methodologies factors relating to environmental changes. As climate change becomes an increasingly relevant factor affecting fisheries, information furthering scientific understanding of these changes and impacts on groundfish species can benefit future stock assessments.
1. Document changes, in the ocean environment, that have occurred in the New England region. Consider the potential for future changes. Identify effects on fish stocks.
2. Identify methods to account for these effects in science and management, particularly to incorporate environmental variables into stock assessments (i.e. herring assessment).
3. Identify data collection needs to monitor environmental change and the effect on fish populations.
4. Provide recommendations that are relevant to the general topic.
The second workshop “Fishery Monitoring and Survey Selectivity,” will examine “the sampling theoretic related to fishery-independent survey design and the collection of catch data.” The goal of the workshop is to provide recommendations for a longer-term approach to improving monitoring and surveys
1. Document current protocols and sampling designs for the fishery monitoring programs and resource surveys.
2. Document the current data needs of management and science, including any changes anticipated to these needs. Determine if current sampling programs is meeting these needs.
3. Recommend revisions to the current data collection system to improve the ability to meet the scientific and management needs.
4. Provide recommendations for an optimal sampling system to meet scientific and management needs.
5. Provide recommendations that are relevant to the general topic.
The final workshop “Reference Points and Uncertainty Buffers” will begin with recommendations made by the New England Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee in response to MFI’s November 2010 MFI’s analysis “A Report on Economic and Scientific Conditions in the Massachusetts Multispecies Groundfishery”. The workshop will provide a catalog of reference points and document their affect on the probability of overfishing and catch limits. It will also analyze alternative methods to setting buffers and recommend best practices.
1. Evaluate the biological, social, and economic risk implications of commonly used proxies for fishing mortality and biomass levels needed to result in maximum sustainable yield.
2. Provide guidance on the magnitude of the buffer between the overfishing limit and acceptable biological catch, which is intended to take account of scientific uncertainty.
3. Provide recommendations that are relevant to the general topic.