by Saving Seafood staff
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) Feb. 1, 2013 — In the wake of Wednesday's vote by the New England Fishery Management Council to slash cod catch rates by 77% in the Gulf of Maine and by 55% in Georges Bank, the question arose: "Why, if the fishermen can't find fish anyway, do they care if the quota is cut?" Saving Seafood interviewed fishermen, industry members, and scientists to pose that question, and compiled their answers. The result follows:
Why are fishermen currently saying they can't find cod?
-The inability of fishermen to meet current cod quotas is not necessarily a sign that there is a lack of cod. Just as fisheries managers do not assume that cod are abundant when catch levels are high, they cannot assume that cod is depleted when catch levels are low. The exact reason catch levels are low is currently unknown.
-Of the several potential factors influencing catch levels, environmental factors may currently be the most influential. Waters off the coast of New England have been unusually warm for most of the fishing year, with temperatures for the 2012 calendar year being the warmest on record. It's not entirely clear how cod is affected by this, but many in the industry believe it is likely that cod have migrated to cooler waters, away from traditional fishing grounds.
-There has been a large amount of cod recorded this year off the coast of Iceland. That population of cod has largely stayed out of the range of the New England fishery. However, after Hurricane Sandy in October, which disrupted normal ocean current patterns in the North Atlantic, fishermen began reporting large amounts of cod once again reappearing.
-The influence of prey species is another factor affecting cod distribution. Prey species are influenced by the same environmental factors that affect cod, and may possibly be even more sensitive to environmental changes.
-Environmental conditions may also not support the food that cod prefer, like sand lance, but these factors can change quickly. Cod reappear when their food sources are prevalent.
-There are still three more months in the fishing year. Many in the industry expect that the fish might come back in the next 2-3 months when the waters reach their coldest point of the year in February, March, and April, as New England does not usually experience warm temperatures until May. As a result, many think it is inappropriate to base management decisions on what has happened in the year so far.
Why does reducing the quotas matter if fishermen aren't landing current quotas?
-Fish migrate, and are abundant at different times of the year under different environmental conditions. As reported by recent stock assessments, catch per unit of effort (CPUE) data has not been used to estimate abundance due to unreliability. Therefore, fishermen's catch data today does not necessarily correlate to abundance of groundfish stocks. Quotas are often only modified based on the results of a stock assessment. There are many dangers in setting quotas too low, as well as too high. If quotas are lowered because they are not currently being met, fishermen would be unable to take advantage of shifting environmental conditions when cod become more catchable.
They were wrong before, what if they are wrong again?
-As the Boston Globe's Beth Daley reported, fishermen say "they were lied to by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees fishery regulation. That's because the federal agency made major errors on a federal analysis of cod off New England that dramatically overestimated the number of cod. The agency only recently discovered the errors and the cuts approved Wednesday reflected the new science."
-The Magnuson-Stevens Act states that cuts in quotas must be implemented in order to end overfishing and rebuild certain groundfish stocks. The quotas set Wednesday at the NEFMC meeting will be in effect from 2013 to 2015, with no opportunities to revise them unless a new stock assessment is conducted. They will not change the catch limits even if cod become easier to catch and more abundant.
-If cod become readily catchable, cod has the potential to be a major choke species. Absent a new stock assessment or a revised management strategy which takes into account current prevailing environmental conditions, there is little opportunity to change allowable catch levels prior to a revised assessment. The current quotas would not only prevent fishermen from catching any cod that do return , but also prevent them from catching other species with exceeding their low cod allocations.