Management & Regulation

January 31, 2013 – John K. Bullard, an official long-entrenched in the fishing industry, said New England fisherman will adapt to changing quotas and move toward a sustainable future.

"There isn't enough cod for people to make a decent living," Bullard said, adding that "there's no biological wiggle room left."

Bullard said that the challenge facing fishermen is to adapt to the new regulatory environment. He noted that the port of New Bedford does not rely on groundfish, and has seen economic success fishing for scallops, quahogs, and other species. He specifically mentioned redfish and Georges Bank haddock as two species that are currently healthy, although he recognized that making such a transition would be difficult.

"We all have to change at some points in our careers, and fishermen are no different. So change may be the order of the day," he said.

Watch the full video at the New York Times

 

 

PORTSMOUTH, Maine — February 3, 2013 — While Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod have been subject to severe catch limits as a result of New England Fisheries Management Council meetings last week, herring saw different results.

The herring population, which is doing well, saw a significant increase in quota allocation.

The Council allocated a total of 107,800 metric tons for the Atlantic Herring Fishery quota, which is 16,600 metric tons more than last year's quota of 91,200.

Patricia Fiorelli, public affairs officer with the New England Fisheries Management Council, said they expect approval from the National Marine Fishery Service on the new quota as soon as possible and it will be implemented in 2013.

Fiorelli also said the Council last week officially decided to examine catch limits for the Atlantic Herring Fishery for river herring, which applies to Alewife and Blueback herring.

“Because those species, which are managed, are in declining numbers, we will put some kind of limits on what can be taken by the Atlantic Herring Fishery,” she said.

However, no specific limitations have been decided at this time.

The Council last week also alerted the industry to the possibility that a portion of the costs for the At Sea Monitoring program may soon fall on the fishermen.

 

Read the full story at Foster's Daily Democrat

 

 

February 3, 2013 — For local fisherman David Goethel, the effect of cod catch reductions decided last week by New England fishery managers is cut and dried.

“It puts us out of business. It's not a viable business anymore.”

Goethel, of Hampton, sits on the New England Fishery Management Council, but voted against the cuts on Wednesday, day three of four-day hearings addressing the fate of the region's commercial fishing industry.

The Council approved decreasing the overall quota of Gulf of Maine cod by 77 percent, and by 61 percent for Georges Bank cod, for fishing years 2013 to 2015.

Those reductions mean that fishermen's allocations will drop from 6,700 metric tons to 1,550 for Gulf of Maine cod, and from 5,013 metric tons to 2,002 for Georges Bank cod.

The cuts will take effect May 1.

New England fishermen turned out in droves to the Sheraton Harborside Hotel in Portsmouth for the hearings, and were outspoken about their concerns for the industry and their livelihoods.

In 2012, an interim action was put in place that reduced catch limits by 22 percent. That interim action ends April 30, and while the New England Fishery Management Council had requested another, the National Marine Fisheries Service denied that request.

John Bullard, regional administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said an interim measure is only an allusion.

“Fisherman don't need allusions,” Bullard said. “They need a big dose of reality.”

The interim action kept the fishery in business while addressing fish stock assessment numbers that were much lower than initially reported.

 

Read the full story at Foster's Daily Democrat

 

 

January 31, 2013 — Gloucester, like many coastal towns, now faces the largest cuts ever to the region's commercial fishing industry. An advisory council voted Wednesday to slash cod catch rates by 77% in the Gulf of Maine, a region roughly the size of Indiana that extends from Cape Cod up through Nova Scotia.

"It's more of a management crisis," said Steven Cadrin, a former NOAA scientist and faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

"There's twice as many cod there compared to the 1990s, but they're still not at the levels we'd like to see them at."
Just a few years ago, the government projected that the area was well on its way to recovery after decades of overfishing.

Federal regulators then raised catch rates to nearly five times the sustainable level based estimates now believed to have been far too optimistic.

That, combined with warmer waters, pollution and policies that protect natural predators like seals, have all contributed to fewer fish that triggered the mandatory cuts.

While larger commercial trawlers capable of traveling to more distant fishing grounds are expected to survive, the plan will likely cost most of the region's smaller crews their jobs.

"Fifteen years from now, it'll all be corporate," Robillard said. "The mom-and-pop days are over."

Still, codfish aren't about to become an endangered species, according to Sam Rauch, head of the NOAA's fisheries service. Coming restrictions are about protecting the overall size of the cod population and complying with federal law.

Environmentalists say depleted stocks show the region needs time to recover in order to save it.

But fishermen are furious.

They say the law and its targets are largely arbitrary and argue that murky science surrounding fish estimates has given fodder to those willing to let their livelihoods founder.

In September, the Commerce Department declared the Northeast ground fishery a formal disaster, which raised hopes of economic relief that were later dashed in a trimmed-down relief bill for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Confronted with possible drops in domestic cod supply, industry analysts say U.S. consumers will likely look elsewhere, importing more from other countries such as Norway and Canada.

But the danger, they say, is a loss of U.S. market share. And for men like Robillard and Cattone, that shift has already occurred.

"I call it the systematic castration of the groundfish fleet," said Cattone.

But the 47-year-old man from Gloucester also said he never gave his son — who's now in college — the option to fish in the way that generations of his family had.

"I was afraid he was going to fall in love with it the way I did," he said. "It's a shame, but it's something I knew I had to do."

 

Read the full story at CNN

 

 

 

 

LITTLETON, N.H., January 30, 2013 — New England's once mighty fishing industry suffered a blow on Wednesday after a council voted to cut cod fishing quotas by more than 50 percent this year amidst sharply declining North Atlantic stocks of the bottom-feeder.

At a meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to slash the legal harvest of cod in the Gulf of Maine by 77 percent to 1,550 metric tons for the fishing season beginning May 1, said Pat Fiorelli, a spokeswoman for the council.

"It's really grim," said Fiorelli. "These stocks are in real decline and questions were raised about whether they'll ever come back."

It also cut the quota for cod caught on Georges Bank, an area stretching east of Cape Cod, by 55 percent to 2,002 metric tons. The new quotas will be in effect until 2016.

The limits highlight the disappearance of a fish species that helped draw settlers to North America from Europe 500 years ago.

This year's quotas are equivalent to about 6 percent of the landings of Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine cod in 1981. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire estimate that cod stocks have declined by about 90 percent in the last 50 years due to overfishing and other changes to marine ecosystems.

 

View the video at the Huffington Post 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — January 31, 2013 — The New England Fishery Management Council late Wednesday afternoon approved drastic cutbacks in quota for Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod after facing another storm of criticism from fishermen in the packed audience.

The mood was grim at the council meeting, prior to the vote on sharp reductions in groundfish quotas that could cripple — and will almost certainly hurt — the industry.

The 18-member panel spent more than three hours in the morning reviewing the fish population assessments that are driving the council to drastic action. It spent another two hours in the afternoon hearing testimony from the public — sometimes angry, sometimes stormy.

The final vote cut the available catch of Gulf of Maine cod by 77 percent to 1,506 metric tons in fishing year 2013. This will have the effect of reducing some fishing boats to one day at sea, or even one hour.

Georges Bank cod was cut by 61 percent, to 2,506 metric tons. Many fishermen this year are not catching their quota but these cuts are deeper than any shortfall they are experiencing.

Some members, including John Quinn, of Dartmouth, implored NOAA scientists to get serious about coming up with ways of measuring the effects of freshwater influxes into the ocean, ocean warming and the rise of predators such as seals and dogfish.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Regional Administrator John K. Bullard made a lengthy statement in which he argued that neither the law nor biology gives the council any "wiggle room" to back away from strict limits. He said it is entirely possible that a complete end to fishing might no longer be enough to keep certain stocks, cod in particular, from collapsing permanently.

 

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

January 31, 2013 — The regulatory body that oversees commercial fishing in New England approved steep cuts to the catch quotas Wednesday for two types of cod in the region because of depleted stocks, a move that advocates said will devastate the livelihoods of many fishermen.

The New England Fishery Management Council voted to reduce the catch limit of Gulf of Maine cod by 77 percent from last year and the US share of Georges Bank cod, whose stock is shared with Canada, by 55 percent, said Patricia Fiorelli, a council spokeswoman.

She said the cuts take effect May 1, and the Gulf of Maine quota will remain in place for three years while the Georges Bank limit will be in effect for one year.

Fiorelli said that before the vote at the council meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., members heard from fishermen who indicated that “they really cannot make a living from these numbers,” while others said they were already not catching cod because of the low stocks.

She said the council could revisit the quotas if new information comes to light that shows that the stocks are rebounding.

Officials “don’t know why [the stocks] are so low,” Fiorelli said. “There’s a lot of scientific work that is still being done. They haven’t made good linkages between climate change and the state of these stocks, although people are working on that, as well.”

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

 

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — January 30, 2013 — Fishermen say drastic catch limits endorsed by regulators Wednesday will destroy New England's groundfishing industry.

In its most dramatic move yet to protect dwindling stocks of cod, the New England Fishery Management Council passed a 77 percent reduction in the catch limit for Gulf of Maine cod.

The council's decision, which is expected to be backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, cuts the annual catch for Gulf of Maine cod to 1,550 metric tons for the next three years, down from 6,700 metric tons in the past year.

The council also approved a cut of 55 percent for cod on Georges Bank, to 2,506 metric tons a year for three years.

The catch limits are set to take effect May 1, the start of the 2013 fishing year.

"This ruling will put many fishermen out of business," said Angelo Ciocca, president of Nova Seafood in Portland and part-owner of a few fishing vessels. "This is the end of the Gulf of Maine fishing industry. It's a sad day for New England, it's a sad day for fishing and it's a sad day for the country."

Fishermen who attended the hearing held by the fishery management council Wednesday said the limits are based on flawed science.

 

Read the full story in the Portland Press Herald 

 

 

 

 

JANUARY 31, 2013 —  "As of two years ago, we were told the cod was going to be completely rebuilt in a year. And then, all of a sudden, now they are telling us we are in a total collapse."

Jim Ford, a cod fisherman out of Gloucester, Mass., faces an uncertain future after the New England Fisheries Management Council voted Wednesday on painful reductions to cod harvests.

Watch the New York Times video by Brent McDonald