Members of the fishing community who support using new scientific information to identify effective and practicable habitat protection measures are invited to express their support for the efforts to update closed areas.
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — April 12, 2013 — For the past several weeks, Saving Seafood has analyzed claims by organizations such as the Conservation Law Foundation, the Pew Environment Group, and the Sylvia Earle Alliance, among others, who suggest that fishery managers are about to damage our oceans by reevaluating decades-old habitat closed areas off the coast of New England and updating them as necessary. These organizations want to maintain the status quo, urging fishery managers to ignore the latest science and to keep these closures as they have been for over a decade.
But analyses by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) and its scientific and technical committees, as well as peer-reviewed independent science, demonstrate that the closures should be amended to better protect essential fish habitat. Evidence shows that the closures are not protecting the most important and vulnerable habitat, meaning the status quo is ultimately more detrimental to the environment. As a result, NOAA is considering the NEFMC's proposed updates to the closures. The updates include monitored access for groundfish vessels, which could help struggling groundfish fishermen and their families. The updates also include allowing scallopers back into their historic fishing grounds, recouping tens of millions of dollars of lost sustainable yield.
Members of the fishing community who support using new scientific information to identify effective and practicable habitat protection measures are invited to express their support for the efforts to update closed areas.
It is important that the voices of those who will be most affected by a failure to enact these updates be heard above the clamor of special interest groups.
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