After Mass AG Martha Coakley announced a lawsuit against NOAA alleging that the agency did not use the best science available and did not consider the impact on the fishing industry, Pew's Peter Baker appeared on WBUR to discuss the issue.
In the course of the interview, Mr. Baker made several misleading statements and omissions about the current state of cod and the fishing industry.
Saving Seafood drafted a response and submitted it to WBUR. The response is reproduced below.
In a May 30 Radio Boston segment on the state of the New England cod fishery ("Coakley Sues NOAA Over Catch Limits"), WBUR offered The Pew Charitable Trusts' Northeast Fisheries Program Director, Peter Baker, an opportunity to respond to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley's lawsuit against the Federal government on fisheries regulation.
Mr. Baker stated that "decades of overfishing have gotten our fish stocks, namely cod, into terrible shape." Instances of overfishing have certainly contributed to the current state of stocks like cod, but environmental factors such as rising water temperatures and the relative abundance of predators play a significant role.
Ocean temperatures in New England are on a steady upswing. An all-time high for sea surface temperatures in the Northwest Atlantic was set in 2012. A scientific consensus is developing around the idea that warming water temperatures likely shift the distribution and disrupt the migration patterns of commercially valuable fish stocks. A 2009 study from NOAA, "Changing spatial distribution of fish stocks in relation to climate and population size on the Northeast United States continental shelf ," concluded that roughly half of the stocks studied had gradually migrated north in the last 40 years. Why? It's believed that the trend is in response to a warming of traditional habitats, with fish either shifting north or moving deeper in the ocean in search of water within their optimal temperature range.
In a May 30 interview with WCVB Boston, NOAA Northeast Regional Administrator John Bullard remarked that "cod are a cold water species, and the waters are getting warmer. This isn't the fishermen's fault," he said. "The waters are getting warmer. The fish are moving."
These were also the conclusions of a 2013 study from scientists at the University of British Columbia published in the journal Nature. They found that, over the past several decades, warming trends in ocean temperatures have forced fish species to migrate from traditional habitats to cooler waters. In the case of cod, this may be causing the species to migrate north, outside of the range of the New England cod fishery.
Mr. Baker cited the fact that fishermen were unable to catch their quotas as evidence that New England's cod is dwindling. But many factors influence how fishermen catch their allocations.
Groundfish species intermingle. No matter what fish are targeted, other species are inevitably caught as bycatch. A low quota on a species that can't be avoided can prevent fishermen from catching another species. A low enough quota can turn these fish into "choke species," forcing fishermen to avoid them altogether in order to preserve their limited allocation for bycatch.
Ultimately, whether or not fishermen meet their yearly quota is a poor indicator of the health of fish stocks. Fishermen are often unable to catch their entire quota. Georges Bank haddock, for example, is not overfished, but in 2012 only 4 percent of the total haddock allocation was caught.
Mr. Baker argued that stock assessments are highly reliable, saying fisheries science is "about as questionable as the science as to whether global warming exists or not." But that doesn't take into account several recent, high profile examples of when the science was flat out wrong. The 2008 NOAA cod stock assessment noted that cod was rebuilding. But three years later, another stock assessment resulted in a dramatic reversal of that finding, leading to the substantial quota cuts devastating the fishery this year. In contrast, the pollock population was recently found to be six times higher than previous estimates. These instances bear very real consequences for fishermen and lead to legitimate skepticism.
For nearly two decades, fishermen have accepted cuts, and operated within limits set by federal regulators. Today they are being asked to cut back even more, based on science that they don't trust. Attorney General Coakley's lawsuit aims to keep the industry alive through an exceedingly difficult period.
Works Cited
Nye, Janet A; Link, Jason S.; Hare, Jonathan A.; Overholtz, William J., "Changing spatial distribution of fish stocks in relation to climate and population size on the Northeast United States continental shelf", Marine Ecology Progress Series, volume 393, October 30, 2009
NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, "Sea Surface Temperatures Reach Highest Level in 150 Years on Northeast Continental Shelf", April 25, 2013
Cheung, William; Watson, Reg; Pauly, Daniel, "Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch", Nature, volume 497, May 15, 2013
NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, "The 2008 Assessment of the Gulf of Maine Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) Stock", March 25, 2009