The New England Fishery Management Council's (NEFMC) Groundfish Committee met on Tuesday, April 16, and Wednesday, April 17, to consider recommendations from the Council's Closed Area Technical Team (CATT) on closed areas in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) April 26, 2013 — At its three-day meeting in Mystic, CT this week, the NEFMC received the first report from the CATT. The Council provided additional guidance to the CATT by asking them to emphasize options that focus on the region's two cod stocks, Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, the two haddock stocks, halibut, ocean pout, Southern New England winter flounder and wolffish.
The following is a summary with audio clips from the NEFMC Groundfish Committee meeting to consider the CATT recommendations. In addtion, the NEFMC today issued a release summarizing the current state of these efforts.
The CATT made several proposals for year-round closures to protect juvenile fish habitat and seasonal closures to protect spawning fish habitat. The recommendations were developed from ten years worth of survey data that identified "hot spots," habitats in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank which consistently have large amounts of juvenile or spawning fish. The majority of the proposed juvenile closures are located in the Gulf of Maine, but two juvenile closures in Closed Area II and the Northern Edge have been proposed for Eastern Georges Bank.
The proposed juvenile habitat closures in Georges Bank are based on an analysis of haddock hot spots, while several of the other proposals are structured around cod hot spots. Some members of the Groundfish Committee noted that a year-round closure for Georges Bank haddock areas may not be advisable. The haddock population is currently at an all-time high, and is not overfished or under threat. The juvenile haddock that would be the target of these closures are considered to be one of the less vulnerable species based on an analysis conducted by the CATT.
Most of the proposed seasonal spawning closures are also located in the Gulf of Maine, with spring closures in Georges Bank recommended for cod, haddock, and yellowtail flounder. There was some controversy over the recommended spring yellowtail closure, as the scallop fishery had begun to abandon similar closures as a result of new research from the Scallop Research Set-Aside Program (RSA). The CATT agreed to attempt to reconcile information from its report with information from the RSA.
The CATT presented its findings to the NEFMC at its April 24 meeting in Mystic, Connecticut. The Council took no immediate action on the recommendations. The CATT will meet with the Habitat Plan Development Team on Monday, April 29, in Mansfield, Massachusetts.
Audio clips from the NEFMC Groundfish Committee meeting: