July 22, 2013 — The following is an excerpt from "The Bottom Line: For New England’s Fishing Fleet it’s Déjà vu All Over Again," a National Geographic News Watch editorial by The Pew Charitable Trusts' Lee Crockett and Peter Baker, originally published June 11.
As an editorial in the Boston Globe observed, things did not look good for the coming fishing season. Fishermen were “returning from three or four days’ hauling on Georges Bank with near-empty holds.” And while other regions of the country were successfully managing their fisheries “New England’s council has been unable to do so.”
The year was 1993.
Twenty years later, the sense of déjà vu is unshakeable. A new season brings a troubling scenario of depleted fish populations and deficient management. Fourteen of the region’s 20 groundfish—or bottom dwelling—species are currently overexploited. Cod stocks are at the lowest levels ever recorded. New England’s best captains could not find enough cod in the past year to meet more than a third of their allotted quota on Georges Bank. It is, officially, an economic disaster, as the U.S. Department of Commerce declared last fall.
In short, here we are, with our storied fishing grounds in even worse shape than they were two decades ago.
The tools to rein in overfishing and rebuild healthy populations have been there all along — in the form of science-based catch limits required by the nation’s top fishing law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act. For much of the country, the law has worked: Over the past 11 years, rebuilding plans have restored 32 previously severely depleted fisheries.
Yet New England stands apart as a place where treasured species are chronically subjected to overfishing. The waste from accidental catch is not adequately controlled, or even monitored. And important protections for marine habitat could soon be dismantled.
As in 1993, the nation’s top fishing law is again due for reauthorization by Congress. Last month, leaders from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors gathered in Washington, D.C. for a special summit to discuss the future of our nation’s fisheries and how the law should change to meet current challenges. Some regional critics pointed to the ongoing difficulties in New England as an excuse to weaken the law’s requirements to set strong catch limits and rebuild depleted species.
Read the full story at National Geographic
Analysis: Addressing the New England cod fishery in an online National Geographic op-ed (“The Bottom Line: For New England’s Fishing Fleet it’s Déjà vu All Over Again,” 6/11), Lee Crockett and Peter Baker, of the Pew Charitable Trusts, make several misstatements of fact and overstate the challenges facing the resource.
Assessments of cod stocks in New England have clearly been low. But writing that, “cod stocks are at the lowest level ever recorded,” and that fishing grounds are “in even worse shape than they were two decades ago” overstates their current challenges. Both stocks in question, Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, are actually up from recently recorded lows. According to estimates from NOAA’s January Northeast Regional Stock Assessment Workshop (SAW), the spawning stock biomass for Gulf of Maine cod was last estimated at 9,900 metric tons, an increase from the 6,300 metric tons estimated in the late 1990s. The assessment also estimated biomass for Georges Bank cod at 13,200 metric tons, up from its mid-2000s low of 10,100 metric tons. Put simply, and contrary to the authors’ assertions, neither species is at its lowest level.
The authors further claim, “New England’s best captains could not find enough cod in the past year to meet more than a third of their allotted quota on Georges Bank.” Meeting yearly allocations is important economically for the fishery, but it is not a very reliable way to gauge a stock’s health. It is true that, based on statistics compiled by NOAA, fishermen only caught 35 percent of their 2012 allocation of Georges Bank cod. But fishermen also faced difficulties meeting quota for healthy species. Georges Bank haddock, for example, is not overfished, according to NOAA, and is generally regarded as a recent success story in fisheries management. Nonetheless, fishermen caught only four percent of their allocation in 2012.
Neither fact tells much about the condition of either stock, other than to show that many variables are responsible for whether or not fishermen are able to catch their quota. Factors such as climate and restrictions on things like gear type and catch size all play a role, as do limitations caused by “choke species” bycatch. Groundfish habitats overlap, and regardless of which fish are targeted, fishermen will inevitably catch other groundfish species as bycatch. If the available quota for any species is too low, it can prevent fishermen from pursuing the fish for which quota is still available, turning the low-quota fish into a “choke species.”
The problem currently facing the industry is bigger than fishermen simply not being able to catch cod. Should the cod return in numbers before the next round of allocations, the currently low for cod quota may also prevent them from catching other, healthier species.
The article holds in esteem the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s “science-based catch limits,” but glosses over the fact that the science behind the catch limits on cod and other stocks has been subject to dramatic reversals in the recent past. As recently as 2008, NOAA stock assessments showed Gulf of Maine cod to be relatively healthy, and on the way to being rebuilt by 2014. This outlook suddenly shifted with a series of assessments beginning in 2011, ultimately leading to 2013’s steep reduction in catch limits. In contrast, the catch limits for pollock were increased by 600 percent in 2010, after new information revealed that the species was much more abundant than previously thought. The catch limits are “science-based,” but that science has often been less than certain.
With the available science on cod shifting so dramatically in the span of three years, it is inappropriate to fault the fishing industry, which has followed the catch limits set by NOAA, for stocks that have yet to fully rebound. The fishery needs catch limits that not only allow stocks to rebuild, but also allow the fishing industry to survive.