October 16, 2012 –The New England Fishery Management Council has shown a willingness to consider allowing fishermen into areas of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank that, through conservation efforts and attempts to grow the stocks, have been off limits for many years.
Among those advocating for the opening of closed areas was new NOAA regional administrator John Bullard; he was joined in support by the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the region’s largest industry group, and the Associated Fisheries of Maine.
Peter Shelley, senior counsel at Conservation Law Foundation, said his organization would sue to prevent the opening of the closed areas. Also registering opposition were the groups Earthjustice and The Nature Conservancy. But the Environmental Defense Fund, which played an important role in the decision to create a catch share system for New England, argued conditionally for the opening of the closed areas, if sought by the sectors.
“While that larger important and significant analysis continues, we support the committee’s motion to conditionally consider exemption requests from individual sectors for access to groundfish closures that do not overlap with current (habitat) closures,” said Emilie Litsinger, New England Fisheries project manager for EDF.
“Whether or not access is granted to any sector should be transparent, temporary, and determined based on clear demonstration of the benefits of access in terms of high (catch per unit effort) for healthy stocks and low CPUE of weak stocks,” she added. “We believe that access should also require 100 percent at-sea monitoring to ensure that we are capturing total catch and accounting for all mortality.
Fishery council member David Goethel, a Hampton, N.H., groundfisherman, said mortality closures have had enough time — 16 years — to prove themselves a wellspring for the stocks.
“We should be overflowing with groundfish; instead we have a disaster,” said Goethel, who said the closed areas should be opened.
“When the Northeast groundfish fishery transitioned to hard total allowable catches,” the Northeast Seafood Coalition said in statement, “it was understood the measures that continued to exist under the old mortality controls would be removed. Sectors are now in the third year of operations and very little has been done to remove the artifacts of the old system, other than removing trip limits. Areas fishermen could gain access to (via the request of sectors) are conservative and will not overlap existing habitat areas or new areas being considered under the larger habitat amendment currently under development.”
The Gloucester-based coalition is the region’s largest industry group, and its subsidiary, the Northeast Sector Network, supports 13 of the region’s 17 sectors including all gear types and boats from all the port states.
“We have supported closures, but we at Associated Fisheries of Maine don’t see that they’ve produced,” said Maggie Raymond, the organization’s executive director. “In some way … we regret supporting it. We have to do something different. The hard TAC (total allowable catch) is the control.
“If not this, then what do we do?” Raymond told the council. “This is an opportunity to bring more fish across the dock.”
Associated Fisheries of Maine is another major trade association of fishing and fishing dependent businesses. Membership includes harvesters, processors, fuel/gear/ice dealers, marine insurers and lenders, and other public and private individuals and businesses with an interest in commercial fishing.
Shelley, representing Conservation Law Foundation, sees otherwise.
“This is a bad idea,” he Shelley. “There is no definition of what the economic emergency is. There is an emergency for some fishing operations, but it’s not everybody.”
Shelley said he was concerned that opening the closed areas without conducting a full environmental impact study was illegal, but he also said he worried that the underlying catch share system insured that, if more fish became accessible, they would end up in the holds of the biggest operators without helping the mom-and-pop fishing boat businesses.
Read the full story in the Gloucester Times