March 16, 2013 — NOAA's annual statistical progress report on the vitality of the nation's fishing industry, which traditionally accentuates the positive, indicates that 2011 produced the "highest landings volume since 1997 and the highest value" in dollars "ever recorded."
But questions about the credibility, historical and editorial objectivity of the report from multiple sources across the industry and elsewhere are raising doubts about the integrity of the document, which was developed in the Economics and Social Analysis Division of the National Marine Fisheries Service's Office of Science and Technology in Silver Spring, Md.
Members of the recreational fishing sector have questioned statistical claims about the growth of their industry between 2008 and 2011. And the fishing industry website SavingSeafood.org has disputed the claim in the narrative report about NOAA's resurrection of the scalloping industry..
The Recreational Fishing Alliance's Jim Hutchinson as well as Ed Lofgren, of 3A Marine Service in Hingham found the claims in the report of a powerful economic growth — especially 40 percent growth in recreational fishing jobs from 2010 to 2011 — incredible.
A member of the board of the Mass Marine Trades Association, Lofgren said he agreed with Hutchinson that the reporting was "ridiculous and worthless." He said sales by his South Shore company averaged 100 boats a year prior to 2008, but with the general economic decline, sales slumped badly.
SavingSeafood.org took issue with the section of the NOAA report that implied an emergency closing of scalloping grounds in 1994 triggered a revitalization of the industry,
"Between 1990 and 1994, there was a 68 percent drop in total landings of sea scallop in the New England Region from 24 million pounds to 7.6 million pound," the report stated. "Additionally, an Emergency Action was enacted in December 1994, which closed three large fishing grounds on the Northeast Continental Shelf to rebuild certain groundfish stocks, but which also affected a large percentage of the scallop biomass. Portions of these closed areas were reopened to scallop fishing in 1999, resulting in a total catch of 13.7 million pounds.
But SavingSeafood reported that NOAA overlooked the contributions of non-government "researchers whose groundbreaking work is widely acknowledged to have demonstrated NOAA's scallop assessments to be inadequate."
The website specifically referred to video technology developed at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. In addition, Saving Seafood executive director Bob Vanasse said, "the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the Coonemesset Farm Foundation and the Fisheries Survival Fund played essential roles in conducting research and developing improved technology, and in working with the Science Center in Woods Hole."
"The scallop recovery was not simply a function of the area closures as the report implies," Vanasse said.
NOAA did not respond to inquires from the Times about the report.