March 12, 2014 — The government need not face claims that its amended guidelines for mid-Atlantic fisheries do not protect vulnerable species from overfishing, a federal judge ruled.
While overfishing limits estimate the catch level above which overfishing is occurring, regulators account for scientific uncertainty in such estimates by reducing levels in computing a stock's acceptable biological catch, or ABC.
In 2007, Congress required all fishery management plans to establish annual catch limits, at or below the ABC, and accountability measures to ensure compliance. Bycatch, fish that are caught but not sold or kept, remains a source of management uncertainty.
The Mid-Atlantic Council included annual catch targets in an October 2011 omnibus amendment to six of its fishery management plans: the Atlantic Mackerel, Squids, and Butterfish Fishery; the Atlantic Bluefish Fishery; the Spiny Dogfish Fishery; the Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Fishery; the Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Fishery; and the Tilefish Fishery.
Oceana challenged the rule in a federal complaint against Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, arguing, among other things, that overfishing could still occur since the service did not consider bycatch of non-target stocks. These fish caught while fishing for other species would, for example, include river herring caught in the Atlantic Mackeral fishery.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington granted the government summary judgment Monday, despite doubting its claim that the new regulations did not require it to consider including additional stocks in the fisheries.
Read the full story at Courthouse News Service