The New England Fishery Management Councilstuck by its guns and those of two member states yesterday, advising afederal judge that federal regulators had failed to follow his order toconsider a holistic approach to managing the fishery.
The council vote was 12-4-1 against the National Marine Fisheries Service,with Patricia Kurkul, the regional administrator, who contributed tothe hour-long debate only in a monosyllabic "no," one of the four votesagainst the motion by David Pierce,the deputy director of marine fisheries for the state ofMassachusetts. He, along with Dave Goethel, a New Hampshire fisherman,carried the motion with a message for U.S. Judge Edward Harrington.
Goethel insistedsomething large and important is in dispute. To him, Kurkul’s refusalto see a place for the so-called "mixed-stock exception" in fisherymanagement policy is a sign of a continued commitment to "singlespecies management," which he argued was never the intent of Congressand will only "lead to the ruination of the fishery."
He, as well as Dave Prebble, a Rhode Island fisherman, cited a legal brief against NMFS’ position filed by fishing industry attorney Stephen Ouellette of Gloucester, and said he believes that what Congress wants is "ecosystem management."
Inhis January opinion, Harrington found that NMFS had given only "lipservice" to the mixed-stock exception regulatory scheme, which wouldallow some overfishingof minor stocks in order to get the optimal yield from the fishery ingeneral. NMFS’ current regulations are all based on the recovery of theweakest of the stocks; the mixed-stock exception would give fishermenaccess to more of the stocks that have shown recovery.