NEW BEDFORD — July 19, 2012 — Scallop fishermen are pleading with government scientists to change course and abandon the models used to determine the yellowtail flounder stock on Georges Bank. The Fisheries Survival Fund, a scallop industry advocacy group, outlined its concerns in a letter to Dr. Bill Karp, director of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole on Friday.
The letter is fair,” said Karp. “But it’s not reasonable to expect these issues to be resolved overnight.”
The important point, he said, is that Georges yellowtail is in poor shape.
“Every signal that we have indicates it is in a declining condition. The argument is how bad is that condition, not whether it’s good or bad.”
Three U.S. surveys and the Canadian survey all bear this out, he said.
The leter asks NOAA to recognize that the current assessment is “not viable for use as a basis for catch advice,” which Karp said was a ”strong statement.” A conservative approach is necessary to maximize the possibility for the stock to recover, he maintained.
“It’s not just the numbers coming out of the assessment. It’s the trends we see in the data,” he said.
Since Georges Bank encompasses both U.S. and Canadian waters, the yellowtail stock there is managed jointly by both countries. “We aren’t free, independently, to change that,” he said.
Karp said that some tough decisions will have to be made by fishery managers in the fall in order to set 2013 quotas.
Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times
Read more about the letter on Saving Seafood