October 26, 2014 — In April 2013, John Bullard, NOAA’s chief northeast regional administrator, first imposed Draconian cuts of up to 78 percent in fishermen’s allowable landings of cod and other groundfish species. And at the time, he called it the fishing industry’s and fishing communities’ “day of reckoning” over stock declines.
But, if NOAA’s new stocks data is to be believed, those dire cuts have failed, and the Gulf of Maine cod, in particular, remains seriously threatened.
So Bullard is now prepared to deliver a series of measures to the New England Fishery Management Council next month that will go far beyond any “day or reckoning,” to the Gloucester groundfishing fleet’s virtual Armegeddon. And any such new mandates must be challenged legally and on the legislative level in Washington.
Bullard told Times’ writer Sean Horgan last week that new, “emergency” measures he plans to bring to the New England Fishery Management Council next month will not only include new cuts, but a series of rolling area and spawning closures that even he concedes will have a “serious” and “disproportionate” economic impact on Gloucester and other groundfishing ports.
That’s a hefty threat, given that a new economic study compiled by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center already shows Gloucester’s fishermen would suffer a groundfish revenue decline of between 21 percent and 25 percent from the fiscal 14 groundfish revenues of $8.07 million. And let’s not forget that all of these cuts have come after — that’s right, after — the federal Department of Commerce declared the Northeast groundfishery to be in a state of “economic disaster” as early as November 2012.
Given the Gloucester fleet’s reliance on groundfish, Mayor Carolyn Kirk has termed Bullard’s potential action “unfair to Gloucester,” while Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, says she views the potential area closures and other changes as “punitive.”
Both are absolutely right on several counts. Consider:
The idea of having to carry out any new “emergency” measures is still based on what can only be called a surprise, underhanded NOAA stock assessment carried out without an iota of fishermen’s input into the kind of cooperative research even NOAA officials had promised. The “unscheduled” stock assessment found the cod stock spawning at just 3 to 4 percent of the biomass target by the end of 2013, down from 13 to 18 percent in the 2011 assessment. But without input from fishermen and fishing activists, it’s not clear whether NOAA’s trawl study may have simply failed to recognize the cod’s location. Without that input, this data cannot be accepted as valid.
Even if NOAA’s latest assessments are correct, closing down new areas won’t protect the cod unless the agency documents cod are spawning and swimming in those areas. Sadly, any new closures will only block fishermen trying to transition toward landing more species such as gray sole, dabs, haddock and flounder — along with other stocks that are not deemed threatened. That, indeed, seems “punitive.”
Read the full opinion piece from the Gloucester Daily Times