November 2, 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 later this month that will go far beyond any “day of reckoning” to the region’s groundfishing fleet. Any such new mandates must be challenged legally and on the legislative level in Washington.
Last month, Bullard told Sean Horgan of our sister paper, The Gloucester Daily Times, that new “emergency” measures he plans to bring to the New England Fishery Management Council 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 that 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. Let’s not forget these cuts have come after the federal Department of Commerce declared the Northeast groundfishery to be in a state of “economic disaster” as early as November 2012.
Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, says she views the potential area closures and other changes as “punitive.”
Read the full opinion piece from The Salem News