Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: SouthCoast Man of the Year: Kevin Stokesbury continues to seek solutions to fishing industry challenges

December 31, 2018 —  It’s pretty well known around these parts that homegrown research proved the ocean held more Atlantic sea scallops than federal regulators thought.

And a lot of folks know that the value of those succulent bivalves has made New Bedford the highest-grossing fishing port in America for 18 years running.

Starting in the late 1990s, Professor Kevin Stokesbury of the School for Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth, working with SMAST founding dean Brian Rothschild, developed a video technique to count scallops on the seafloor without harvesting or killing them.

Along the way, he pioneered a partnership with local fishermen.

Some fishermen say the research saved the New Bedford scallop industry. (Other observers point out that federal regulations protected the species at critical times.)

Read the full story at New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New Name, New Goals for New Bedford Harbor Officials

March 8, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — It’s tough to argue that the most-well known attribute of New Bedford is its internationally known commercial fishing port. After all, it is called the Whaling City.

Since its establishment on the shores of Acushnet in the 18th Century, New Bedford has grown into the highest grossing commercial fishing port in the United States, and has been an unmatched center of the industry on the East Coast for years.

Despite hundreds of years of success, port leaders and city officials are planning to grow and diversify it even more. On Wednesday, Port Director Ed Anthes-Washburn, Mayor Jon Mitchell, and Dr. Brian Rothschild announced that the Harbor Development Commission (HDC) has changed its name to the New Bedford Port Authority (NBPA) as part of a five-year strategic plan to further expand and diversify the port, as well as enhance its operations.

“We were formerly the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission which was developed in 1957. In 1957 the focus was on a smaller subset of things. Today we have our hands in a lot of different areas and we’re a very diverse and vibrant port,” Washburn explained. “We want regionally, nationally, and internationally to be recognized and the New Bedford Port Authority moniker does that a little better than the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission.”

Read the full story at WBSM

MASSACHUSETTS: SMAST opening draws interest nationally

October 2, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The official opening of the second SMAST facility created ripple effects beyond its location on South Rodney French Boulevard.

Construction crews erected SMAST East at a cost of $55 million. The names on the guest list, which packed into the first floor of the 64,000 square foot building Friday, displayed its incalculable value to the SouthCoast.

From the political arena, Cong. Bill Keating, Sen. Mark Montigny, Rep. Antonio Cabral and Mayor Jon Mitchell addressed the crowd at the ribbon cutting ceremony. NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator and former New Bedford Mayor John Bullard and former dean of SMAST Brian Rothschild sat in attendance. Eastern Fisheries President Roy Enoksen and Executive Director of New Bedford Seafood Consulting Jim Kendall each listened to the 90-minute presentation that ended with a ribbon cutting.

“Today, you see evidence of UMass Dartmouth developing as a hub for the blue economy for all of New England,” UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Robert Johnson said.

The reach of the new research building extends beyond the northeast as well, particularly in Washington D.C.

“I happen to work with some people that may not be warming up to the idea of climate change is something that might occur,” Keating said. “So when I come here, I can bring some of that science back and try to work with some of my colleagues.”

Mitchell echoed those sentiments. The mayor spent Wednesday in the nation’s capital speaking to Congress on the reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Act, which is the primary legislation that governs fisheries.

“What you do here in creating the basis of regulation matters a whole lot. It’s indeed indispensable. The industry couldn’t function well. It couldn’t flourish as it is, especially on the scallop side these days, if it didn’t have the science to back up our assertions,” Mitchell said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Professor: Carlos Rafael’s actions did little to affect the ‘big picture’

September 20, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A study by an SMAST professor shows that claims alleging Carlos Rafael’s actions created hysteria in the New England Fishery are exaggerated. The study by Dr. Brian Rothschild was filed in federal court on Monday, a week before Rafael is scheduled to be sentenced for falsifying fish quotas.

Rothschild said he doesn’t condone anything Rafael did, but in his study argues the data associated with the fishing tycoon’s criminal actions reveal a minimal effect on stock assessments.

In 54 pages entitled “The effect of under-reported catch (URC) on the New England Fishery and stock dynamics,” Rothschild used data agreed upon by the Department of Justice and Rafael’s attorneys, who funded the study.

“The thing that stood out the most was in terms of the big picture the amount of fish that both parties agreed to was relatively small,” Rothschild told the Standard-Times. “I put no value judgement on that. That’s for others to do.”

In the study, Rothschild stated, “The URCs were so small relative to common-sense benchmarks, that they could hardly be noticed in either the abundance of fish in the ocean or in stock assessments.”

Among the dozens who’ve spoken out since Rafael pleaded guilty in March, including Gov. Charlie Baker, Mayor Jon Mitchell, the Maine Congressional delegation and other organizations, Rothschild is the first to present data minimizing the effects of Rafael.

“I think that it’s a very contentious issue. When you look at the data, it comes out different than what most people perceive,” Rothschild said. “At the end of the day, it’s the science that really counts.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Rafael Attorneys File Report By Dr. Brian Rothschild Concluding Misreporting Did “De Minimus” Harm to Science and Assessments

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — September 18, 2017 — Attorneys for Carlos Rafael filed a report in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts this evening that concludes that the fish mislabeling and record falsification to which Mr. Rafael entered a guilty plea had a limited impact on the amount of under-reported catch and the quality of stock assessments in the Northeast.

The report was authored by Dr. Brian Rothschild, Dean Emeritus of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology.

According to the report, “the under-reported catch effects on fishermen or stock-assessment quality are de minimus.”

It also concluded that “the Sector IX [under-reported catch] relative to the Sector Fleet catch and allocation was less than 1%” and that “the percent of [under-reported catch] of the Sector Fleet catch and allocation was less than 1%.”

Mr. Rafael pleaded guilty in March to several counts, including fish mislabeling, falsifying federal records, tax evasion, and conspiracy. He is scheduled to be sentenced next week.

Read the full report here

The executive summary of the report is included below:

THE EFFECT OF UNDER-REPORTED CATCH (URC) ON THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERY AND STOCK DYNAMICS

B.J. Rothschild

September 18, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Various sources have asserted that the alleged mislabeling of fish by Carlos Rafael, Sector IX, has created harm by 1) reducing the quantity of fish that non-Sector IX fishermen could catch and 2) diminishing the quality of stock assessments used to “optimally manage the fish stocks. The mislabeled fish have been characterized as under-reported catch (URC).  The URC consists of four species of groundfish: yellowtail flounder, cod, sea dabs/American plaice, and witch flounder.  The magnitude and year of occurrence of the URC of each species has been determined by the Department of Justice and stipulated by parties. The years concerned are 2012,  2013,  2014 and 2015.

Our report refutes the assertions of harm.  We show that the URC effects on fishermen or stock-assessment quality are de minimus.

We analyzed the magnitude of the URC in relation to published fisheries statistics and stock assessments conducted by NOAA Fisheries (both GARFO and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, NEFSC) available to the public from the official website and library resources.

We organized our analysis into three approaches:  1) technical issues, 2) data issues, and 3) five perspectives that analyze the URC in relation to the catches and allocations of the Northeast Multispecies Sector Fishery, to the effort of the Northeast Multispecies Sector Fishery, to the catches and allocations of the entire Northeast Multispecies Fishery, to resource wastage through under-fishing and discarding, and to effects on stock assessments.

The first technical issue explores the URC in the context of overfishing/under-fishing in a simplified setting of a multispecies groundfish fishery.

The second technical issue involves a brief discussion on the effects of fishing and how these effects might relate to URC in terms of immediate effects and consequent effects.  For example, if 20% of the stock was removed as URC, then the catch per unit of effort (CPUE) would decline immediately by 20%.  However, given the complexity of the fishing process it is doubtful whether a change of this magnitude would be observed.  This is especially true for stocks out of equilibrium because a return to equilibrium may cause the stock to either increase or decrease.

The first data issue concerns the assembly of fishery statistics by species and year.  To evaluate the effect of the yellowtail flounder URC or cod URC we combined catch and assessment statistics from the geographically separate areas used by NOAA Fisheries to manage these species.  This was not the case with American plaice URC or witch flounder URC as the management of these species is not split geographically.  With respect to annual fishery statistics,  NOAA utilizes calendar year in stock assessments and fishing year (May 1 to April 30) in the actual management of the Northeast Multispecies Fishery and its component the Northeast Multispecies Sector Fishery in setting Annual Catch Entitlements (ACEs) or Annual Catch Limits (ACLs) and reporting catch statistics.

The second data issue relates to the quality of NOAA stock assessments.  We show that NOAA stock assessments are associated with considerable statistical variability, a conclusion shared by external observers and NOAA expert panels.

The first perspective shows that the Sector IX URC relative to the Sector Fleet catch and allocation was less than 1%.

The second perspective shows that the percent of URC of the Sector Fleet catch on a per species basis is only a few percent.

The third perspective explores how in understanding the harm done by generating URC, it is necessary to go beyond just the magnitude of the URC.  For example, if we examine all 16 stock-year categories we find that the Sector IX URC is zero for some years and species; doesn’t cause the Sector IX ACE to be exceeded when added to the Sector IX catch (all yellowtail flounder URC);  or does cause the Sector IX ACE to be exceeded when added to the catch. The latter case is the harm generated by Sector IX and it occurred in 2015 for cod, American plaice and witch flounder, and in 2013 and 2014 only for witch flounder. These overages, however, put in context of the total ACE of entire Northeast Groundfish Fishery show that the overages amounted to 1%  to 2% and that the actual amounts of ACE overage were several time less than the amount of fish discarded.

The fourth perspective shows that 30-40% of the total Northeast Multispecies Fishery ACE  for the URC species is wasted by under-fishing and discarding and puts into perspective the small magnitudes of the URCs.

The fifth perspective examines the effect of the URC on stock assessments by providing a heuristic example.  While we could not repeat the NOAA stock assessments per se by adding URC to them, we show that the quantities of URC are so small that it is unlikely that they would have had a significant effect.  Our heuristic example utilizes a standard stock assessment technique (virtual population analysis) to evaluate the effect of the URC of witch flounder on estimates of the abundance of the year class of this species most affected by the URC.  It shows that adding the URC to NOAA catch-at-age estimates result in a small increase in estimated year class numbers (2%) or biomass (3%).  This difference is dwarfed by NOAA stock assessments of the same age group of witch flounder that varied by 27% between the two different assessment models it used in its 2015 stock assessment report.

Lastly, with respect to NOAA stock assessments of the URC species, we point out that the stock assessments of all 20 stocks in the Northeast Multispecies Fishery were under review the week of September 11, 2017.  With respect to the URC species, based on deliberations of a NOAA expert panel, all most recent stock assessments have significant flaws affecting the estimation of population sizes and therefore management advice.

 

Dr. Brian Rothschild: Congress Must Make Magnuson Recognize Existence, Content of National Standards in Fishery Plans

Dr. Brian Rothschild

August 9, 2017 — The following was written by Dr. Brian Rothschild, and was published in the June/July issue of Fishery News:

Four years and counting, the stalled reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA) is impeding the progress of U.S. fishery management.

In December 2013, a reauthorization draft was distributed to the 113th Congress. Since that time various versions of the bill have been shuffled between the House and the Senate. The most recent version—”Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act”—was introduced to the 115th Congress on January 3, 2017 by Congressman Young as H.R. 200. On February 10, it was referred to the Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans.

H.R. 200 is a step in the right direction. It builds flexibility into fisheries stock-rebuilding schedules by replacing the current law’s formulaic and impracticable rebuilding strictures. It recognizes, at least implicitly, that stocks that are at a historically low level of abundance should be designated as “depleted”, not as “overfished” and addresses, albeit weakly, improvements in research planning.

However, H.R. 200 only scratches the surface of needed reform. It falls short in failing to recognize the operational quartet that fundamentally shapes fisheries- policy implementation. This quartet consists of the interactions among 1) the “plain language of the law”, 2) the record of “legislative history”, 3) guidelines issued by the agency (NOAA), and 4) day-to-day implementation actions by NMFS.

Given this framework, it is crucial to realize that even the slightest ambiguity or equivocation in the reauthorized law will propagate uncertainty and substantial costs to the over-all economic and social performance of our fisheries.

Let’s look at an example. To begin, it is necessary to recognize that the MSFMCA is based upon 10 National Standards. So, it is only logical that reauthorization language should use the National Standards as a point of departure.

But, in H.R. 200 the National Standards are virtually ignored. This is problematic because reference to, and possible revision of, the National Standards is necessary to improve fishery policy. Not doing so creates substantial opportunity for ambiguity and equivocation.

To further exemplify, two key concepts in National Standard 1 involve: (1) overfishing and (2) optimum yield.

(1) There are many different types and shades of overfishing, so what kind and how much overfishing are we preventing?

Arriving at a determination of overfishing depends on the choice of model (there are several). The magnitude of a overfishing “value” generally differs among “models”. For example, overfishing can be defined in the context of production models, age-structured production models, or yield-per-recruit models, each of which gives a different view of stock status. It is also often the case, amidst this profusion/confusion, that all of these definitions are just simply ignored and replaced by arbitrary “proxies” that rely upon highly uncertain age-structured production models.

Consider also that two different forms of overfishing are well-known: “stock overfishing” and “recruitment overfishing”. Each is determined on the basis of different information requirements. Each has different conservation content.

Stock overfishing can be determined on the basis of data at hand e.g. landings and fishing effort, and has— despite its wide use in managing fish stocks—very little conservation importance. Alternately, determining whether recruitment overfishing exists requires several years of data—and despite its conservation importance— it is seldom done.

So, when we change “overfished” to “depleted”, how do we interpret the status of all the fish stocks previously designated as overfished or at risk to overfishing, definitions that would no longer be relevant? How do we manage stocks that are at a low level of abundance because they are truly depleted by fishing, in contrast to stocks that are depleted by environmental change? Also, there does not appear to be a universally acceptable way to distinguish fishing-depleted from environment- depleted.

(2) Optimum has a specific technical meaning. It refers to something that we want to maximize. The question arises as to what we are maximizing and over what time frame. On one hand, the extant version of the law gives some clues, but following these clues only leads to deeper uncertainty and ambiguity. First, it is clear that the intent of the extant law is to somehow maximize “a quantity of fish”. But it could be “a quantity of fish” that provides the “greatest overall benefit to the nation”, or it could be “maximum sustainable yield as reduced by economic, social, or ecological factors”, or it could be “rebuilding the fishery to an MSY level”.

And, in any event, a little thought might indicate that maximizing a quantity of fish may not be a good idea in general. For example, there are many other measures of performance that are better measures than a quantity of fish and yet optimizing these other measures seems to be virtually ignored.

A relevant example is that optimization, as it is practiced under the current law, is taken to mean that biological productivity is maximized, subject to economic and social constraints. Yet, perhaps a better and different approach would be to maximize economic and social productivity, subject to biological constraints!

So, the reauthorization of the MSFCMA gathers dust. During four decades since its original authorization in 1976, fisheries management has had its bright spots and dark patches. Future dark patches can be considerably reduced by making sure that the elements underpinning the operational quartet in the reauthorization are, at the very least, well-defined and feasible to attain. The consonance among the plain language of the law, the intent of Congress, the regulations and the actual implementation of the Act needs careful scrutiny. “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” The time is right for fishery policy to come out of hibernation.

About Dr. Brian Rothschild: Dr. Rothschild is the Montgomery Charter Professor of Marine Science and former Dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Prior to joining the University of Massachusetts, Professor Rothschild held professorships at the University of Maryland and the University of Washington. He has had faculty or visiting scientist affiliations with the University of Hawaii; Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami; Institut fur Meereskunde, University of Kiel; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and Harvard University.

 

New Bedford again tops nation for dollar value of fishing catch

October 31st, 2016 — The city’s port has again topped the country for dollar value of its fishing catch, NOAA Fisheries reported this week, citing 2015 landings worth $322 million.

That marks 16 years in a row that New Bedford has held the top-value title, which is thanks largely to scallops. Dutch Harbor, Alaska, again was tops for total volume of catch, landing 787 million pounds last year.

New Bedford’s catch was much smaller: 124 million pounds, good for only 11th in the country and far behind Dutch Harbor. But Dutch Harbor’s catch had a value of $218 million — second-highest in the country — reflecting the strong commercial value of New Bedford’s scallop industry.

“The scallop industry has put New Bedford at the top of the food chain, as it were, of fishing ports for the last 16 years — that’s a very impressive streak,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, port director for the city’s Harbor Development Commission. “It really shows the impact of scallops but also the impact of cooperative research.”

In the 1990s, SMAST scientists Brian Rothschild and Kevin Stokesbury pioneered innovations in counting scallops, with cameras tested and used on local scallopers. The resulting data affected stock assessments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ultimately leading to larger catch quotas and helping secure steady catches for waterfront businesses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

MASSACHUSETTS: UMass Dartmouth, Iceland sign partnership to maintain fishery

August 9, 2016 — DARTMOUTH, Mass. — UMass Dartmouth has established a new partnership with the Republic of Iceland intended to advance marine science and marine-related biotech research and commercialization, the university announced Monday.

Representatives of Iceland visited SouthCoast in 2015 to display and demonstrate some of the products Iceland is making utilizing the parts of fish that might typically be discarded in New England.

The result is 95 percent utilization of cod, said the announcement. Cod are abundant in Icelandic and Norwegian waters.

According to Dr. Brian Rothschild, dean emeritus of the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), the products being manufactured can be something as familiar as cod fish oil to leather pocketbooks made with fish skin.

He said the method is similar to the old expression about Russia, “that they used to process everything in the pig except the squeal.”

Utilization of fish waste in New Bedford to make fish meal was curtailed decades ago after complaints about odor; Rothschild said today’s technology almost eliminates that.

UMass Dartmouth spokesman John Hoey said that the collaborations with Iceland, including faculty and student exchanges, will be mainly with the College of Engineering, concentrating on biofuels for example, and SMAST, the School for Marine Science and Technology, which is more oriented toward fisheries management and surveys.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

UMass invention could cut fish monitoring costs

July 21, 2016 — Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth have been awarded a patent for technology they say could reduce the costs of fishing vessel monitoring, a cost fisherman say threatens their livelihood, the school announced this week.

Dr. Brian Rothschild, the retired founding head of the UMass-Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology, and graduate student Glenn Chamberlain said their on-board 3D camera system would reduce costs, ensure accuracy and expand the scope of what information could be collected.

“Broad-based and accurate counting of the fish being caught is critical to our collective efforts to sustain critical fish stocks and thus the commercial fishing industry,” Rothschild said in a statement. “We believe we have found a way to count the fish being caught in a relatively low-cost manner that will increase confidence among the federal regulators and the fishing industry.”

The camera system, which would cost about $500 to install on a vessel, utilizes stereo photogrammetry, a system used by meteorologists to collect information about tornadoes, to capture images of fish either on the deck or passing through a net, according to the university. Those images could then be analyzed to produce “a permanent record of each sampling tow or catch in the fishery and to determine the species and size composition of each tow,” the university said.

Last year, Hampton, New Hampshire, fisherman Dave Goethel and a fishing sector filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of a mandate requiring them to carry at-sea monitors on their vessels and pay the cost of hosting those federal enforcement contractors. The government shifted the cost of paying for monitors from itself to fishermen earlier this year.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

40 years of change: For fishing industry, the spring of 1976 was the start of a new era

June 20, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published Saturday by the New Bedford Standard-Times:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — When you talk about fishing here in New Bedford, you have to start with the whaling era — and the lessons learned.

For decades, the pursuit of whaling chugged along without any dramatic changes. The ships, the equipment, the culture remained essentially the same for years, feeding countless families, lining countless pockets … until the bonanza ran out and the industry collapsed in the early part of the 20th century, never to be revived.

The fishing industry, both local and national, might have fallen into that same trap, but 40 years ago the U.S. government changed the game, adopting the most sweeping changes in the laws governing fisheries that reverberates to this day.

On April 13, 1976, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was passed and immediately accomplished two major goals.

One, it set into motion a new and unique scheme of regulation to rebuild dwindling fish stocks, a system dramatically different than anything else the government had tried until 1976.

Two, it expelled foreign fishing vessels from fishing inside a 200-mile limit from America’s shoreline.

It isn’t talked about much today, but until 1976 the capacity of the foreign fleet exceeded the Americans, sending huge factory ships into fertile places like Georges Bank to virtually vacuum the fish into the hold and freeze it on the spot, allowing the ships to stay for weeks at a time. “There were West Germans, Poles, Russians, East Germans,” recalled former fisherman James Kendall, now a seafood consultant.

In 1975, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported there were 133 foreign fishing vessels fishing on Georges Bank. The Magnuson-Stevens Act ended that decisively.

Since 1976, much has changed. The unions, which once represented the fishermen and the workers in the fish houses, virtually disappeared from the waterfront. The venerable fish auction at the Wharfinger Building on City Pier 3 is now a museum piece, since the brokers years ago put down their chalkboards and picked up computer screens. Today it has evolved into a computerized display auction elsewhere on the waterfront, with complete transparency and documentation, and bidders located across the nation.

What else has changed?

For lack of a better term, everything.

Where, oh where has our groundfish fleet gone?

At the BASE New Bedford Seafood Display Auction, co-owner Richard Canastra called up data of groundfish sales in recent years that demonstrate a dropoff of more than 30 percent in the last few years alone.

Today there are some days that don’t warrant conducting the auction at all. “Sometimes it’s like a candy store,” he said. “Five pounds of this and three pounds of that.”

Much of the blame for the shrinking of the groundfish fleet, particularly in New Bedford and Gloucester, is laid at the feet of the catch shares and sector management introduced in 2010 by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. It dispensed with most of the old days-at-sea  system, which had reduced the annual days at sea to 50, down from around 225, that the boats once had available to them.

The term “sectors” was unfamiliar to the industry when NOAA announced their arrival in 2010. Essentially they are cooperatives, in which individual boats are grouped together along with their catch allocations, and the sector manager manages them as efficiently as he or she can.

This was predicted to cause a consolidation of the industry into the bigger players as the smaller ones weren’t getting enough quota to make it profitable to fish.

For some boat owners, the problem was that the catch shares were determined by the history of the boats but the practice of shack left no paper trail, no formal record, so catch shares were reduced in many cases.

Dr. Brian Rothschild, dean emeritus of the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology and a critic of NOAA, noted that many boat owners found that they can “own it and lease it out and obtain money in windfall profits” without even going fishing.

Oh, those pesky environmentalists!

It was “not right from the beginning that NOAA has enforced this,” Rothschild said. “On top of that, NOAA enforcement didn’t come from a desire to make good public policy but because it came under the influence of organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund,” he said.

Catch shares and sector management have, however, withstood legal challenges in federal court, because of a legal doctrine named Chevron, in which government institutions are allowed to interpret laws such as Magnuson any way they wish unless the departures from congressional intent are egregious.

Rothschild is among those who believe that sector management under Magnuson has been ignoring key provisions of the act, notably the socio-economic impact evaluation and the instruction to use the best available science. That has largely excluded scientists outside of NOAA itself.

Outside scientists have occasionally run rings around NOAA. For example, SMAST’s Dr. Kevin  Stokesbury’s invention of a camera apparatus to quite literally count the scallops on the seabed individually has revolutionized scallop management, opened the door to a treasure trove of healthy scallops, and made New Bedford the No. 1 fishing port in the nation.

But NOAA now employs its own camera apparatus. It conducts regular surveys of fish populations and that has been a very sore point at times in recent years.

This is a departure from the days before Magnuson, when fishermen were issued permits for various species and were left largely on their own to discover how many fish were in the ocean, which were already dwindling at the time.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times