Fishery Management:
Down, But Not Out

Schwaab presents new face of the agency

by Laurie Schreiber

“Fisheries management in New England is beset with problems and challenges that are characteristic of fisheries management in general but may be even more acute in this area now due to concurrently changing factors of law, management programs, and economics,” concluded a new study of the state of fisheries management in New England.

“A Review of the New England Fishery Management Process,” requested by New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) Chairman John Pappalardo and commissioned by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Director Eric Schwaab, was released on April 26.

The report was the first phase of a regional assessment and management review focused on the relationships between the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., the NMFS regional office in Gloucester, Mass., and NEFMC, Schwaab told the NEFMC at their April 26 meeting in Mystic, Conn.

Schwaab told NEFMC last September that he would be commissioning the report in response to the challenges of striking a balance between the need to achieve sustainability in the fisheries while also maintaining viable fishing communities. Those challenges, Schwaab said at the time, “are testing the limits of our collective system.”

At the time, NMFS and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), were continuing to deal with the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that had occurred the previous spring.

In addition to the oil spill, he said, fishery managers have been grappling with particularly challenging issues, especially with regard to the “aggressive deadlines” to end overfishing, rebuild fish stocks and stabilize fisheries that were put in place by the 2006-2007 reauthorization of the federal fisheries management law called the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

At the time, Schwaab said that Pappalardo’s suggestion for a comprehensive review of fishery management was timely.

In a December 2009 letter to United States Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Pappalardo wrote: “The implementation of the reauthorized Magnuson Stevens act has highlighted the urgent need to improve the fisheries management process throughout the nation. I write to ask for your help in implementing a visionary pilot in New England that is a necessary first step in making these critical improvements.”

The changes in Magnuson, wrote Pappalardo, have placed additional demands on the NMFSNortheast Regional Office and its Northeast Science Center, as well as on the NEFMC, “and it has become clear that our region’s bureaucracy is unable to efficiently meet its expanded obligations.”

Pappalardo called for the evaluation and improvement of how each component in the system operates and interacts. Communication and coordination between the institutions have hitherto been a challenge, he wrote.

“Additionally,” he wrote, “our bureaucracy is often driven by process and protocol rather than by mission and outcome.”

Pappalardo proposed that the review include extensive interviews with leadership and staff of each organization and well as with a wide range of fishery stakeholders, with an eye toward understanding their view on the performance of the current system and suggestions for reform.

Schwaab told the NEFMC that he asked Preston Pate to lead the review. Pate is the director of the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), the chairman of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), and serves on both the Mid- and South Atlantic Fisheries Management councils. The Touchstone Consulting Group was hired to conduct the review, which began last October and involved interviews with 179 fishermen, other industry participants, local government officials, academic institution partners, members of fishery management councils, and NOAA regional and science center staff to produce a phase one report on positive findings, challenges and recommendations.

Some of the findings were not new, the report concluded.

“There is a great deal of frustration among all stakeholder groups over the difficulty (some might say inability) to make progress and having to constantly work in an environment of contention and mistrust. Improving this working environment will require significant investments of time, resources and ingenuity to put into place ideas and solutions for both short- and long-term improvements,” the report said.

“We found that many of the strengths and weaknesses of the current management process have been presented to a large degree in other reports. The fact that they persist is evidence to us that there has not yet been a sufficiently strong commitment to creating a solustion, or, that there may be serious institutional or legal barriers standing in the way of implementation—not that no solution exists.

“The stakeholders involved have an expectation that change can and will occur. In order for this change to happen, implementation of the recommendations of this report should be the priority. All stakeholder groups must be engaged and committed to the change process and work together to create a new way of operating. Neither fault for the current problems, nor the responsibility to find solutions, falls on one group alone.”

“This does not mean the system is broken or that the progress we’re making together isn’t real. Only that we can do better,” Schwaab said in his remarks to the NEFMC on April 26.

The report said that interviewees identified strengths in the fishery management process. These included, in all three organizations, competent and dedicated staff; transparency in the management process, although complex and slow; good interaction, but not at all stages; cooperative research world-class fishery scientists; the ability of science to build confidence in the decision-making process; the role of groundfish sector managers in improving collaboration between industry and NMFS; and improved awareness through education.

“There was general recognition that the staff are highly professional and dedicated to their work,” Schwaab said. “Many believe that the Scientific and Statistical Committee is a positive component and that stakeholders would gain more confidence that science, rather the politics, would drive management, especially as scientists become more collaborative among themselves and with the industry…. The process is transparent, and no one complained of any appearance of backroom deals.”

But there was a fair amount of negative feedback, said Schwaab.

“Stakeholders agreed that many existing programs are unnecessary or redundant,” he said.
Lack of coordination between the organizations, poor communication and outreach, lack of an overarching plan to guide management policies, and day-to-day delays in simple tasks such as filing or retrieving data with the agencies has created tension and discontent in the industry, Schwaab said. There is a perception, he said, that decisions are influenced by whoever shows up at meetings or by politics, and that environmental lawsuits against NMFS appear to be taking increasing amounts of the agency’s time away from policy-making and management.

“Many feel that there factors in New England that create additional complexities not faced by other regional councils,” Schwaab said. “Most common is geography – more states than most regions, packed into a small geographical area, with each state having constituents, politicians and representatives expecting their individual needs to be met. And history – New England having the oldest fishing ports in the country, and fishing is deeply embedded in the culture.”

Schwaab said there is also a perception that the three organizations have not had a sufficiently strong commitment to finding solutions to the problems.

“Finding solutions will not be easy,” he said. “Some will be long-term and will require commitment of significant resources. But stakeholders believe change can occur. I am confident that change can be made, but only if all stakeholders recognize that they are part of the problem and commit to making improvements.”

Schwaab said his agency is in the process of working out both short-term and long-term action plans to correct the problems.

“We understood at the outset that we have some very real problems,” he said. “With this review and with these recommendations, we have some specific actions that we are going to take… and begin to make improvements.”

Schwaab said that initial recommendations for change would be based on the review and also on a second report. Also requested by NOAA and released on April 26, the second report was a national review of NMFS science, and was conducted by fisheries scientists, Dr. Michael Sissenwine and Dr. Brian Rothschild.

The recommendations included:

• Improve collaboration with partners on science, cooperative research with industry and reviews of science programs

“The review was very specific regarding the opportunity to improve science collaboration,” Schwaab said. “While we, along with many partner institutions and fishermen across the region, continue to do great science work, we can do better. Especially in this budget climate, it is critical that the science conducted by our Northeast Fisheries Science Center and partner research institutions is done in a more collaborative manner and in ways that maximize involvement of fishermen in the findings. We will immediately initiate an expedited mid-term review of the 2009 strategic plan for cooperative research in a way that involves all regional cooperating agencies and academic institutions. The results will be incorporated into FY12 research funding prioritization decisions.”

• Improve communication efforts in specific and immediate ways

“Several of the report recommendations relate to how we communicate with and provide customer service to the industry and the general public,” Schwaab said. “We are committed to continuing our efforts to improve our communications. Specifically, in the Northeast we will consolidate our communications staff under one program and coordinate them under one communications plan….We will also build on our efforts to communicate directly with industry through programs like the pilot Fisheries Information Centers, bi-weekly calls with the sector managers, and our new compliance liaison here in New England.”

• Clarify roles and responsibilities

“A third consistent concern noted in the review was that the roles of our regional office, science center and council need to be expressed clearly, performed consistently, and coordinated well,” Schwaab said. “We will immediately update the regional office and science center operating agreement in light of the report recommendations….we will renew our efforts to clarify NOAA and council functions and specific staff roles through new operating agreements.”

• Improve data management systems

“The management review finds that our data management systems are not integrated, appear redundant, and stakeholders are unsure of where to turn for data,” Schwaab said. “Over the years, data collection programs and data management systems have been developed in our Northeast Regional Office and science center as needed. To address this, we will integrate and consolidate our fishery dependent reporting/collection systems and the underlying data management systems in the region. To improve the timeliness and accuracy of fisherman reported data and simplify industry reporting requirements, our regional office and science center have been working with the industry to transition from paper to electronic logbooks. This will speed processing of data, reduce errors in the data and relieve the industry of having to obtain, carry and fill-out paper logbooks. The program will be available initially on a voluntary basis to vessels in multispecies sectors. We are targeting June 2011 availability.”
NEFMC chairman Pappalardo said his council would heed the report.

In discussing next steps, Pappalardo said the “council will take ownership of the findings,” referring to meetings to be held in the near future during which planning for the changes will begin.

Although NEFMC members in general had little comment on the report, member David Pierce suggested that the management process could further be improved and made more broadly meaningful with the collection of socio-economic data, as well as data pertaining to biological science.

NEFMC member Sally McGee said the council should consider its role in the improvement of the management process.

“This is not just a critique of the fisheries service and the science center, but of the council, too,” McGee said. “Part of this is making sure that this performance review improves the way this council works. I want to make sure that we’re not overlooking the fact that there are a lot of good recommendations in here that the council can take action on.”

Schwaab opened an informal public comment period on the report. The deadline is May 27.
Comments are being collected online at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/publicreview/new_england_phase1/index.htm#viewComments; by fax at (301) 713-1940 (Attn: Public Comment on Management Review, NOAA Fisheries); or by mail at NOAA Fisheries, Attn: Public Comment on Management Review, 1315 East-West Highway, SSMC#3, Mail Code: F, 14th Floor Rm. 14627, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

To view the report, visit http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/publicreview/new_england_phase1/