“I’m very concerned about the magnitude of where we have to go,” said NEFMC representative Terry Stockwell, who is with the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The old timeline for the development of A16 had NEFMC revising stock rebuilding measures prior to receiving the results of the groundfish assessment. “I agree we can’t go forward,” said NEFMC member Dana Rice of Maine after hearing Rago’s presentation. “What we’ve been doing is insane. We need some accurate science.” There was some concern about potential legal consequences of putting off A16 implementation. But NEFMC concluded that default measures in 2004’s Amendment 13 would kick in if A16 deadlines were not met. If fishing days are cut so severely that the industry wouldn’t be able to operate, said Rice, NEFMC should seek some form of relief for the industry. “If the numbers force a quasi-shutdown, should we even go further?” Rice said. “This is extremely serious business. There are people in the industry who are hanging on by a thread.” “We have restrictions and more restrictions, and no balance for the fishing industry,” said Vito Calomo of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. “We need to think about the communities. This is the worst time I’ve seen in my 64 years of living. This is a disastrous time.” “The National Marine Fisheries Service needs to make time for the people who established this fishing industry, to save the economies up and down the coast,” Calomo said. But one fisherman, Phil Ruhle, said it might make sense to shut down the fishery for five years or so, to allow stocks to rebuild, since there are so few fishing days-at-sea allowed per fisherman now, and, potentially, a 70 percent reduction in DAS for the future. The current management regime’s B day program will only cause problems for currently healthy stocks, he said. “I know it sounds drastic, but this is drastic stuff,” Ruhle said. It doesn’t much matter, at this point, what the extent of the DAS cut is, he said: it’s just a matter of how long one guy will last over another. “People are going to go out one by one by one by one, just like bowling pins,” Ruhle said. “Some people will stick it out, no doubt about that, and that’s who you’ll be turning this industry over to.” It used to be that fishermen could shift between fisheries, but now all the doors are closed, he said. Closing the fishery will at least allow the industry to go to the federal government for relief, Ruhle said. “To me, it’s going to be devastation to the industry,” Ruhle said. “But a 70 percent cut is devastation, too.” Overall, Rago said, most stocks show general reduction in productivity. Among the preliminary findings: Decreases in average weight; Shift in partial recruitment patterns toward older fish, which can lead to higher rates of mortality on older fish, and occurs because of re- duced mortality on younger fish; Lower estimates of maximum sustainable yield—system is less productive; Trends in length and weight show that two are increasing, 12 are decreasing; Biological Trends show that smaller size at age, delayed maturity at age, and decreased survival of recruits are measures of reduced productivity that induce lower biomass reference points, slower rebuilding rates, lower total landings during rebuilding, and increases in discarding. The GARM III biological reference points estimates are expected to be more accurate than previous assessments in that it incorporates updated landings data, improved discard estimation, and longer time series of data for some stocks. The assessment also employs revised models and methodology. Gerenser said the Magnuson-Stevens Act fails because it depends on the “artificial construct” of biological reference points, whereas stocks rise and fall naturally. Trying to figure out the right BRP is impossible, so the system is set up to fail, he said. Fishery science, as it stands now, is not designed to be a dynamic management tool, and stock assessments come too slowly to use, he said, so management plans are fueled by obsolete data. There needs to be less pressure from political sources on management, and more support for science and monitoring, with real-time landings data and sampling. “Unless we change our mindset about how science is delivered, we’re always going to be stuck in poor management,” Gerenser said. “How is it that Magnuson dictates that we have to build our stocks as soon as possible, but the best available science arrives whenever it damn well pleases? “ Maine and Massachusetts U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Edward Kennedy and John Kerry were among those advocating for a change to the A16 timeline. To practice sound management, scientific data must be valued over adherence to an arbitrary timeline, the senators said. “Clearly the schedule for development of Amendment 16 violates the terms of Amendment 13 by failing to base any adjustment on the findings of a 2008 peer-reviewed benchmark assessment,” their letter to Assistant Administrator for Fisheries James Balsiger said. “The Council relied on the results of the 2005 assessment to make adjustments to the FMP in the form of Framework 42, which brought about sharp cuts to fishermen’s DAS and other effort reductions. Additional DAS cuts of 18 percent are already mandated by Amendment 13 to go into effect on May 1, 2009. If the Council continues with its expressed intent to make adjustments for fishing year 2009 using the same data that has resulted in this series of cuts, it will effectively place the industry in a state of double jeopardy, imposing effort reductions twice based on the same data without providing any credit to the industry for benefits that may have accrued under the previous adjustment. The fisermen must not be forced to bear the cost of the agency’s inability to complete a timely benchmark assessment as required by its own rules.” The senators tabulated impacts to the fleet to date: Maine’s groundfish fleet is less than half the number fishing in 1994, and shoreside jobs in fish processing and wholesale down by more than 40 percent. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of active limited access groundfish vessels in Massachusetts fell by 30 percent and the enactment of Framework 42 in 2006 led to an 18 percent revenue loss for Massachusetts vessels. NEFMC member Sally McGee said that, while waiting for the GARM results in September, NEFMC should work on other measures such as sectors, which could be useful for mitigating economic impacts. Fishermen, she said, need to see a light at the end of the tunnel. “Otherwise, people will be pushed to desperate measures,” she said. For Maine’s groundfishing industry, Maine State Senator Dennis Damon submitted a petition from the Maine Legislature, asking NEFMC to commit to the establishment of an equitable future distribution and allocation of permits to qualified Maine fishermen when stocks do rebound, and asking Maine’s NEFMC delegates to advocate for community-based initiatives such as sectors, permit banking and area management. Community-based initiatives, the petition reads, “hold a real future hope for recovery of the resource, recognizing as they do the ecological differences between ocean regions and species and emphasizing alignment of economic, ecological and sustainable harvesting interests to ensure a long-term recovery of the fishing business in New England.” In the end, NEFMC decided to continue work on several elements of A16 – including sector monitoring, other reporting issues; and recreational/commercial allocation decisions. But the new timeline has NEFMC developing rebuilding measures in September, when they receive the GARM III report. The draft environmental impact statement will go out to public hearing in January 2009, NEFMC will make its final decision on A16 in February 2009, the document will go to the National Marine Fisheries Service in March or April 2009, and the new rules will be implemented in the middle of the 2009 fishing year, sometime between September and December. The new timeframe could also allow NEFMC to apply guidelines for new federal requirements to establish Annual Catch Limits and Accountability Measures to rebuilding programs. The guidelines are still under development. The new requirements are part of the reauthorized Magnuson Stevens Act of 2006. They were established to end and prevent overfishing for stocks subject to overfishing in 2010, and in 2011 for all others. NMFS has not yet issued guidance to its regional fishery councils on how to develop and implement these new requirements. The original schedule for the development of A16 had the DEIS going out to public hearing before the groundfish assessment could be completed. That timeline was created in order to ensure new regulations would be in place for the May 1 start of the 2009 fishing year. |
