SEVERE IMPACTS ON COD continued from Home Page

 

Still, said Cunningham, “Efforts are being made to mitigate the impact as much as possible and to look at what is happening with the science.”

The working group was convened in late 2011 by the National Marine Fisheries Service and includes the NEFMC and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) staff “to explore potential management options for reducing disruption to the fishery while responding to the new assessment,” according to a NMFS release. Working group meetings also include members of the commercial and recreational fishing industry, and other members of the public.

According to a statement from the Gloucester (Mass.) Fisheries Commission (GFC), read by Gloucester mayor Carolyn Kirk, the GFC “expressed grave concern regarding deep cuts in allowable catches of Gulf of Maine cod.”

“Gloucester’s fishing industry and harbor infrastructure are deeply dependent on landings of codfish, and significant cuts in the allowable catch of codfish would, without a doubt, threaten the very survival of our entire fishing industry and working waterfront,” the statement said.

Michael Ruccio, a fishery policy analyst with NMFS’ Northeast Regional Office in Gloucester, Mass., gave a presentation on Feb. 10 on the implications of a new “benchmark assessment” for Gulf of Maine cod, which was completed in January 2012.

Ruccio said the assessment “substantially revised our perception of the stock status.”

The stock is overfished and overfishing is occurring, said Ruccio, adding that even if fishing were to halt all together, the stock would not meet a rebuilding deadline of 2014.

The federal law, called the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), established timelines for rebuilding all depleted groundfish stocks. For Gulf of Maine cod, the deadline for completely rebuilding the stock was 2014. As a result of the assessment, NMFS informed NEFMC that rebuilding progress for the stock was inadequate. The notification triggered a legal provision that required NEFMC to revise the cod rebuilding plan within two years.

NMFS’ authority to get out from under the deadline is limited by the MSA, said Ruccio. However, NMFS does have the option to implement an interim action to reduce (not end) overfishing in fishing year 2012, Ruccio said.

After 2012, NEFMC is required to end overfishing on the stock beginning in May 2013, and also must adopt the new rebuilding plan by then, he said. Given that option, NEFMC came up with several recommendations for specific measures for NMFS’ interim action.

NEFMC asked NMFS to consider setting catch levels for fishing year 2012 at between 6,700 metric tons and 7,500 metric tons; 6,700 mt is a 21.6-percent reduction from the 2011 catch level of 8,545 mt.

NEFMC asked for measures that would result in corresponding limits on recreational catches. Measures such as reducing the minimum size for Gulf of Maine cod and bag limits were suggested. And NEMFC asked NMFS to consider opening groundfish closed areas.

A catch level of 6,700 mt for 2012 would only reduce overfishing, but would not end it, said Ruccio.

If NMFS were to end overfishing in 2012, he said, the catch level—also known as the annual catch limit—would have to be reduced to approximately 1,500 mt, an 82.4 percent reduction of fishing from 2011. The 6,700-metric-ton figure, he said, was meant to be a temporary measure that might allow NMFS and NEFMC “to get ahead of this thing in order to mitigate economic impacts for fishermen.”

The key, said Ruccio, is to rebuild “some semblance of stock size” with an interim action. Ruccio said that NMFS is in the process of evaluating NEFMC’s recommendations.

To date, Ruccio said, NMFS has determined that an ACL higher than 6,700 mt would increase fishing mortality in 2012, whereas an ACL at or below 6,700 mt would reduce fishing mortality and maintain or increase biomass. Ultimately, said Ruccio, the industry still faces “substantial” reductions in the ACL for 2013, in order to end overfishing.

For example, Ruccio said, fishing at 6,700 mt in 2012 would require a 2013 catch level of approximately 2,000 mt. The year 2013 “looks pretty bleak,” said Ruccio.

Fishermen who attended the February 10 meeting said they didn’t trust the new assessment or the data going into it. They said the reduction in catch level would devastate their industry and it would be irresponsible for federal regulators to impose devastating impacts on the industry with so much “reasonable doubt” in the data and the assessment model.

They also said there were disproportionate economic and social impacts depending on who fishermen were and where they fished. For example, small-boat fishermen in the western Gulf of Maine were expected to suffer the greatest impacts, according to NMFS data.

Bill Wagner, a New Hampshire charter boat captain, told the working group that the data used in the assessment was wrong.

“You have models you run all this through. How do we know the model’s any good?” Wagner said. “And now we’re trying to manage the fishery based on bad data. Ask the people out here, who believes the data? We don’t believe there’s a shortage of codfish. We don’t believe there’s a crisis out there on codfish.”

Wagner said that NMFS’ methods for collecting data should be audited. “We’re looking at 2013 – and we’re out of business,” Wagner said.

Mark Stettner said he represented about 120 handgear fishermen, of whom fewer than a dozen “do any serious fishing anymore.” Although the handgear fishery is “extremely labor-intensive,” Stettner said, “We’re hoping to keep this traditional fishery alive. We’re scared about what will happen next year and the year after.”

Stettner urged the working group to better delineate the gulf’s different cod stocks and to incorporate that information into the assessment, saying the stocks have different levels of problems and should not be treated in the same way.“It will save the fish where they need to be saved and it will allow fishing to be continued.”

Roger Bryson said he has been a handgear fisherman for more than 30 years.

“It’s a tough thing we’re going to go through,” said Bryson. “Looking back before 2008, we had lot of regulations and rules and were always told by NOAA that we would reap the rewards. And we believed it.” The 2008 assessment was optimistic about the fishery, Bryson said. But by 2011, the fishery had almost collapsed, he said.

“How can you go from a fishery that’s surviving to a collapse?” Bryson said. “There’s not much talk about that. What we do in the future isn’t going to do much good, until we find out what happened during those three years.”

Bill Chaprales, manager of the Northeast Coastal Community Sector in Chatham, Mass., said he was not surprised by the cod assessment. In his area, he said, the fishery is already shut down due to lack of cod. “The Georges Bank area, from Provincetown south, has already been shut down,” Chaprales said. “Fifty hook-gear fishermen who made a great living in that area are out of business.”

In the meantime, he said, fishermen are in the process of wiping out the cod population on Stellwagen Bank. “They’re going after the last codfish,” Chaprales said. “They’re laying those hooks everywhere on that bank and cleaning it up. So the Chatham fleet is already devastated….Small-boat fishermen, they don’t even want to go anymore, they’re so disgusted.”

“Trying to fix this groundfish situation is like the Rubik’s cube of fishing,” said John Williams, owner of an offshore lobster vessel. “I hope you can get it fixed, but when you do make a decision, consider what the collateral damage could be from those decisions.”

Ellen Goethel, a marine biologist who is on the board of directors for Sectors 11 and 12 in New Hampshire, said the sectors’ membership feels “The stock boundaries have been proven to be inaccurate. I would ask you to put that on as a priority to get them right.” She and others said the problems of understanding the stocks are further exacerbated when the landings of some vessels are attributed to one area but are actually caught in another. “I think this is a huge problem for the science,” she said.

Goethel also said she was “uneasy” about NEFMC’s recommendations to open closed areas. “I ask you to look very, very carefully at the impact on the small -boat fleet, if you decide to open the closed areas.”

Bonnie Spinazzola, executive director of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association (AOLA) in Bedford, N.H., asked NMFS not to accept the NEFMC recommendation to open Closed Area 2. “Closed Area 2 is laden with female lobsters and, of those females, they are practically all eggers,” Spinazzola said.

Spinazzola said that AOLA members annually throw back millions of pounds of egg-bearing female lobsters from June to November. “We feel this is a nursery,” she said of Closed Area 2. “It is the best nursery for lobster in the entire lobster fishery and we’re very concerned….We can’t imagine that anyone would want to take one fishery and ruin it in order to do something better for another fishery.”

The Gloucester Fisheries Commission said it supported NEFMC’s short-term solution to enact an emergency rule for 2012, but proposed an interim catch level of 7,500 mt.

“This will do the least harm to the industry as the process continues to address the scientific issues in question,” the GFC said. The GFC statement continued, “The economic impacts of deep cuts to landings of codfish will be felt most strongly by the Port of Gloucester. Our city will be the effective epicenter of the impact of the ‘new’ assessment. Gloucester was working under the assumption that GOM cod was on target to be rebuilt by 2010. We cannot survive a sudden cut of codfish landings, and we must not be forced to do so based on one assessment that dramatically contradicts years of scientific information.

“The stark difference between the two assessments in 2008 and 2011 threatens all fishing related businesses in our city, and it is essential to reassess such wildly different findings and conflicting results, if a fishing community like Gloucester is to exist.”

“There’s a tremendous and understandable temptation we all have to push this problem down the road and to doubt the data the science is providing us because our eyes are telling us something differently,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel with the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston, Mass., in speaking of the gap between data and fishermen’s observations. Shelley said the outlook did not appear to be favorable.

“I don’t think there will be enough Gulf of Maine cod for anyone to fish on at the levels they’re used to fishing,” he said. Shelley said projections from the proposed ACL reductions appear to show that impacts on the inshore fleet during the first year and on the recreational fleet in year two will be “dramatically different and more significant than the impacts on the non-inshore boats.” The higher the ACL that’s selected for 2012, he added, “the higher the risk will be for further spawning stock declines. There’s a two-thirds chance, at 6,700 metric tons, that [the spawning stock biomass] will drop below the lowest level ever seen…and we have no idea what will happen to spawning stock after that. We’ve never observed it and it’s a complete unknown.”

In addition, Shelley said, a higher ACL for 2012 will only mean that the greater economic losses will be borne by the inshore fleet, based on an analysis of NMFS data.

“The inshore fleet will bear most of the burden, and if spawning stock declines, they’ll bear the ultimate risk of that fishery closing,” Shelley said. And, he said, a higher ACL for 2012 will also mean that the recovery “will be longer and harder, you’ll go deeper in the hole and take longer to get out of the hole.” Shelley said the CLF recommended an ACL for 2012 of 4,000 mt.

“For the near term,” said Shelley, “if we can’t dedicate these limited amount of Gulf of Maine cod to these boats that are most highly dependent on them, these boats will disappear. And if you wait until next year, it will be too late.” The working group held a separate session for members of the recreational fishing industry. These included owners of charter/party boats, and private anglers.

According to Ruccio, under a 2012 catch level of 1,500 mt, the recreational catch limit would be 500 mt. This compares with the 2011 recreational catch limit of 2,824 mt. Under the 6,700 mt catch option, Ruccio said, the recreational fishery would have a catch limit of 2,215 mt. Ruccio said NMFS is considering other measures for the recreational fishery to limit catches, such as a reduction of the GOM cod minimum size limit and/or bag limits to reduce recreational discards.

With regard to the recreational fishery, Ruccio said, the assessment was complicated by a shift in the type of data collection program used by fishery managers. The old system is called the Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistics Survey (MRFSS) and the new system is the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP). Ruccio said the MRFSS data were used in the most recent stock assessment. Both survey methods will be run in tandem for calendar year 2012. And then, beginning on January 1, 2013, only MRIP will be available, he said. The catch limit for the recreational fishery for 2012 will be determined by MRIP, he said.

Charter boat operators said they were concerned that customers won’t show up if they’re not given the chance to catch enough fish.

“We have lots of customers. I have a lot of guys on the books, waiting for the date they like,” said David Waldrip, a charter boat operator in Green Harbor, Mass. “They will not come until they know what they’re getting, They all said, if the bag limit’s too low, they’re not coming up. Because they can go 10 hours south and go fishing.”

“As charter people, we’re concerned about the amount of fish people can keep and bring home,” said another operator. “It’s a perception issue. If people think they can’t catch anything, they’re not going to go. But if they think they can catch 10 fish and still don’t get anything, they’ll come back and try again.”

Bill Karp, acting director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass., said he and his staff shared the concerns of both commercial and recreational fishermen regarding the uncertainties of the scientific information.

“We are committed to doing the best we can to work on these issues to better understand the sources of data that support the stock assessment and ultimately to revisit the stock assessment itself,” Karp said.

In a joint statement made after the meeting, NMFS acting director Sam Rauch and NEFMC chairman Rip Cunningham said, “We will certainly consider the helpful input we heard as NOAA and the council move ahead with developing interim measures for 2012, further explore the scientific basis of any decisions and consider management measures for 2013. This has been a difficult time for all of us, and we know whatever measures are ultimately adopted will have economic impacts on fishermen and fishing communities. Together, we remain committed to identifying measures that will keep fishermen on the water and allow this iconic resource to continue to rebuild.”

A recording of the meeting is available for download at the Northeast Regional Office’s Gulf of Maine Cod webpage at nero.noaa.gov/nero/hotnews/gomcod.