STOCKS AND SCIENCE IN SYSTEM GLITCH
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In 1929, the fishermen got their way. My point is, the fish come and they go and they don’t show up. If the Bigelow was doing their survey in 1928, we would have to live with that for how many years? I think a lot of the problems we’re seeing today is something’s going on with the surveys. Fishermen are saying that.”©Photo by Sam Murfitt
It was found that, if the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) were to end overfishing in 2012, the annual catch limit (ACL) would have to be reduced to approximately 1,500 metric tons (mt) – an 82.4 percent reduction of fishing from the 2011 catch level of 8,545 mt.
NMFS convened the Gulf of Maine Cod Working Group to try to find some leeway for fishing communities. On April 2, NMFS set the 2012 ACL at 6,700 metric tons, a 21.6-percent reduction from the 2011.
NMFS has indicated that further, and drastic, reductions in ACL will be required for 2013.
In April, the groundfish industry learned it was also facing economic losses from Georges Bank yellowtail flounder quota reductions. Georges Bank yellowtail is a mid-value fish often caught incidentally while fishermen target high value stocks like cod, haddock and scallops.
According to NMFS, poor stock conditions of yellowtail have continued because fewer fish are growing to catchable size than previously expected. As a result, the overall U.S. allocation of the Georges Bank yellowtail flounder stock will be reduced by 61 percent this fishing year.
The U.S. yellowtail flounder allocation is divided between the scallop and groundfish fisheries. Yellowtail flounder is bycatch in the high-value scallop fishery. Under existing regulations, the yellowtail flounder allocation to the scallop fishery will increase by 53 percent to approximately 679,024 pounds in 2012. The allocation to the groundfish industry, however, will be reduced by 80 percent to roughly 480,608 pounds.
“While this is good for the scallop industry, it’s a challenge for the bigger and some of the smaller groundfish boats that go to Georges Bank,” said NMFS acting assistant administrator Sam Rauch in a press release.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has instituted actions that “may help mitigate economic loss,” the release said. These include the reallocation of any projected unused portion of the scallop fishery’s Georges Bank yellowtail flounder allocation to groundfish fishing vessels. New management measures also authorize mid-sized fishing vessels to use a new type of trawl fishing gear that may enable fishermen to reduce their bycatch of yellowtail flounder while they target other groundfish species, the release said.
At the New England Fishery Management Council’s (NEFMC) April 24-26 meeting, groundfishermen raised concerns about the low yellowtail ACL, which became effective at the start of the new fishing year on May 1.
The revised limit for 2012 was included in Framework Adjustment 47 to the Groundfish Plan over the course of two NEFMC meetings last fall. During the meeting, NEFMC asked NMFS to convene a Georges Bank Yellowtail Flounder Working Group, similar to the cod working group, to address the issue.
On April 25, NEFMC heard a report from Woods Hole, Mass.-based Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) scientists James Weinberg and Paul Rago, on assessment and data updates for 13 Northeast groundfish stocks through 2010.
The assessed stocks were Georges Bank (GB) cod, GB haddock, Gulf of Maine (GOM) haddock, Cape Cod/GOM yellowtail flounder, American plaice, witch flounder, Acadian redfish, white hake, GOM_GB windowpane flounder, Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic (SNE-MA) windowpane flounder, SNE/MA windowpane ocean pout, Atlantic wolfish and Atlantic halibut.
About half of the 13 stocks assessed are overfished, said Weinberg. Two are newly rebuilt. “There are really not a lot of changes regarding overfished or not, based on these updates,” Weinberg said. The assessments included eight months of data from the industry’s new catch share program, said Rago.
According to the NEFSC report “Assessment or Data Updates of 13 Northeast Groundfish Stocks through 2010,” the groundfish management plan currently comprises 20 groundfish stocks. Nineteen of the stocks were assessed and peer reviewed in 2007-2008 in a regional scientific peer review process to provide benchmark assessments, called the Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM III). One stock, Atlantic wolffish, was added to the FMP after GARM III took place.
Of the 20 stocks, five were reassessed during 2010-2012, and therefore were not updated for the current report. These five stocks include pollock, three stocks of winter flounder and Gulf of Maine cod.
In addition to the five stocks, two other stocks were not updated for the current report because they are scheduled for assessment in 2012. They are SNE/MA yellowtail flounder and GB yellowtail flounder.
The current report contains updated assessment information on 13 groundfish stocks.
One of the major changes in the new assessments was the use of bottom trawl survey data from the relatively new research vessel Henry B. Bigelow, according to NEFSC.
In aggregate, it’s a 70 percent reduction in the allocations of an already very low and even, this year, close to a choke stock – yellowtail….That is an immediate emergency.” ©Photo by Sam Murfitt
According to NEFSC, “A composite snapshot of the overall stock status of these stocks reveals seven stocks that are overfished and of these, four experience overfishing.”
Acadian redfish and SNE/MA windowpane flounder are newly rebuilt since GARM III, NEFSC said. Stock biomasses increased for eight of the 12 stocks between 2007 and 2010.
Comparisons between GARM III and the current update results, said NEFSC, “revealed decreases of 46 percent for Georges Bank cod, 20 percent for Georges Bank haddock, 57 percent for Gulf of Maine/Cape Cod yellowtail flounder, and 21 percent for witch flounder.”
Revised biomass estimates for GOM haddock, American plaice, redfish biomasses exceeded those estimated at GARM III, NEFSC said.
NEFMC members expressed frustration with the assessment results.
“We tried follow guidelines to not exceed fishing targets,” NEFMC member Doug Grout said of the assessment results for GOM haddock, the status of which changed from not overfished, in the 2008 assessment, to overfishing. “But we’re overfishing, even though we stayed under our ACL, and this both puzzles me and troubles me because we used the best available scientific information. And yet the assessment says we grossly overfished this stock….There’s some problem with our system here.”
Rago said that, with regard to GOM haddock, a number of issues come into play. The resource peaked in 2003 as a result of healthy year classes in the late 1990s. Since then, he said, the resource has been dropping – and dropping faster than expected. The biomass for haddock is down on the order of 20 percent in a three-year period, Rago said.
The overall productivity of the system is declining, Rago said. “I hope there will be some kind of suggested remedy for us trying to stay within our allowable catch so that this doesn’t happen,” Grout responded. “We had a resource that was not overfished, overfishing wasn’t occurring.
We followed the guidance of our SSC [the NEFMC’s Scientific and Statistical Committee], which was partially based on this assessment, and we stayed within that. And somehow, to have it go completely the opposite way and have such severe overfishing occurring at such a high level – almost double the reference point – how are we gong to address this from a management standpoint in the future with other stocks?”
One NEFMC member said there was “something systemically wrong with the tools and process by which we’re setting catch advice for a range of these stocks. Gulf of Maine haddock is a great example of that….I don’t think the problem is specific to Gulf of Maine haddock alone. It’s a really big problem. We have to change something and it can’t start with immediately getting into a specific assessment or the assumptions made therein. It’s something that is, I fear, bigger than that….We continue to have scientific and management cycles that are out of sync.”
NEFMC member David Goethel said that the more complex modeling techniques used to assess stocks seem to be yielding numbers that “are not panning out at all. I’m looking for a simpler way forward, particularly because we have to do this every year now.”
Goethel said the NEFMC should be concerned about the “general low productivity of all the groundfish stocks here, now going on for the better part of 10 years. With a couple of exceptions, productivity has been extraordinarily poor. So – despite the lowest fishing effort ever, the least number of boats, the most restrictive regulations, having stayed within limits – we’re getting nothing essentially, no bang for our buck whatsoever.”
Simpler modeling processes have failed to result in good projections, Rago said.
Vito Calamo, a former fisherman and now a staffer for U.S. Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, wanted to know if fishing methods might have contributed to the unexpected results of the stock update.
“We have not been able to identify a probable cause,” responded Rago. “It’s music to my ears, you saying that fishermen didn’t create this monster,” said Calomo.
Calomo said the industry has undergone numerous changes in conformance with regulations and has now been caught by surprise.
“People made big plans because everything was looking rosy,” Calomo said. “I think we all need to work together to resolve some kind of a plan….This has created quite a problem, especially in the New England area.”
Tina Jackson, president of the American Alliance of Fishermen in Charlestown, R.I., said that, after three years of the catch share program, stocks were “supposed to have increased. What we’re seeing is obviously quite the opposite, especially when it comes to cod and yellowtail.”
Jackson said We should be seeing a record rebound of stocks under the catch share program and that’ s not what we’re seeing. That’s a clear indication that catch shares are a failure. You’re ruining the ecological system of the ocean by allowing this to continue. Every catch share program in the country has never had an increase in the allocation. Every catch share program has had massive reductions. What does that tell you? They don’t rebuild stocks. They’re an economic tool. It was promoted as a conservation measure. It has nothing to do with conservation. This is distressing and it’s frustrating.”
NEFMC member David Pierce said the assessment for CC/GOM yellowtail flounder “is the one update that’s most telling and troubling.”
“I continue to be concerned that the reason why we have pessimistic results for the [yellowtail] assessment now is unaccounted-for catch,” Pierce said. “If it’s removals, okay – predation or whatever. But right now, the assessment screams out it’s unaccounted-for catch. And if that’s true, we’ve got problems. Unless we can get a good record of actual catch, we’ll always behind the eight ball with regard to what is happening, and assessment scientists will always be hampered by not having actual catch” data.
New Bedford, Mass., fisherman Richard Canastra said there is a discrepancy between what fishermen see and what survey tows are pulling up. “When I speak to the vessels that are, for example, fishing in the Gulf of Maine or Georges Bank during the winter this year, and they were having a hard time bringing in trips, I asked them why, and they said it was the temperature of the water; we had a warm winter,” said Canastra.
“Speaking to fishermen who fished 30 or 40 years, I said, ‘The fish aren’t there? They’re gone?’ And they said, ‘No, we see them. But they’re up in the water column because the bottom of the ocean is warmer. We just can’t catch them.’ I go back in history, in the year 1928, we had a warm winter. And in 1928, Massachusetts put the codfish on its license plate, because of the sacred cod. What happened in 1928, it was a bad year fishing. The fishermen accused the government or the state for putting the codfish on the plate, where it was swimming away from Massachusetts – being how superstitious they were.
In 1929, the fishermen got their way. The fish were swimming toward Massachusetts. A friend of mine collects license plates. He asked me, six months ago, did I know about the cod situation in 1928? It’s true the fish were turned around and started swimming back to Massachusetts, and they had a better year the following year. My point is, the fish come and they go and they don’t show up. The point is, if the Bigelow was doing their survey in 1928, we would have to live with that for how many years? I think a lot of the problems we’re seeing today is, we have a disaster with the cod, but it all comes down to – something’s going on with the surveys. Fishermen are saying that.”
The NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow, launched in 2005, is a fisheries survey ship, one of four in the NOAA fleet. NEFMC member Jim Odlin said he was “uncomfortable with the calibration” of the Bigelow.
Canarsta said that possible errors in the surveys, for whatever reasons, result in impacts for the fishery that can last for years.
“The problem is that avoiding the yellowtail is avoiding the Georges Bank cod is avoiding Gulf of Maine cod – we’re avoiding everything,” said Canarsta. “And as far as the disaster relief – we need that now. It’s been over a year since we asked the governor, and it’s still in limbo. Time is of the essence.”
Canarsta said the problem is with the survey gear itself, deployed by the Bigelow. “There is a crisis here,” Canarsta said. “Unfortunately, this crisis is caused by the beginning of the problem, which is the Bigelow. I cannot explain it, but there is a problem. Until we fix that, we’ll be asking for emergency action for the next five to 10 years.”
NEFMC member Terry Stockwell, of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, submitted a motion to recommending that the NEFMC write a letter to Commerce Secretary John Bryson to request a determination that the reduction of ACL on Georges Bank yellowtail and Gulf of Maine cod for 2012, and for GB cod, GOM haddock, witch flounder and plaice for 2013, warrants a declaration of disaster for the fishery. “There’s no question of the impact on both offshore and inshore fleets, both this year and next year,” said Stockwell.
Pierce recommended that, in order to move forward on the proposal, the NEFMC first ask NMFS to conduct an economic analysis of the expected problems for 2012 and 2013.
A previous NMFS “break-even” analysis for the entire groundfish fleet, said Pierce, indicated that, in 2009 and 2010, more than 50 percent of vessels were not breaking even in those two years. No analysis was conducted for 2011.
Pierce said the state of Massachusetts continues to await a response to a request for a fishery disaster declaration submitted more than a year ago. That request, he said, as made in response to the economic impacts suffered by the industry with the implementation of the fishery’s new catch share system.
“You have a disaster – there’s no doubt in my mind – now, and brewing more heavily about yellowtail flounder,” said Calomo. “I think it’s important, one more time, that the New England Fishery Management Council submit something stressing you need disaster relief funds for this important fishery.”
Reductions for GOM cod in itself constitutes an argument for a disaster declaration, said Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. “But in aggregate, it’s a 70 percent reduction in the allocations of an already very low and even, this year, close to a choke stock – yellowtail….That is an immediate emergency.”
With only two years remaining in federally mandated rebuilding schedules, other fishing reductions are also on the horizon, Giacalone said. “So if you don’t feel like this is a disaster, this is about as bad as it gets,” Giacalone said.
The NEFMC considered the possible causes of the yellowtail numbers. These included the possibility that the scallop fishery is taking more yellowtail bycatch than expected.
It was also considered that the United States might be able to re-negotiate a resource sharing agreement with Canada to obtain a higher yellowtail allocation.
Several fishery advocates told the NEFMC it needed to take a “holistic” approach in considering solutions to the yellowtail deficit.
“This has hit the industry like a brick wall,” Canastra said. Calomo said that, under the adverse conditions now seen in the codfish and yellowtail resources, it has become apparent that the NEFMC needs to work more closely with industry to conduct collaborative research.
“I plead to you, as a once-member of this council and an active fisherman at one time, to please work strongly together to resolve issues,” Calomo said. “We have weeded out, through a process of boat buybacks and a process of very hard and difficult management decisions, to have probably the cream of the crop left in the fishing industry. And most of them are very highly educated, either through the process or through the times that they’ve suffered.”
NEFMC member David Goethel endorsed the idea of a holistic approach.“There are larger issues here,” Goethel said. “This is like taking a styptic pencil to a nick when you’ve chopped your arm off. It’s not going to solve the problem. The larger question that has to be asked – it’s not just groundfish – is why is there such a disconnect between what the vessels see on the water and the numbers in numerous stock assessments?”
“This is a crisis management meeting.” It keeps going back to overfishing, but it’s not overfishing. In my estimation, it’s mismanagement. It’s only management by the information we’re getting, and I don’t think it’s correct information. - Rodney Avila, NEFMC member.©Photo by Sam Murfitt
Until the recently exposed “bigger, fundamental questions” are answered, Goethel said, “we’re just spinning our wheels here.” The problems can be seen across all fisheries, not just groundfish, Goethel said.
“The problem is systemic and it’s got to be dealt with,” Goethel said.
“This is a crisis management meeting,” said NEFMC member Rodney Avila. “We’ve been in one crisis after another after another. I agree with David, there’s a disconnect. It keeps going back to overfishing, but it’s not overfishing. In my estimation, it’s mismanagement. It’s only management by the information we’re getting, and I don’t think it’s correct information.”
In voting to ask NMFS to form a yellowtail flounder working group, the NEFMC suggested that one of the working group’s tasks might be to renegotiate the U.S./Canada resource sharing agreement that pertains to yellowtail.
The discussion pertained to the U.S. and Canada’s coordinated management of three fish stocks that overlap the boundary between the two countries on Georges Bank. In the late summer of 2011, the two countries, through the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee, which includes representation from state and federal agencies and the fishing community, recommended shared total allowable catches for fishing year 2012 for cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder stocks.
The NEFMC adopted these total allowable catches at its September 2011 meeting and incorporated them into its latest revision to the groundfish fishery management plan, known as Framework 47.
NMFS has proposed to implement these quota recommendations which resulted in the 61 percent decrease in the Georges Bank yellowtail quota.
But fishery plan manager Tom Nies advocated caution around reopening negotiations with Canada. He said that Canada could just as easily propose counter terms beneficial to that country’s fishermen. A working group might not be sensitive to the nuances of such negotiations, he said.
NEFMC member Laura Ramsden said she was not opposed to talking with Canada. But, she said, “really the work is in our own backyard, in how we can use better surveys to ascertain what’s really out there as far as yellowtail. Maybe the working group should look at other survey methods, rather than continuing to use the Bigelow, which clearly isn’t working.”
After the NEFMC meeting, on April 27, NMFS acting assistant administrator Sam Rauch and NEFMC chairman Rip Cunningham announced the formation of the working group, “to explore measures to help fishermen facing a reduction in the Georges Bank Yellowtail Flounder quota in 2012.”
According to the joint statement, “Through the new working group, we will reach out to the broader fishing community and other stakeholders to advance selective fishing gear and practices and explore other ideas and management alternatives that will minimize the impacts on commercial fishermen.
This working group will also provide a constructive platform for continued open and public planning and discussions about the challenges facing the industry in 2013.”
According to the statement, NOAA and NEFMC, through the scallop research set-aside program and other NOAA Cooperative Research Program funds, will support several new research projects in 2012 aimed at reducing yellowtail bycatch on Georges Bank and in other areas.
According to the statement, “The situation with yellowtail flounder could be worse, were it not for legislation introduced by Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Olympia Snowe in 2010, supported by the entire Northeast delegation, and enacted in January 2011. The International Fisheries Agreement Clarification Act allowed NOAA in 2011 to extend the rebuilding timeframe for these shared stocks. The Georges Bank yellowtail flounder rebuilding timeframe was extended from 2016 to 2032, enabling larger allocations. Even with the extended rebuilding schedule, NOAA and the industry are faced with this big reduction in 2012.”