F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

In These Last Hours



Big changes in United States marine habitat management are underway. It is hoped Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2 will be part of wholesale resource rebuilding and stabilization. The unknowns that climate change brings could present hurdles to re-establishing marine habitat stability created over thousands of years of climate stability.

An important part of the amendment is the long-awaited move away from single-species management to comprehensive management. Management bureaucracy is resistant to change and slow to acknowledge the need.

The 50-year delayed response to climate change has burned all the slack in any plan to functionally address it. The scientific work for the comprehensive approach in the amendment is in place. Data for building the amendment was gathered after climate change began transforming the oceans. Whether those changes have erased the opportunity to return to a previous status of the ocean habitat remains to be seen.

With all of these knowns and unknowns, the Amendment 2 process needs the input and oversight of fishermen. There’s not much time left for fishermen or anyone else to be heard regarding how the habitat amendment could or should affect fishing in the Gulf of Maine. The last round of habitat closures has been in effect for 20 years.

Although the amendment is intended to protect habitat, not groundfish, and does not directly involve the lobster fishery, it could ultimately have impacts on both. The recent alleged drop in the cod stocks led the groundfish committee to call for limiting lobster traps in some areas to reduce cod bycatch. That call was voted down, since the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is the lead in lobster management and the matter was sent there for further consideration. Not the same as voted down and out.

Amendment 2 may be about habitat, but fish live in it and fishermen fish in it. Federal fisheries management is much more complicated than simply keeping fish in the water. The management process is also about political and economic interests, both public and private. If federal funding is going to an organization, that organization is expected to toe the party line. Fishermen’s interests will be served by bringing their political and economic interests to the table in these last hours.