July 24, 2017 — CAPE COD, Mass. — NOAA is seeking public comment regarding a request from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance for an exemption from a regulation that prohibits having unauthorized gear on board while fishing for, retaining, or possessing a bluefin tuna.
In their application, the Alliance suggest that the use of electronic monitoring, already required by federal fishing authorities is a sufficient at-sea monitoring to verify that the catch of bluefin tuna occurred on authorized gear.
The regulation was designed to allow enforcement to not only verify that only the authorized gear type was used to catch the bluefin tuna, but also serves as an effort control for bluefin tuna as it limits the number of vessels that can actively pursue bluefin tuna to those with only authorized gear.