It is critical to understand that the apparent status of the Gulf of Maine cod stock is not a failure of fishermen to comply with the law. Not once has the catch limit for the groundfish fleet been exceeded in the eight years of this rebuilding plan.

Further, this is not a failure of fishery managers to embrace the science they were provided. The New England Fishery Management Council's catch limits were designed specifically to prevent overfishing and rebuild stocks in the 10-year time frame consistent with the law and the science they were provided. Only retrospective analyses performed years after the fact have suggested that these original catch limits (with which the fishery complied) were insufficient to prevent overfishing and rebuild the stock.

Instead, the GOM cod situation represents a flaw in fishery policy that places demands on science that exceed its capacity to predict nature. Science cannot sufficiently or reliably predict six, eight, much less 10 years into the future what recruitment, natural mortality, growth or the dynamics of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem will be. Nor can it sufficiently predict how these parameters affect overall stock productivity over time.

Read the complete letter to the editor in The Gloucester Times