Management & Regulation

A report to the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries entitled "A New England Dilemma: Thinking Sectors Through" has been completed. Written by Seth Macinko and William Whitmore of the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island, the report is "an ‘outside’ consideration of the current policy process playing out in the New England Fishery Management Council arena regarding the multi-species ground fishery and the movement towards a management tool known as sectors."

Most of the world’s important commercial fish species have been declining for years. Nearly one-fourth are unable, essentially, to reproduce. The biggest cause of the deterioration in ocean health — bigger than climate change or pollution — is overfishing. American fisheries are in better shape than most but not by much.

The White House seems prepared to give this issue high priority. George W. Bush, though more sensitive to marine issues than other environmental problems, was slow to offer remedies, the most important being the establishment of three large protected marine reserves in the Pacific. President Obama has engaged the matter early in the game.

He recently ordered a new task force to develop a national oceans policy. He said he wants a more unified federal approach to ocean issues, now spread across 20 different agencies operating under 140 separate laws. He also wants a plan for allocating resources among competing interests like fishing and oil exploration.

Read the complete story at The New York Times.

The history books are pretty clear: no cod, no Boston.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the fishing industry to New England as a whole. The industry’s well-documented decline in recent decades due to overfishing and mismanagement has taken its toll, but 80,000 people in Massachusetts still work in the commercial fishing business.

Listen to the full show at Radio Boston.

The New York Times accuses fishermen of wanting “to keep vacuuming up depleted fish populations before they have a chance to recover.” In our northeastern commercial fisheries the facts show a much different reality.

The New York Times’ editorial of June 13, 2009 “Of Fish and Flexibility” accuses Senator Charles Schumer of filing a bill that would “poke holes in the Magnuson-Stevens Act” and “ allow the government to consider the economic consequences of fishing restrictions”.    This ignores the fact that taking into account the economic consequences of fishing restrictions is already law.  

National Standard 8 of the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that “Conservation and management measures shall… take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities in order to (A) provide for the sustained participation of such communities, and (B) to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.” 

Most fishing interests question the degree to which regulations in the past several years have upheld this part of the law.

Citing the fluke fishery, the editorial notes that it “has not yet been rebuilt”. Rebuilding the fluke population remains prudent, and it is true that fluke was declared by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to be subject to overfishing.  But a later review of the stock assessment determined that the natural mortality rate had been set too low. The Council increased the mortality rate, and fluke is no longer considered overfished.

Oceans and eco-systems are complex. Human institutions, our government agencies included, are subject to human error. They don’t always get it right the first time. Flexibility allows the opportunity to fine tune regulations when new information arises, as happened in the fluke fishery.

Flexibility also provides regulators the ability to adhere to the Magnuson-Stevens Actrequirement to “minimize adverse economic impacts”.  

The Times accuses fishermen of wanting “to keep vacuuming updepleted fish populations before they have a chance to recover.” In our northeastern commercial fisheries the facts show a much different reality.

Each year, using “best available” data, NOAA scientists set limits for total allowable catch.  However existing regulatory schemes have prevented fishermen from actually catching these amounts. In the most recent year, only two species (monkfish 101% and white hake 87%) of the ten species for which National Marine Fisheries Service statistics are available had commercial landings at levels near the total permitted.  For most species, fishermen landed only 4%-52% of the allowed catch.  For haddock and cod, two mainstays of the northeast fishery, only 32% and 48% of the limits were landed. 

Uncaught fish are not sold at auction.  Uncaught fish translate to dollars that did not go to working families, and taxes that were not paid to struggling municipalities in difficult times.  Poor regulation has forced northeastern fishermen to leave half of their potential earnings – all of which would be legal and within-limit — in the sea.

Restoring the flexibility that was included in the Magnuson Act in 1976 will allow fishermen to harvest more of their total allowable catch, and to do so with minimal impact on other species.

 

 

Frank Mirarchi’s capsule history of New England fishery management ("Half a century of fishing," June 2) skipped one episode that is particularly important to remember as we prepare to shift from days-at-sea and other input controls to catch shares.

The New England Fishery Management Council tried catch quotas immediately after it was organized in 1977. By 1982 the council and the New England fishing industry were so frustrated with quota-related problems that they abandoned catch quotas and spent the next 10 years developing the input controls that have now proven to be similarly troublesome.

I share Mirarchi’s belief that catch shares have the potential to tame overfishing while allowing fishermen to operate more profitably. Catch shares have proven that potential in places where they have been allocated to individual fishing businesses.

Read the complete story at South Coast Today.

As U.S. fishermen have become leaders in sustainably fishing for swordfish, many foreign fishermen have not adopted the same fishing gear and techniques…some foreign fleets also receive subsidies from their government and have lower labor costs than U.S. fleets. They spend less catching more swordfish without protecting the marine ecosystem and then are able to undersell the swordfish caught by our fishermen in the marketplace.

Unlike some fish stocks making headlines these days, the Atlantic swordfish is a great success story in rebuilding. Yet the U.S. fleet that fishes for swordfish faces the unique problem of not being able, due to a variety of reasons, to catch its U.S. quota. It is catching only half the base quota.

We’re looking for a way to help the swordfishing fleet while continuing to sustain a healthy fish stock and marine ecosystem. The best solutions come from lots of different sources — fishermen, managers, scientists and the general public — who want healthy marine ecosystems, fresh locally caught seafood and prosperous fishing communities.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Read the notice of meetings and proposed rule-making referenced in Dr. Balsiger’s column.

Read the advance notice of rule-making in the Federal Register.

View the PowerPoint presentation on the Advanced Notice of Rule-making.

The federal government dramatically extended protection yesterday for the imperiled wild Atlantic salmon in Maine, declaring that the few remaining sportfish in the Penobscot, Kennebec, and Androscoggin rivers and their tributaries are endangered.

The move comes nine years after the federal government declared the fish – once such a part of American legend that one was delivered to the US president each year – endangered in eight Down East Maine rivers.

And, like then, the listing is promising to spark a political war, with state officials saying the decision will unnecessarily harm industries along the rivers that will have to undergo arduous environmental reviews.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

Senator Charles Schumer has introduced a bill called The Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act. Flexibility, in this case, means bending to the will of fishermen who want to keep vacuuming up depleted fish populations before they have a chance to recover.

The bill aims to help New York fishermen whose livelihoods depend on fluke and other species. To achieve this narrow objective, however, it would poke holes in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the basic law governing fishing in federal waters. The act, strengthened by Congress in 2006, imposes ambitious timetables for rebuilding fish stocks and gives scientists a say in setting limits.

It is those sensible restrictions under which the fishermen are now chafing, and which Mr. Schumer’s bill — the companion to a House measure sponsored by Frank Pallone of New Jersey — seeks to gut.

Read the complete story at The New York Times.

See related story about flexibility bill.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today extended Endangered Species Act protection to more Atlantic salmon by adding fish in the Penobscot, Kennebec, and Androscoggin rivers and their tributaries to the endangered Gulf of Maine population first listed in 2000.

The decision is part of the ongoing effort to recover the imperiled fish, which once returned by the hundreds of thousands to most major rivers along the Northeastern U.S. and now returns in small numbers only to rivers in Maine.

“Legend has it you could once walk across these rivers on the backs of salmon,” said FWS Acting Director Rowan Gould. “Unfortunately, in most years we are able to count barely 1,000 fish returning to the Penobscot and fewer than a hundred in the other two rivers. If we are ever going to recover this iconic species so that future generations can witness the teeming runs that awed past generations, we need to protect it now throughout the Gulf of Maine.” 

Read the complete story at NOAA News.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama on Friday set up a task force to craft the first US national policy for sustainably managing the country’s oceans, drawing praise from environmentalists who said the move was long overdue.

"We are taking a more integrated and comprehensive approach to developing a national ocean policy that will guide us well into the future," Obama said in a proclamation declaring June "National Oceans Month."

The proclamation was issued along with a memorandum setting up the high-level Ocean Policy Task Force.

"Our nation’s economy relies heavily on the oceans … They support countless jobs in an array of industries including fishing, tourism and energy," the president said.

Read the AFP newswire story in full

View the presidential proclamation marking June 2009 as National Oceans Month [PDF]

Read the White House memorandum establishing the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force [PDF]