WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) 13 March 2013 — The New York Times, in a recent blog post, fails to accurately describe the original rationale of the New England / Georges Bank closed areas, and does little to explain the credible science backing the New England Fishery Management Council's decision-making. Many of the closed areas in question don't actually protect marine habitats, because they were never designed to do so. Instead, they're the vestiges of a phased-out system of management that limited fishing effort, and are redundant under current regulations.
The Council has concluded that some areas can be opened without significantly impacting marine habitats because the habitats in many closed areas are mostly sand and gravel that are already naturally subject to a variety of severe tidal forces. Several peer-reviewed studies published in the last decade have concluded that the impact of trawling in these areas is insignificant compared to natural forces which can be equivalent to hurricane-force winds on land. In addition, data available today that was not available at the time these closure areas were selected in the 1990s indicates that many areas closed for ocean habitat reasons are not in locations best suited for habitat protection and revision of the boundaries is appropriate.
Academic sources used in the preparation of this response are linked throughout and listed in the bibliography at the end of this alert.
A New York Times blog post last month by Emma Bryce (“Bracing for a New England Trawling Decision,” 2/14) on allowing trawling in closed marine areas off the coast of New England failed to include a single voice from the commercial fishing industry, despite the fact that the commercial industry is the target of these regulations. Instead, it quotes extensively from the environmental and recreational fishing communities via Pew Environment Group’s Jud Crawford and Tim Tower, a recreational fishermen from Maine. As a result, the Times presents a one-sided view of the potential effects of the decision, and ultimately does little to explore the scientific rationale behind it.
Despite being prominently featured in the article, Mr. Tower is not described as having any scientific background or experience with the closed areas other than as a recreational fishermen. When disputing the decision of the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) to open and change some of the closed areas, Mr. Tower relies chiefly on anecdotal data and his subjective fishing experiences. He even admits to the Times that his work as a recreational fishing boat captain biases him in favor of keeping the current restrictions on the closed areas, as only commercial fishermen need to comply with them.
Pew’s Jud Crawford faults the fisheries management councils for treating protected areas as “an artifact of an outdated system of management,” and maintains that the New England closed areas are still necessary to protect marine habitats. But many of the closed areas are actually vestiges of an outdated system of effort controls, which managed the fishery by limiting when, where, and how fishermen could fish. The Northeast abandoned this system in 2010, switching to an allocation-based system. Areas were closed in Georges Bank as part of that system, and were chosen because they made the fleet less efficient, not because they had any environmental value.
With the Northeast currently operating under an allocation system, fisheries managers now directly set total allowable catch levels for all species. Under this new system, the closed areas, which are different from areas closed specifically to protect habitat, are redundant. To eliminate this redundancy the NEFMC has recommended that some of these areas be changed.
When the current closed area boundaries were designated, there was not much seafloor data available to fisheries managers, and their locations were chosen largely based on previous management closures from earlier in the 1990s. These closures were intended to limit fishing ability, not protect specialized habitat. Data available today that was not available at the time indicates that many areas closed for ocean habitat reasons are not in locations best suited for habitat protection.
A 2010 study, which mapped the Georges Bank seabed using underwater video, indicated that the current closures are not in locations that would best-protect important habitats. The closure boundaries are geographically arbitrary and do not include many of the rocky habitats that are the most susceptible to fishing disturbances. These rocky areas are also most likely to harbor juvenile groundfish and feature unique habitats. This creates a no-win situation for both fishermen and fish as fishermen are driven to fish where they do not want to (because of damages to trawl gear) in areas that are important to many species.
In a 2011 analysis of the impact of the use of trawls and other gears, the NEFMC Habitat Plan Development Team (PDT) concluded that changing some closed areas would ultimately lessen the impact of fishing on marine habitats. While this seems counter-intuitive, the current closed areas are actually having the effect of concentrating fishing effort into other areas, and disturbing more habitat than would otherwise be the case. “We find that for nearly all area and gear type combinations, opening existing closed areas to fishing is predicted to decrease aggregate adverse effects,” the PDT wrote, adding “allowing fishing in almost any portion of the area closures on Georges Bank is estimated to substantially decrease total adverse effects from fishing.” This indicates that the current closed areas are providing few unique benefits for habitat protection, and that adjustments to the current system, like the ones recently voted on by the NEFMC, are likely to yield better results. It's important to note that the PDT's analysis does not diminish the importance of closures as a conservation tool, but instead quantitatively demonstrates what happens when that tool is misapplied.
The seafloor of Georges Bank is made up mostly of sand and gravel. A 2012 study by Bradley Harris of Alaska Pacific University and Geoffrey Knowles and Kevin Stokesbury of the School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that tidal forces on much of Georges Bank are so strong (roughly equivalent to or greater than 70 mph winds on land) that the seabed probably becomes unstable on a bi-weekly basis. This does not include the extreme impacts of typical winter storms or hurricanes. The areas of Georges Bank which remain stable under these conditions are composed more of larger rocks and boulders rather than sand and gravel, and are largely located outside the current closed areas.
Trawling sandy and gravely areas that are subject to these forces has little long-term impact. A 2004 study conducted by James Lindholm and Peter Auster of the University of Connecticut and Page Valentine of the US Geological Survey compared the habitat features of seabed inside and outside of the closed areas. The study found that “it is possible that mobile sand habitats that experience varying degrees of sand movement naturally are able to recover from the impact of bottom fishing gear in a relatively short period of time, perhaps less than a year.” A later 2006 study, also by Harris and Stokesbury, reached a similar conclusion about the effects of trawling on Georges Bank, concluding that a “short-term sea scallop fishery” alters the environment “less than the natural dynamic environmental conditions of Georges Bank.”
Read the full story, "Bracing for a New England Trawling Decision" at the New York Times
Bibliography
Harris, Bradley; Stokesbury, Kevin, “The spatial structure of local surficial sediment characteristics on Georges Bank, USA”, Continental Shelf Research, Volume 30, Issue 17, October 15, 2010, p. 1840–1853
Harris, Bradley; Cowles, Geoffrey; Stokesbury, Kevin, “Surficial sediment stability on Georges Bank, in the Great South Channel and on eastern Nantucket Shoals”, Continental Shelf Research, Volume 49, September 23, 2012, p. 65-72
Lindholm, James; Auster, Peter; Valentine, Page, “Role of a large marine protected area for conserving landscape attributes of sand habitats on Georges Bank (NW Atlantic)”, Marine Ecology Progress Series, Volume 269, March 24, 2004, p. 61-68
New England Fishery Management Council, “The Swept Area Seabed Impact (SASI) Model: A Tool For Analyzing The Effects of Fishing On Essential Fish Habitat”, Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) Omnibus Amendment, January 21, 2011
Stokesbury, Kevin; Harris, Bradley, “Impact of limited short-term sea scallop fishery on epibenthic community of Georges Bank closed areas”, Marine Ecology Progress Series, Volume 307, January 24, 2006, p. 85-100