WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — March 15, 2013 — In his recent article “The Bottom Line: Changing Course for America’s Oldest Fishery,” Pew Environment Group’s Lee Crockett opposes proposed modifications to closed areas off the coast of New England, claiming that such actions would “risk further harm” to the ocean ecosystem. But this statement contradicts much of the available scientific research on the closed areas, and ignores both the areas’ original purpose and the intent behind the actions recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC).
Academic sources used in the preparation of this response are linked throughout and listed in the bibliography at the end of this story.
The NEFMC, as part of its current Omnibus Habitat Amendment, has proposed revisions to the existing closed areas in Georges Bank. These revisions follow the results of an extensive analysis of the currently designated closures and the Georges Bank seafloor. The Council determined that maintaining the areas in their current form ultimately has a more detrimental impact on Georges Bank habitats than the Council’s recently suggested alternative boundaries. They wrote: “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 Council further noted in its analysis that “allowing fishing in almost any portion of the area closures on Georges Bank, is estimated to substantially decrease total adverse effects from fishing.”
This finding is supported by several other peer-reviewed studies published in the last decade. For example, a 2010 study examining the structure of the seabed on Georges Bank found that the existing closure boundaries often do not correspond to the habitat features on Georges Bank that are most in need of protection. Specifically, they exclude many of the rocky and boulder-filled areas that are most likely to harbor unique habitats and are also most susceptible to damage from trawling. Most of Georges Bank, and much of the closed areas, are made up of sand and gravel habitats. Unlike the rockier habitats, these areas are frequently disturbed by strong tidal forces, at a rate that often prevents any unique habitat from establishing itself. 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 these influences likely cause the seabed to become unstable on a bi-weekly basis.
Trawling the constantly-shifting sandy and gravelly areas has little long-term impact, even though Mr. Crockett cites allegations that any habitat improvements in the closed areas would be “wiped out in less than a season’s fishing.” However, the disturbances caused to these habitats by trawling are comparable to the routine natural disturbances in Georges Bank.
This was the conclusion reached by a 2004 study conducted by James Lindholm and Peter Auster of the University of Connecticut and Page Valentine of the US Geological Survey. Comparing the habitat features of seabed inside and outside of the closed areas, their 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.”
The existing closure boundaries are ultimately up for modification because they are not very useful for habitat protection. When these areas were originally closed in the 1990s, limited information was available regarding the composition of the New England seabed. Managers and scientists relied on charts with only a few hundred habitat samples. Today, around 70,000 video sample points are available, resulting in a much clearer view of essential habitat locations, and a better idea of where habitat closure boundaries should be drawn. The areas were also not primarily designed to protect habitat, but rather to control fishing effort and fishing mortality. Fisheries management in the Northeast no longer relies on effort controls, ultimately making these areas obsolete.
Modifying these closed areas to better reflect the two decades of new information gathered on New England marine habitats will actually decrease the overall amount of damage done to habitats by trawling, as the Council’s analysis indicates. When areas with relatively abundant fish and relatively little habitat value are closed, fishermen instead trawl longer in more significant habitats. This results in more damage to the seafloor than would otherwise be the case. Rather than eliminating habitat protections, as Mr. Crockett alleges, the closed area modifications recommended by the NEFMC are a significant improvement over the habitat protections currently in place.
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