November 20, 2014 — A proposal to restrict lobster fishing in certain designated spawning areas for cod is on the agenda at the New England Fishery Management Council meeting in Newport, R.I., this week.
A groundfish subcommittee voted last week to recommend that, “due to the high bycatch of cod in the lobster fishery and potential disruption of spawning behavior,” Gulf of Maine cod spawning closures “include a restriction on fishing with or using lobster pot gear.”
At issue is the number of cod being caught in lobster traps and whether they survive the trip to the surface.
Last week, the Portland Press Herald published numbers citing a Department of Marine Resources estimate that 177,247 cod were taken in lobster traps in 2008. “That was an estimate based on raw data provided by DMR staff to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC),” Commissioner Pat Keliher said in a statement Monday. “However, the analysis and extrapolation were not done by DMR.
“In fact,” Keliher said, “DMR believes this work overestimates the actual by-catch of cod in the Maine lobster fishery.
“The data, which was from 2008, was a very rough estimate, and does not fully account for the variability of by-catch in the lobster fishery in different parts of the coast, in different depths, and in different seasons. That variability is significant. This rudimentary analysis should not be the basis for management decisions.
Read the full story at the Ellsworth American