The New England Fisheries Management Council on Monday voted 12-4-1 to reject a NOAA report and to inform Federal Judge Harrington that NMFS failed to provide a proper analysis of the Mixed-Stock Exception
New England Fishery Management Council members voted 12-4 Tuesday to disapprove a revised report that NOAA Fisheries had prepared at the order of Senior Judge Edward F. Harrington. Two months earlier, the council had rejected the agency’s original report, after disagreeing with its conclusion that the mixed-stock exceptiondid not apply in the case of Framework 42.
Harrington ordered NOAA Fisheries to revise its report, taking the council’s argument into consideration. He said the new report must be reviewed by the council and submitted to court by Friday — the same day that the judge’s ban on Framework 42’s double-counting system for fishing day swill expire.
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The council vote was 12-4-1 against the National Marine Fisheries Service, with Patricia Kurkul, the regional administrator, who contributed to the hour-long debate only in a monosyllabic "no," one of the four votes against the motion by David Pierce, the deputy director of marine fisheries for the state of Massachusetts. He, along with Dave Goethel, a New Hampshire fisherman, carried the motion with a message for U.S. Judge Edward Harrington.
Goethel insisted something large and important is in dispute. To him, Kurkul’s refusal to see a place for the so-called "mixed-stock exception" in fishery management policy is a sign of a continued commitment to "single species management," which he argued was never the intent of Congress and will only "lead to the ruination of the fishery."
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