At its June meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to approve 17 new fishing sectors and expand the provisions for the Georges Bank (GB) cod hook and the GB cod fixed gear sectors in the groundfish fishery for 2010 through Amendment 16 to the Northeast Multispecies Fisheries Management Plan.
In order for sectors to be ready to go by the start of the 2010 fishing year, new monitoring and reporting systems and procedures have to be designed and implemented. Thus, sector proponents, sector managers, scientists, vessel owners and NOAA Fisheries Service staff came together for two workshops, the first in June and the second in July, at the Northeast Regional Office (NERO).
The intent was to come to a shared understanding of reporting requirements for fishing sectors and to provide information to help sector managers complete their Sector Operations Plans (SOPs), which are required under the new system and due September 1, 2009. Outlined in Amendment 16 is a sector monitoring program including notification procedures, dockside and at-sea monitoring, and weekly sector manager reports. So, during the workshops, the group spent considerable time fleshing out these various components of the monitoring program.