August 5, 2014 — A regional fishery management council is preparing to take on the task of trying to reverse a nearly 99 percent decline in Maine’s cod fish catch that has stripped the state’s economy of more than $250 million over the past 22 years.
The Gulf of Maine cod population has continued to drop despite decades of catch restrictions, according to preliminary results of a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study. Exact causes are unknown, but they likely include warming of the oceans and continued overfishing, marine scientists said.
As the cod stock rapidly approaches what the fishing industry calls “commercial extinction,” regulators must decide whether to reduce catch quotas even further, place certain areas off-limits to cod fishing or impose a complete moratorium, they said.
Before that happens, results of the latest NOAA cod survey must be peer-reviewed and vetted, said Lisa Kerr, a fisheries ecologist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. NOAA followed the same, approved methodology used in its 2012 survey, so the vetting process will focus primarily on the new data itself and not the data-gathering methods, she said.
In 1991, Maine’s cod catch reached an estimated peak of 21.2 million pounds, representing about $16.3 million in sales at the then-average wholesale price of $0.77 a pound, according to the state Department of Marine Resources.
By 2013, the catch had declined to just 286,000 pounds, valued at roughly $736,000 at the average sale price of $2.57 a pound.
The cumulative loss of the catch’s value each year totals more than $250 million since its peak, the department’s records show.
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald