by John Cooke and Sarah Hanselman, Saving Seafood Staff
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) Jan. 25, 2013 — With next week's New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) January meeting approaching, recent data indicates that fishermen are not close to landing their current quotas on many species of groundfish. As the Conservation Law Foundation observed in its January 11, 2013 "Fish Talk in the News" column, this has led "some to question whether proposed severe cuts on catch limits for some stocks…would be as catastrophic for the industry as some have predicted, since fishermen aren't catching their current allotments anyway."
Some observers have expressed the view that current quotas are not being met as the result of a lack of fish. For example, Tom Dempsey, of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association and a NEFMC member, is quoted by the Associated Press: "There's a disaster in New England groundfish, but it's because we can't catch the quotas we have. And in most cases, that's because those fish just aren't there." However, fisheries experts, industry members, and a number of scientists contend that the problem is not that there aren't enough fish to be caught, but that current regulations and related factors prevent fishermen from catching them.
"The failure to catch quota is a complex issue," explained Dr. Brian Rothschild, professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST). "Careful analysis needs to be made of the influence of choke species, leasing costs, and the influence and timing of stock assessments."
An example of this problem is haddock. The most recent Georges Bank haddock stock assessment concluded that the stock is healthy. It is not overfished, and overfishing is not occurring. Future projections for the stock are also positive, as a record-breaking 2010 year class matures. But only around 3 percent of the Georges Bank haddock quota has been harvested this year, and only 12 percent in the 2011 fishing year. This situation raises the question, 'What is keeping haddock quotas from being reached?'
As the assessment makes clear, the problem is not a lack of haddock. However, a list of impediments including bycatch of choke species and regulations are hampering fishermen's ability to catch this abundant stock.
Choke Species Bycatch
Choke Species in Georges Bank
Fishermen who want to catch haddock also need an allocation of yellowtail flounder. Yellowtail and haddock populate the same areas of the ocean, and fishermen targeting haddock frequently accumulate yellowtail as bycatch. With a low allocation of yellowtail, fishermen must avoid directly targeting the species in order to save their quota to use it for bycatch when haddock return to waters off New England in the spring.
"As soon as people start seeing the haddock, then you'll see the catch of yellowtail go up drastically," explained Captain Mark Phillips, a fisherman from Greenport, New York, and captain of the Illusion. Only 37 percent of the yellowtail quota has been landed so far in the current fishing year (which ends April 30), according to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).
"When they go in there to catch their haddock, they'll be running into bodies of yellowtail," says Ray Canastra, co-owner of BASE New England in New Bedford, Massachusetts. "If they don't have any yellowtail allocation onboard, they won't be able to chase haddock, and they're going to lose that whole fishery."
Captain Phillips noted that the cost of leasing yellowtail quota is another factor keeping fishermen from catching haddock. "Yellowtail are going for $1.75 a pound on the leasing," he said. But yellowtail is only selling for approximately $1 per pound at current auction prices. Fishermen will take an economic loss when leasing yellowtail in order to obtain the quota for bycatch. "The whole south side of Georges Bank is off limits if you don't have yellowtail quota," said Phillips.
Yellowtail flounder is just one of several "choke species" in Georges Bank. Like yellowtail, these species, such as Georges Bank cod, are caught as bycatch by fishermen targeting haddock. Because many of these species have low catch limits, and are found in the same location as haddock, fishermen will often need to stop fishing for haddock once they meet or near their quotas on these other species. For example, in the 2011 fishing year, while only 12.6 percent of the Georges Bank haddock quota was landed, nearly all of the quotas on other Georges Bank species were caught. This includes 76.2 percent of the allocation of Georges Bank cod and 86.7 of the allocation of Georges Bank yellowtail.
Reductions in Allocation for 2013
The yellowtail fishery was once a profitable part of the groundfish fishery, bringing in over $15 million in 2000, for example. The percent of yellowtail caught as bycatch has increased with the implementation of quota reductions, lowering the value of the yellowtail fishery to approximately $4 million.
For the 2013 fishing year, which begins May 1, the US yellowtail quota recommended by the US-Canada Transboundary Management Guidance Committee (TMGC) is 215 metric tons (or about 473,000 pounds). If implemented, the groundfish fleet will get 60 percent of the allocation, or 129 metric tons (283,800 pounds). That figure constitutes a severe reduction from last year's US groundfish allocation of about 600 metric tons. Putting this cut into perspective, yellowtail landings though the fourth quarter of 2012 alone were 125 metric tons, equal to almost all of their allocation of next year's quota.
The remaining 40 percent of the allocation has been designated for the scallop fleet, which also catches yellowtail as bycatch. Since the scallop fleet is scheduled to operate under reduced days-at-sea in the 2013 fishing year, reductions affecting scallop bycatch of yellowtail could harm scallop fishing.
This sharp decrease in quota is due to the fact that NOAA considers Georges Bank yellowtail flounder to be overfished, and in a state of decline. However, the agency also recognizes that there is a "source of scientific uncertainty" regarding the exact status of the stock in the form of a retrospective pattern, a type of persistent statistical bias that occurs when the population and mortality estimates for specific years are challenged by new data provided by subsequent assessments.
When a stock assessment is updated, new estimates of stock size and fishing mortality are produced. Stock assessment scientists compare the updated results with those of past assessments as a way of measuring the performance of the stock assessment model. While some error is expected in any stock assessment, retrospective patterns occur when there is a persistent tendency of the model to overestimate or underestimate assessment results, such as fishing mortality or biomass.
Problems with the Yellowtail Assessment
While the assessment reached the conclusion that yellowtail is overfished, the survey data used for the assessment by the Transboundary Resources and Assessment Committee (TRAC) contains several positive trends, indicating that the conclusions of the assessment may be too pessimistic. These include estimates of total biomass, fishing mortality, and abundance-at-age.
Biomass surveys included in the TRAC assessment, especially the spring survey conducted by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), show that current yellowtail biomass is similar to levels seen in the 1970s. But while biomass may be similar, the amount of removals from the fishery is among the lowest on record. Landings, which were around 15,00 tons 40 years ago, hover around 500 tons today. Fishing mortality is currently also low, and has been for several years.
"We're getting indications from the surveys that the stock is moderate-to-high, and we're getting indications from relative fishing mortality that we're not removing many fish from the population," said Dr. Steve Cadrin, professor of marine science at SMAST and president of the American Institute of Fisheries Research Biologists. "These sources of information are completely opposite from what the stock assessment model is telling us, which is that the stock size is low and fishing mortality is high."
Dr. Cadrin noted that similarly positive were the trends in abundance-at-age recorded by the TRAC, with the abundance indices of yellowtail ages 3-5 the highest on record. He suggested that these positive indicators were evidence that the stock assessment model used for the TRAC is no longer working.
"In my opinion, based on how the management alternatives are being considered, the model should have been rejected, because it doesn't fit the data. It's not consistent, it has a huge retrospective pattern, and attempts to salvage the stock assessment have led us to unreasonable management decisions."
The scallop industry expressed its concerns about the assessment in a July 18, 2012 letter to Dr. Bill Karp, the Director of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) legal counsel Drew Minkiewicz and David Frulla wrote "…all too often [the Science Center] takes the approach of trying to solve an assessment problem by reworking the existing data and using numerous statistical tools." They continued, "if the model is not capable of accounting for the unknown aliases, the answer is not to put one's head down and go forth into that statistical night; rather, it is to accept the limitations of the model and acknowledge the obvious: we are currently in a place that is beyond the capability of the current model, making the model no longer useful for catch advice."
FSF said that NOAA "…needs to redirect its limited resources away from the computer models and towards field research." In his response, Dr. Karp proposed a nationwide workshop on retrospective patterns and approaches for resolving them in stock assessments. But because the workshop will not take place until sometime this year, it will not be able to affect the quota for the 2013 fishing year, the focus of the FSF's request.
Reports from fishermen, who claim that the yellowtail stock is healthy and that they are seeing a high abundance of the species in the water, add to the lack of faith in the assessments.
"There are plenty of yellowtail out there," said Mark Phillips. "The biggest thing is, we are trying to avoid them." He said that he has been using nets whose mesh sizes are larger than he has used in the past, in order to avoid accumulating bycatch.
Ray Canastra explained that fishermen have also been using gear known as a "rockhopper" in an effort to avoid yellowtail. Normally, the rockhopper is used to pass over stones in areas where the ocean floor is rocky. However, because it rides higher than gear that is in direct contact with the ocean floor, it can also be used to avoid bottom-dwelling species like yellowtail. Despite this, fishermen are still landing yellowtail in large quantities.
"Even with the rockhopper gear they're using now, they can't get away from the yellowtail," he said. "We don't usually catch yellowtail with rockhoppers."
Phillips blames the discrepancy between what the assessments are concluding and what fishermen are seeing on the design of the assessments, most notably that the survey vessels do not survey in areas where yellowtail are often found. "It's like they drew a big circle around where the yellowtail are caught, and never made one single tow where the fishermen catch yellowtail," he said.
Other Regulations
Many haddock fishermen believe that a series of regulations, from limits on minimum catch size to gear restrictions, have prevented them from catching their quota; they point to the drastically different experiences US and Canadian fishermen have had in fulfilling their haddock allocations.
"Since 1997, Canadian fishermen have caught approximately 94 percent of their haddock catch," explains Jim Odlin, a fisherman for forty years and a former member of the NEFMC. "During that same period, we were only able to catch approximately 18 percent of our quota."
Since the mid-1980s, with the adoption of the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, the United States haddock fishery has been operating under minimum size limits. Currently, fishermen are restricted to catching haddock larger than 18 inches. Canadian fishermen do not face the same size restrictions, allowing them to land haddock that their American counterparts would have to discard. In September, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) added an option to drop the minimum size for haddock down to 16 inches in the current draft of Framework 48, which will modify the management plan for the Northeast multispecies fishery.
The passage of this option would allow the upcoming 2010 year class to be caught effectively, instead of being discarded like previous year classes. The TRAC estimates that the 2010 haddock year class, which will begin to reach the minimum size in 2013, boasted 589 million age 1 fish, making it the largest year class in the TRAC's time series. In comparison, since 1990, recruitment has usually fluctuated between 2.1 and 24 million fish, making the 2010 year class both a statistical outlier and an "exceptional" year class, according to the TRAC.
Current gear restrictions are also designed to limit what kind of haddock can be caught. Under the days-at-sea management system, the NEFMC restricted mesh size for haddock nets to 6.5 inches, in an attempt to reduce fishing mortality by allowing more haddock to pass through the nets.
According to Jim Odlin, because so many additional restrictions have been placed on fishermen, such as closed areas, the net restriction should have been eliminated with the move to sector management. He asserts that allowing a smaller mesh size would make the haddock fishery more efficient and allow for more of the quota to be caught.
"If we could change our thinking to 'How are we able to efficiently harvest the healthiest stocks?' Then I maintain that it will benefit the less healthy stocks," said Odlin.
Environment
Another problem fishermen have encountered this year is that even healthy fish stocks are not appearing where they normally would. Many blame recent changes in the environment.
"Sometimes fish just don't swim where you can catch them," said Odlin.
Problems like climate change are presenting new challenges for fishermen. 2012 proved to be the warmest on record in the North Atlantic, and the warmer ocean temperatures likely sent many fish away from their normal habitats in search of cooler waters.
"We need some cold water, that's really what the big issue is. We haven't had any cold water the last two years," said Mark Phillips. "Last winter, Georges Bank where I fish was 3 degrees warmer than the previous year. This year, in December, it was a degree warmer than last year." He noted that when the water temperature stays warm, the haddock are delayed in returning to Georges Bank.
A recent study conducted by a University of Washington professor of aquatic and fishery science, Ray Hilborn, and three other scientists, found that outside influences, such as these environmental factors, have the biggest sway on the strength of a year class of fish. The study found that only 18.3 percent of the 230 stocks examined were dependent on abundance to produce a healthy new year class. This indicated that, in most cases, a change in abundance does not affect a stock's productivity. In addition, they found that species with lower population sizes, such as those that are seemingly collapsed, were the least likely to be dependent on abundance.
"Holding stocks at high levels of abundance and rebuilding depleted stocks will not necessarily result in increased yields in the future," the study states. "Unless the management system changes or we greatly improve our ability to target individual species, current legal mandates will likely lead to major reductions in fisheries yields."
Illustrating that the stock size and population fluctuation of a species cannot alway be easily explained, the study by Hilborn and his colleagues states that exterior factors, such as "physical changes in the environment as well as changes associated with food, competitors or predators," greatly influence the size of a year class and the health of a stock.