Our science right now may be missing the changing forest by focusing on each individual tree. And that science is certainly suspect when it says that one tree is suddenly 40% smaller than it was three years ago.
Acting Administrator Samuel Rauch attended this week's council meetings, but before that, the agency promised to be flexible and use emergency powers to address a situation they agreed came about through absolutely no fault of New England fishermen and fisheries managers.
The attitude and approach of the agency has been markedly different than it was a few years ago, when decisions on quotas and implementation of catch shares were made without regard to any economic or fleet diversity consequences. This is the direct result of political pressure, reviews of the agency's shortcomings, and changes in NMFS personnel.
Gulf of Maine cod, which was declared to be rebuilt following the 2008 survey, is now reclassified as being both overfished, and with overfishing occurring. In fact, the new data say that Gulf of Maine cod has been overfished continuously since 1982, which sharply contradicts the recent rosy statements made by NOAA about meeting the 2014 target that US fisheries are rebuilt, and having no overfishing occurring.
In 2007, the Gulf of Maine cod stock was estimated to be 34,000 metric tons, above the level that would classify it as overfished. in 2011, the spawning stock biomass is now estimated to be 14,500 tons less, and well below the overfishing threshold.
For 2011, allowable catch was just under 8,000 metric tons. If the new numbers were followed without adjustment, the ACL would be on the order of 1400 metric tons, a level that would shut the fishery in the Gulf of Maine.
Cod is by far the most important species for the small boat fleet. In New Hampshire, with a few smaller vessels, cod makes up 91% of the revenue.
The compromise reached at the council meeting, would give NMFS a range of 6700 to 7500 tons for next year, with the agency making a final decision. However, this applies to 2012 only, and does not address the catch levels allowed in 2013.
So why is cod such a crisis for NOAA.
First, the small inshore boats were the hardest hit by the consolidation of the fleet over the past decade. In periods of low abundance, they could not move to new fishing grounds, and as a result, their histories were often the most impacted by prior restrictive fishing rules.
Then the decision to allocate catch shares in the sector program strictly by fishing history served to disadvantage further the small vessels. There may not have been a better system, but the consequence was that larger vessels that could move with the rolling closures and fish both inshore and offshore, were rewarded with higher history, while inshore vessels that had tied up during closures, and significantly cut back on groundfish due to regulations, were hurt.
Further, the leasing and sale of permits and days at sea tended to favor larger boats who were better capitalized, had more access to financing, and could more easily increase their shares through purchases of permits and fishing history.
The last piece of the groundfish fishery that remained to small boats from Gloucester north to Maine was the cod fishery, and this represented the species that accounted for the largest share of their income.
As a result, when the new assessment showed drastic cutbacks were needed in the most visible, most politically potent, and most angry sector of the fleet, a firestorm erupted.
NMFS has responded well with an emergency measure, so that likely impacts in 2012 will be manageable. But what happens in the future is very much in the air.
The cod crisis calls into question how science is being used for fisheries management. In defending the new peer reviewed stock assessment, Northeast fishery center scientists said it was an order of magnitude better and more thorough than previous cod assessments.
Nevertheless, serious questions were raised:
-is the Gulf of Maine the right measurement unit, or should New England cod stocks be considered as a whole.
-the results depend on such a long chain of calibrations as to be unreliable. The survey vessels have changed; there were known problems with some of the survey years in terms of fishing gear, and the model arbitrarily started in 1982 due to assumptions about data. Other scientists have shown that extending the model back to the 1960's shows the stock is not overfished.
-recreational usage is very poorly measured. NOAA is shifting to a new data system for estimating recreational catches, and this has resulted in huge changes in the estimates of recreational removals. They are much lower than previously thought.
-counterintuitively, when less fish are taken out of the stock in prior years, due to changing estimates, the model reduces the stock size, instead of increasing it. The reason is that the model now assumes that fewer fish led to the same stock size, leading to a big reduction in spawning stock biomass estimates. Yet these estimates determine when a fishery is overfished.
-finally, Canada, which manages similar stocks, makes very different model assumptions. If the US adopted Canadian assumptions, much of the problems seen in the current year's results would disappear.
So it appears that the best science has reached the limits of its ability to be used to manage the cod stock.
This is the real crisis coming out of New England. Fishermen and managers did everything NOAA required: they did not fish beyond the limits assigned; they stayed in areas assigned, they observed closures, they had full observer coverage, they reduced discards from over 100% of the catch to around 5%, and yet today after doing everything asked of the industry, the fishery is back in crisis.
There was a real sense of deja vu in the council meeting this week as no one could believe we were back talking about the same issues as had been contentious for the past twenty years.
Fishery managers and NOAA need a new approach. The idea that with current money and budgets and research workload that hundreds of species can be scientifically observed to the degree demanded under current Magnuson is just not possible.
NOAA is right that the US has predominantly ended overfishing and that stocks that are still overfished are on a rebuilding trajectory.
Now it is time to adopt a more macro view of these fisheries. A longer timeline than annual review is needed. Given the uncertainties in the data, and the controls in place, the idea that catastrophic overfishing will suddenly occur is less and less credible.
For fisheries that have catch shares there is real time data available on effort, on lengths and weights and sizes, that can be immediately used to determine if something radical has changed in the biology of a stock that demands immediate response.
But in the absence of such real time adjustments, quotas must be set for longer time periods, and stocks must be managed in larger units. The goal is no longer to achieve absolute certainty for every single scientifically distinct stock, but instead to maintain the U.S. fishery in a healthy and sustainable state overall, knowing that there will be fluctuations in individual years, but the system has enough momentum and self-correcting mechanisms to not consider these annual fluctuations to be a crisis.
Cod stocks in New England are on the southern end of their range at a time when global warming is changing the distribution of many fisheries. Volatility is increasing as a result. To manage in this environment, NOAA has to take a larger view of the productivity of New England's waters, and allow fluctuations in measurements and in species abundance without considering each change a crisis. In this fashion, the economic benefits of the fishing industry will continue as they adjust to the changing circumstances.
A new management regime designed for future fluctuations would look at overall fisheries productivity, spatial distribution of the fleet; goals for fleet diversity and the trade offs to be made for such an outcome; and a robust share trading system to allow fleets within their areas to have access to quota that is actually fishable.
Our science right now may be missing the changing forest by focusing on each individual tree. And that science is certainly suspect when it says that one tree is suddenly 40% smaller than it was three years ago.
Republished with permission from SeafoodNews.com