September 30, 2015 — The requirement that the cost of at-sea monitors be paid by the fishermen who participate in the Northeast Multispecies Fishery is mere weeks away from being phased in.
Study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests as many as 60 percent of affected boats could be pushed out of profitability by the requirement, based on estimates of monitors costing $700 per day.
Republican U.S. Rep. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire hosted a roundtable mid-month with NOAA representatives and fishermen to address the issue.
“We’re supposed to take into account that we don’t destroy the fishing communities,” Rep. Ayotte said, according to Sept. 18 report by the Portsmouth Herald. “(Requirements to protect fishermen) are being ignored in all this.”
She was referring to National Standard 8 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which says measures used to manage the fishery must “take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities by utilizing economic and social data,” consistent with the prevention of “overfishing and rebuilding of overfished stocks.”
The requirement for consistency, above, might explain why Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator John Bullard told Rep. Ayotte that “eliminating overfishing” supersedes all other priorities.
The Standard-Times is having a very difficult time trying to understand why a policy that will have such a clear negative impact on fishermen is being instituted when the beneficial impact on the resource — the fishery — is so unclear.