HYANNIS, Mass. - Next month, federal fishery regulators are expected to implement emergency restrictions on the Gulf of Maine cod fishery. This follows a recommendation yesterday by the New England Fishery Management Council that action be taken as soon as possible to reduce cod mortality. But the plan was short on detail.
After lengthy debate, and much impassioned testimony, the New England Fishery Management Council opted to send a simple to federal regulators: "To reduce fishing mortality on Gulf of Maine cod for fishing year 2014, and that was it," says council spokesperson Pat Fiorelli.
Fiorelli says the emergency measures will apply for the next six months, and that more permanent rules for the fishing year starting next spring will likely be crafted at the council's November meeting.
The brevity of the request reflects the inability of council members to agree on more detailed plans - plans such as those recommended last month by a panel of groundfish experts, which urged a number of changes, including the closure of more inshore spawning areas.
"The committee also recommended a review of the extent of cod by-catch in the lobster fishery," says environmental advocate Peter Shelley, of the Conservation Law Foundation. Shelley says no emergency measures are likely to be sufficient to address the crisis facing the fishery.
Speaking at the council meeting in Hyannis, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, which was webcast, Shelley said much of the blame lies with the council itself. "This council has consistently been setting catch levels that result in overfishing of Gulf of Maine cod," he said.
He says cod are barely reproducing fast enough to cope with even the pressures of recreational fishing - much less the commercial harvest. Shelley, and others, have also expressed concern about proposals for the next fishing year, which he says could see Gulf of Maine cod's protected habitat reduced by up to 70 percent. "This is a management failure," he says.
Many of those who make their living on the ocean, however, say they're paying the price for bad science. "Fishermen in the Gulf of Maine were tried, convicted and executed by their own government without one shred of evidence being offered," says New Hampshire fisherman David Gaithel, who says he doesn't trust the latest stock assessment - the data underpinning many current assumptions about the state of Gulf of Maine cod.
In August, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service said the amount of cod spawning in the Gulf is only at about 3 to 4 percent of its target level. That's a decline from 13 to 18 percent three years ago. "What is described in this document is not what is being seen on the water," Gaithel says.
Some scientists are also concerned by how the latest stock assessment was conducted. "Procedurally, this is highly unusual," says Steve Cadrin, a marine science professor at UMass Dartmouth, and a member of the New England council's scientific and statistical committee. He says the August assessment was unscheduled and carried out without the usual oversight and transparency, and this has led to mistrust.
But he says it's too late to argue about it, as it's now official data. The challenge going forward, as he sees it, is for regulators to come up with a balanced decision. "That allows for the conservation and rebuilding of cod, while also sustaining the fisheries in the Gulf of Maine," Cadrin says.
Cadrin says cod should no longer be targeted.But he hopes any solution will enable fishermen to go after other, more plentiful stocks, like haddock and lobster, without their unintended cod by-catch putting them over the catch limit.
NOAA Fisheries is expected to implement emergency action next month.