The New England Fishery Management Council's Scientific and Statistical Committee, newly empowered to establish catch limits, has conceded making a mistake in calculating the proposed total catch reduction in skates, a high volume food fish.

The mistake, as described in a memo from the committee Chairman, Dr. Steve Cadrin, to council executive director Paul Howard, was in plugging a "0" into an equation where a "—" for missing or blank should have gone.

The result of the data entry error was an unjustified cut of 6,817 metric tons of skate off the acceptable biological catch recommendation for the 2010-11 fishing season.

The original, erroneous calculation of the acceptable biological catch of skate was 23,826 metric tons, a volume that was 57 percent of the catch in 2007, the control year.

After the mistake was rectified, the committee recalculated and set the acceptable biological catch at 30,643 metric tons, which meant that the reduction in skate volume would be only 26 percent.

The mistake by the Scientific and Statistical Committee occurred on the heels of revelations that the parent agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, had calculated many inaccurate catch histories of fishermen for the past 10 years. These fallacious records are the basis for establishing the catch shares for each permitholder as the groundfishery converts next year from a regulatory system based on effort controls to one rooted in fishermen's total allowable catch.

NMFS, which rules fisheries from Canada through the Carolinas from its Gloucester regional headquarters, has invited fishermen to document the erroneous catch histories by Oct. 31 but the service said the corrections could not be made in time to modify the catch share distributions for 2010. Any corrections would only be made for the 2011 fishing year.

Richard Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford and the Boston Seafood Display Auction, said he was disappointed that the skate mistake had not been highlighted during the September meeting of the council in Plymouth. The mistake was noted in the briefing package.

Cadrin's memo to Howard was dated Sept. 23, the middle day of the three-day conference.

According to its 2007 statistical abstract, the skate fishery in New England grossed $10.9 million.

Canastra said the error could have cost New Bedford as many as 300 jobs.

"There are four or five processors that specialize in skate. It's labor intensive, the wings need to be skinned and trimmed. About 95 percent of the skate is exported to France," he said.

Prices range from 25 cents to $1.50 a pound.

Skate is a close relative of the sharks, and tastes somewhat like scallops with a similar texture.

Summarizing the memo from Cadrin to Howard, the industry Web site "SavingSeaFood" said, "As a result of a mistake whereby unavailable data was wrongly included in the calculation as 'zero' rather than 'missing,' the revised recommendation increases the acceptable biological catch by 28.6 percent, from 23,826 metric tons to 30,643 metric tons.

Canastra is an owner of the SavingSeaFood Web site. Cadrin and Howard could not be reached for comment.

The reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 2006 shifted authority for setting the minimal catch limits from the council, an appointed body of industry, environmental and government representatives to the Scientific and Statistical Committee, a group of academics and scientists.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.