By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
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The bitterly disputed low pollock allocation — identified by many as certain to strangle the groundfishery and cited by fishermen and their advocates as an example of the harm done by faulty government science — could be reversed soon, a regulatory committee advised Wednesday.
A well-connected fishing group on Cape Cod and the Pew Environment Group both issued press releases saying the decision had been made.
But the government released a statement noting that the advice was "preliminary."
The Groundfish Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council gave an informal "heads-up" that a new assessment of the pollock stock seemed to confirm industry claims of the fish's prevalence in the mix of groundfish in the waters of the northwestern Atlantic.
The relief of the fleet will be enormous and in some cases business-saving, according to industry analysts.
Although the vetting of the findings will not begin until the full council meets next week in Portland, Maine, Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition — who was at the groundfish meeting in Mansfield — told the Times that relief from the so-called "choke" allocation was probable.
"The pollock stock assessment, which was started last winter, is just coming forward," Odell said in a telephone interview from the meeting. "Although they did not release the numbers, the total allowable catch will probably increase substantially this year."
Last August, the government cut the allowable pollock catch by 67 percent from the poundage landed by the New England fleet in 2008.
It was a decision that Vito Giacalone, the coalition's policy director, said at the time "stands to break the system."
He and the working fleet insisted the government trawl survey was faulty and that pollock remained plentiful.
"The fishermen were right," Richie Canastra, a leader of the New Bedford fishing community, and treasurer of the coalition said Wednesday.
The government in May instituted a catch share system in the groundfishery for boats organized in cooperative "sectors," with fishermen working within hard catch limits.
The cutback in previous pollock landings was projected to short-circuit the experiment in catch shares, the No. 1 priority of fisheries administrator Jane Lubchenco and her close ally, the Environmental Defense Fund — which has a seat on the council and has mobilized an aggressive campaign on behalf of catch shares nationally and in New England.
The premature announcement of the pollock increase as a done deal drew interest Wednesday on its own.
Three hours before the official announcement of even the "heads up" about the impending action on relieving the constraints on pollock, the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association — which has been lobbying for a more reasonable allocation — put a press release on its website at 1:18 p.m.
The Cape Cod fishermen reported that the National Marine Fisheries Service had made what would be a radical liberalization of the constricted catch limit for pollock to 16,000 metric tons, "five times the current allotment."
Last summer, NMFS set the catch at 3,813 metric tons, a 67 percent cut from the 11,370 metric tons that were landed in 2008.
Odell said the press release had jumped the gun, but she added that "whatever the 'Hookers' — (as they call themselves) — said in the press release is probably true."
A relatively small group based in Chatham, the Hook Fishermen's Association, carries significant influence through patronage from and investment by the environmental sector — notably EDF and the Pew Environment Group.
The Hookers also have a close and favorable relationship with NOAA, which anointed the group as "environmental heroes," while EDF is an investment advisor to the hook association's permit bank.
The group's policy director, John Pappalardo, is chairman of the New England Fishery Management Council, but at the centers of the industry — the working class ports of Gloucester and New Bedford — the Cape Cod crew is considered a rival and even turncoat by many fishermen for its advocacy of conservation policies pushed by the environmental sector over the past two decades.
A central point of a federal lawsuit challenging the equity of the new fishing regimen, Amendment 16 is the allegation that favorable consideration was given to the hook fishermen — the group is not named but identified implicitly — at the expense of the rest of the fleet. The suit was filed last month by fishing industry interests from Maine to North Carolina, and includes the cities of Gloucester and New Bedford as plaintiffs.
The Hook Fishermen's Association's press release announced that "the new catch limit, which was announced by the National Marine Fisheries Service today and is expected to go into effect in July, has been updated to reflect the most recent scientific data available and will provide additional opportunities for local fishermen this season."
Pew Environment Group, whose New England Fisheries Campaign is managed by Peter Baker, a former member of the Cape Cod Hook Fishermen's staff, also issued a press release asserting that the expansion of pollock allocation had been announced.
But NOAA Fisheries' release denied that a decision had been made.
"Statements issued by Pew Environment referring to the 'National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announcement that it would be raising the Annual Catch Limit for pollock by over 350 percent, and by Cape Cod Hook referring to 'the new catch limit, which was announced by the National Marine Fisheries Service" led some recipients to believe that a final assessment had been issued," the government agency release said. "That is not that case."
James Kendall, a New Bedford seafood consultant and former fisherman, said the premature announcements were a confirmation of the beneficial close connections of the hook fishermen and Pew with the government.
Kendall compared the incident to "insider trading."
"This is borderline illegal," he said.
He also chastised NOAA science for such a huge misreading of the health of the pollock stock in handing down its original allocation.
"How bad is the science when a second look gets a 500 percent increase?" he said.
Canastra and Odell said the government's initial negative finding was based on limited numbers of pollock caught in trawl nets, but when more sophisticated analyses were made on age structure of the samples, a more realistic profile of the stock was reached.
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
