NMFS late with new stocks data

The research arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service has missed its own deadline for publishing fresh data on the status of New England's groundfish stocks — even as the New England fishing industry braces for business casualties from hard catch limits based on data from 2007.

The delayed posting of the stocks data from trawl surveys taken in the spring and fall of 2009 was attributed to data and calibration problems created by the 2008 replacement of NMFS' longtime research vessel, Albatross IV, with its successor, the Bigelow.

The change created a onetime "apples and oranges" situation, according to the top research scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

"We made a number of changes in the ways we did the survey," said Russel Brown, the supervisory research fishery biologist at the center at Woods Hole. He conceded "not doing a very good" job of predicting when the data vetting and analysis would be done and the material posted on the science center Web site.

A spokeswoman for the center had written in a Jan. 27 e-mail that "we expect to post the spring (2009) data in about two weeks and the autumn data by the end of February."

In a telephone interview yesterday, Brown said he expected the 2009 spring data will be available "immediately, maybe within days."

But the delay in posting the new data — which could shed significant light on the health of the fish stocks and the tight allocations granted fishermen based on the 2007 figures — is not sitting well in the fishing community and elsewhere.

"This is extremely important information and the quicker it is out, the better," said Brian Rothschild, a leading academic scientists and dean at the School of Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

Jimmy Ruhle, a North Carolina-based commercial fisherman and government trawl surveyor, said the problems in the changeover from the Albatross to the Bigelow "didn't sneak up on people."

"The best data should be on the table, and it is not," said Ruhle.

The importance of the recent data is heightened by the scheduled May 1 start of the catch share regulatory system — a radically different conservation and economic system based, and the assignment of hard catch limits, which were mandated by the 2006 version of the Magnuson Act.

Both changes arrive with scientists and industry hoping and expecting to see a continued upward thrust of graph lines showing a strong rebuilding trend from more than a decade of effective conservation controls.

Lobbying for emergency relief actions by regulators is predicated on the continued revival of the stocks.

The catch limits were based largely on the findings of the 2008 report of the Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting, and have been cited by industry leaders as far too conservative to allow a valid test of the catch share business model, based on voluntary fishing cooperatives known as sectors.

Industry leaders in Gloucester and New Bedford have predicted that business failures could amount to at least half of the fishing boats that begin working in sectors in barely a month.

The hard catch limits require fishing to stop when the limit of any species in the groundfish complex is reached. The most likely "choke" stock is pollock, which is managed for the first time as an overfished species with a catch limit barely one third the total catch from 2009.

Brown said the science center was intent on speeding the completion of a survey of pollock that could be used to adjust the catch limit. Officials with the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition have predicted that the pollock catch limit could shut down the fishery by midsummer.

Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has come under intense pressure from up and down the Atlantic Coast since taking office last year for pushing hard to install catch share systems — with the distribution of the hard total catch allocated as reserved harvesting rights to sector members.

As recently as Monday, Sen. John Kerry hosted a private meeting of boat business owners and shoreside support services, who had a two-hour exchange with Lubchenco.

A point of emphasis was the need for flexibility in the recovery deadlines for the stocks. The 1996 Magnuson-Stevens Act requires all the overfished stocks to be restored to optimal vitality at the same time. The inflexibility of the deadline is cited as a cause of the conservative catch limits.

On a related front, a congressional oversight subcommittee recently expressed frustration at Lubchenco's priorities, pushing the nation into catch share systems without solid scientific underpinnings or verifiable stock assessments.

The fiscal 2011 NOAA budget for NMFS shifts millions from scientific research and cooperative research into a $54 million catch shares budget.

Earlier this week, Congressman Walter Jones, R-N.C., filed a bill to bar the use of federal money on catch shares in his state.

Ruhle faulted the government for pushing ahead with catch shares during the transition between the old and new research vessels.

He said the new management regime of catch shares and sectors depends on superior data.

Instead, he said, "you are using 2007 information — and this is the most significant action on groundfish ever."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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