By Richard Gaines
NEWPORT, R.I. — The herring fleet and the lobster industry, which takes the vast majority of the catch for bait, were given some small, but important relief yesterday from harsh projected cutbacks in catch limits for the next three years.
Parsing admittedly cryptic advice from its Scientific and Statistical Committee, which had projected a steep reduction in the catch of the linchpin forage fish — valued more highly by lobsters, striped bass and cod than humans — the New England Fishery Management Council agreed nearly unanimously to ease a bit off the restriction.
Debate on the statistically-driven future of herring catch limits consumed the first day of a three-day conference which poses equally sticky questions today and tomorrow about yellowtail, scallops and the groundfish complex.
In September, the scientific committee had advised shaving the 145,000 metric ton catch limit to 90,000 metric tons, not because of overfishing — none is known to be occurring — but because a troubling pattern deep in the analysis of data suggests something as yet undefined might be amiss in the biomass of the stock.
Herring plays a central role in the ecology of the Western Atlantic as well as the New England economy, yet pleas failed for an accelerated government assessment of the health of the stocks which are fished inshore and deep in Georges Bank as well as by weir technology in New Brunswick, Canada.
Yesterday, the council availed itself of a bit of wiggle room it sought and the science committee provided to up the limit from the presumed 90,000 metric tons to 106,000 metric tons.
The extra 16,000 tons were promised to the deep sea area of Georges Bank to draw the big trawlers away from the coast and limit pressure on the inshore stocks, according to debate comments.
"There's no question where the extra fish should go," said Vito Calomo, a retired fisherman and advocate for the port of Gloucester.
"The (herring) stock is not overfished, it's not on verge of collapse. We're are not just working on herring, we are working on economies of the states ... There's a snowball effect," he said.
Dana Rice, a Maine lobsterman who was replaced on the council last summer, appeared to speak to his former colleagues and argued that the tighter restrictions on herring catches "will devastate the lobster industry beyond repair." He said he believed the problem was "poor data."
The vote to ease up the catch limit from 90,000 to 106,000 tons was 15-1. Only Sally McGee, the representative of the Environmental Defense Fund, opposed the decision to ease the original recommendation by the science committee.
That approach, McGee said, was "consistent with the (science) committee's advice ... consistent with the declining projections of the species."
She was not alone in expressing concern for the stability of herring.
Councilor David Goethel, a commercial fisherman from New Hampshire, highlighted the stakes. "We can't afford to be wrong about this," he said. "We talk about having no bait. If we're wrong, there'll be no bait for years."
The debate was framed by the science committee which undertook a rethinking of its position at the request of the council.
A mass conference call of members of the science committee last week produced a report, in essence saying the science committee could not justify a thinner buffer of uncertainty in its analysis of the "retrospective pattern," suggesting reason for concern about the herring biomass.
The science committee, empowered in the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act to set minimum catch limits, had been so uncertain of what the retroactive pattern implied that it surrounded it with 40 percent of uncertainty. This calculation produced the extreme cut to herring catch limits — 90,000 tons, down from 145,000.
The council had asked if the committee might be comfortable with a 17 percent buffer. In saying no, the committee said it believed the catch level needed to reflect recent catches.
But Steve Cadrin, chairman of the science committee, told the council the committee could not help beyond that point. "What 'recent catch' is, is up to the council," Cadrin noted.
Richard Gaines maybe contacted at 978-283-7000 x3464 or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
