A report this week that the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank groundfishery is recovering more slowly than hoped — if at all — disconcerted the government's advisory council and moved an esteemed fisherman to propose a complete shutdown of the fishery.
After hearing that the pace of recovery was off, especially for flatfish — flounder, sole and halibut — the New England Fisheries Management Council agreed to put off making new, and almost certainly, more stringent rules to protect the stocks during their rebuilding until after a full benchmark assessment is made in August.
The delay means no new rules are likely until next winter. They were previously scheduled for October.
Newport, R.I.-based commercial fisherman Phil Ruhle surprised the council meeting in Portland, Maine, with the suggestion that the fishery should be closed.
"I suggested they should shut it down completely," said Ruhle, who serves on a panel that advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on catch methods for monitoring the status of the fishery.
Such a radical move is virtually inconceivable. Before it could be even formally entertained, the council would be required to undertake extensive environmental and economic studies.
Ruhle was in Portland for the report of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center that established new definitions of overfishing. The technical, 60-page report by all accounts was discouraging.
"All the flatfish are in trouble," Ruhle said. "Their growth rate is going the wrong way on us. The news on finfish (cod, haddock, pollock and hake) are not as bad, they're just not as good as we want."
Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the industry's largest research and lobbying organization, described the report as "surprising to say the least."
She could not be reached for comment on Ruhle's idea to close down the fishery.
Except for white hake, she told her members in an e-mail report on the meeting that "other stocks continue to have high mortality. Why is the big question? Is it the scientific models? Is it the ecosystem?"
In the wake of the report, Odell noted that "council members expressed serious frustration."
Patricia Fiorelli, the council's public affairs officer, said the council opted to wait for the "full blown assessment" due in August before deciding what steps to take.
If the assessment confirms the limited results reviewed in Portland this week, the council would almost certainly further reduce the number of days at sea and catch quotas from already severe restrictions that have convulsed the industry.
The council was considering a proposal that would have cut the days at sea by 70 percent beginning May 2009. That measure and others were tabled pending the peer-reviewed assessment in mid-summer.
Ruhle told the Times that kind of reduction in fishing days would drive many fishermen out of the industry. "Don't have the last three fishermen fighting over the last fish," said Ruhle, who was part of a team of Rhode Island fishermen, scientists and a netmaker that won a $30,000 prize last year for inventing a netting that reduced bycatch.
Massachusetts fishermen are in line to split nearly $12 million in emergency federal financial relief to keep them viable until the fishery recovers sufficiently to loosen restrictions.
"The fishery will come back," Ruhle said. But he added that it made no sense to limp through the next few years until the pressure comes off. "We have five years left in the recovery time frame."
On the current course, he said, he feared that the last fishermen still fishing would be the "deep pockets."
Instead, he said he preferred a complete shutdown which would accelerate the recovery, and then appeal to Congress to give the fishing community the kind of help it has been giving farmers for years not to farm.
"They will be still fishing in the North Atlantic 100 years from now," Ruhle predicted. "But it we were still around, we wouldn't recognize it."
Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
