News

Study delivers good news about cod, haddock stocks

By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
Published: September 4, 2008

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A pivotal scientific study of groundfish stocks off New England, introduced and discussed publicly for the first time yesterday, shattered some assumptions about the winners and losers in the quarter-century effort to rebuild fishing stocks since the federal government stepped in.

According to the report by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, successes were fewer than failures, but cod and haddock surprisingly were among the stocks that seem to have launched successful comebacks.

According to the report, haddock stocks seem to have almost entirely recovered.

Still, the report had ominous implications for the industry that has suffered through a variety of recovery schemes and faces a looming deadline for an updated plan to lift all the stocks to sustainable, if not ideal, levels.

The New England Fishery Management Council, whose members heard the oral report on the scientific paper and along with the public poured questions back at Paul Rego, the presenting scientist of the fisheries science center, today takes up the dilemma: What to do now?

Next May comes with a statutory deadline for a program to take a 10-year recovery process for the entire fishery through its second half to the finish line.

Placed on the table last week at a subcommittee meeting in Peabody were options including up to 70 percent reductions in days at sea that have already cut Gulf of Maine fishing to as little as 24 days per fisherman.

Whatever the council might decide to recommend, the National Marine Fisheries Service is widely expected to impose interim measures next May to bridge the gap until a new set of controls are written to nudge the fishery back to full strength.

In anticipation of Rego's report and this week's meeting of the council, political clout mobilized to urge caution and careful vetting of the science in the report.

U.S. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts and Olympia Snow and Susan Collins of Maine last week asked the inspector general of the federal Department of Commerce to take a hard look at Rego's report.

Another letter, this from the Rhode Island congressional delegation of Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Reps. Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin, urged the delay of any action based on the report until it could be vetted independently.

The massive study involved nearly 150,000 vessel trip reports and 5,000 observer trips, and it was widely lauded for looking longest and deepest into the fishery.

"It's the most comprehensive piece of fishing research I've ever seen," said Mark Gibson, the state deputy director of marine fisheries in Rhode Island.

But the report also was scored for blithe modeling and filling holes with assumptions.

"They burned witches in Salem with less science," said Jim Kendall, a seafood consultant from New Bedford.

"The process is absurd," said Ann-Margaret Ferrante, an attorney from Gloucester associated with the fishing industry. "Taking data and putting it into dysfunctional models."

Joseph Orlando, a Gloucester fisherman, asked Rego pointedly why "your science is so different than mine? We see more fish, we catch more fish and we're not even close to our catch limits."

"There is a disparity there," Rego said. "I'm not quite sure what is ultimately responsible for that disparity."

But the biologist went on to say, "There's a big difference between sampling in the survey and sampling to make money. You have a pretty good idea where to go when you conduct a survey. We're trying to make a statement about fishing as a whole," Rego added.

According to the assessment of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center at Woods Hole, 11 stocks "are now both overfished and experiencing overfishing (in 2007)," compared to seven that were similarly stressed three years earlier.

But stocks of New England's signature food fish, the "sacred" cod and its cousin haddock, whose declines in the second half of the last century spurred conservation efforts and stimulated study of the ocean ecosystem, have made a remarkable comeback.

Three species of flounder also showed the positive effects of more rigorous controls on fishing through limited access to the stocks, but the report posed a grave danger to the industry.

But other flat fish in southern New England and on George's Bank and the Gulf of Maine were not doing well, the report said. Neither were white hake and pollock. The reports on redfish and halibut were mixed.

The presentation by Rego, a biologist for the New England Fishery Management Council, at a meeting room in the Biltmore Hotel, packed with fishermen, industry representatives and political leaders from the coastal states, expanded upon a sneak preview issued in June to forewarn the council of its potentially radical implications.

The council then conceded the conclusions in the report threw them for such a loop, and they decided it would be impossible to meet the May 2009 deadline for a new iteration of regulations.

The council, which advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on policies to achieve the across-the-board recovery of all stocks — a goal imbedded in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management and Recovery Act and its incremental amendments and frameworks — faces intense pressure to forge and recommend new policies to lift all stocks.

Massachusetts state Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, complained that the requirement of the Magnuson-Stevens Act that the fishery be restored across the board means that restrictions must protect the least healthy species even at the expense of those whose vitality would allow a more aggressive use.

"We manage to the lowest common denominator," Tarr said.

"We're hanging by a thread because of the uncertainty of the next steps," Scott Lange, mayor of New Bedford, the nation's leading fishing port, told the council.

He advised the council it better have "tremendous confidence" in the numbers in the report because "any more ratcheting down (of fishing) and there won't be a fishing industry."

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