April 24 - Squelching the People’s Voice - So despite a confusing public process and a paltry 15-day comment period, enough people to fill Fenway Park twice over took time out to participate in the public process. And by a ratio of 12 thousand to one they told NOAA to keep the closed areas closed. But you wouldn’t know this from visiting the official public record for the proposal on the internet.

April 26 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, April 26 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, NOAA repeats its refusal of interim measures after a request from Governor Patrick; NEFMC meets and discusses climate change; a bill to allow Maine fishermen to sell lobsterbycatch fails; NMFS authorizes smaller mesh size for redfish; a bill to reintroduce alewives to the St. Croix River comes into effect; federal budget cuts mean NOAA furloughs.

March 13 - A Conspiracy Afloat? - “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair. There appears to be a conspiracy in our midst. Or so, some would think. Saving Seafood, “a 501(c)(6) association organized as a non-profit corporation funded by the fishing industry,” appears to have become rather discomposed by uncovering the fact that some people in New England believe that the practice of ripping up the ocean floor with heavy bottom trawling fishing gear might have deleterious effects on ocean fish and wildlife and the habitat that these species depend upon.

March 15 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 15 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the northern shrimp season flounders; sharks granted additional protections by Cites; Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization hearings begin; scientists are concerned about ocean acidification in the Gulf of Maine; the Maine lobster fishery earns MSC certification; SMAST will conduct a review of New England groundfish stock assessments; NEFMC member Matt McKenzie discusses the decline of cod stocks; the groundfish committee resumes discussion on Amendment 18.

March 6 - The Bottom Line: Changing Course for America’s Oldest Fishery - Recent scientific studies estimate that cod populations are at or near record lows. But this serious problem has not stopped the New England Fishery Management Council from proposing to end protection of their waters off the New England coast, a move that will make it even harder for cod—a fish that helped build the region’s economy—to recover.

March 8 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 8 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the state is concerned fisherman are misreporting the location of their catch; recreational limits for cod remain unchanged for 2013; Tom Nies promises to focus on ecosystem-based management with NEFMC; a New York Times discussion series features Callum Roberts and Vito Giacalone; the Gulf of Maine is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification; Dave Goethel asks for changes to discard calculations; Cape Pond Ice’s property in Gloucester put up for sale.

February 26 - Destructive Trawling and the Myth of “Farming the Sea” - In the wake of significant but highly warranted cuts to catch limits for cod, the New England Fishery Management Council spent the last day of their most recent meeting in January discussing the development of a suite of habitat protection measures known as the Omnibus Habitat Amendment. Despite the obvious need for new habitat protections to help restore Atlantic cod populations, the Council had already taken action to potentially open over 5000 square miles of previously protected areas to destructive bottom trawling. By doing so, the Council has continued to demonstrate a lack of regard for the immeasurable documented benefits of habitat protection to the health and productivity of our fisheries.

March 1 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 1 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, NOAA proposes measures to increase the monkfish catch, John Bullard writes an op-ed on the New England groundfish fishery, SMAST’s yellowtail avoidance system is growing, dogfish MSC certification expands, public lectures focus on seafood fraud and fleet consolidation, scientists Daniel Pauly, Trevor Branch, and Ray Hilborn face off in Nature.

Trawlers trail massive plumes of sediment in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo credit: SkyTruth

In the wake of significant but highly warranted cuts to catch limits for cod, the New England Fishery Management Council spent the last day of their most recent meeting in January discussing the development of a suite of habitat protection measures known as the Omnibus Habitat Amendment. Despite the obvious need for new habitat protections to help restore Atlantic cod populations, the Council had already taken action to potentially open over 5000 square miles of previously protected areas to destructive bottom trawling. By doing so, the Council has continued to demonstrate a lack of regard for the immeasurable documented benefits of habitat protection to the health and productivity of our fisheries.

Even more concerning were the misperceptions of the effects of bottom trawling on display at the January meeting—even by members of the Council itself. Laura Ramsden, a relatively new member of the Council and an owner of the Boston-based seafood distributor Foley Fish Company, suggested that the scientists tasked with evaluating habitat protection priorities might be missing the benefits of bottom trawling. She asked the members of the Closed Area Technical Team: “As you’re evaluating the different areas, are you also taking a look at potential damage of closing them in terms of invasive species and the potential risk of not ‘tilling the soil’, if you will?”

The inexplicable myth that bottom trawling might “farm the seabed” is all too common, but it has no foundation in scientific reality. There are few serious studies that suggest that trawling may increase any kind of food production, and they are very limited in scope. A single study suggests that plaice in the North Sea may benefit from the reduced competition and increased production of some invertebrate species on which they prey. But the trawling is very limited—1 or 2 trawl passes a year—and the study does not examine the effects on other species of tearing apart complex bottom structures, removing higher trophic level predators, and reducing natural competition and biodiversity. A second, empirical study found that higher levels of trawling reduced productivity of even small invertebrates and that variability in productivity was far more closely linked to climate change than bottom trawling.

There is similarly scant scientific evidence for Ms. Ramsden’s assertion that trawling has any beneficial role in limiting the spread of invasive species. On the contrary, multiple studies suggest that human disturbance makes habitat more vulnerable to the spread of invasive species.

Meanwhile, the scientific consensus on the destruction caused by bottom trawling is nearly unanimous. It’s hardly surprising that dragging massive trawls along the seafloor destroys habitat—scallop dredges can weigh up to a metric ton (2205 lbs), and furrows up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) deep are common in trawled areas. A recent study in European waters even showed bottom trawling was changing the bathymetry of the seaflooron a massive scale.

Numerous scientific studies have shown that trawling  lowers overall productivity and can completely change the composition of local fish populations. Trawling tears apart biological structures like kelp forests and sponges and flattens out the seafloor structures that protect juvenile fish, leading to increased predation and reduced recruitment. It reduces biodiversity and species richness, which have been repeatedly shown to build resilience to invasive species. And areas with complex bottom structure, like the rocky ridges and horse mussel beds of current protected area Cashes Ledge, are the most vulnerable. In some areas trawling can stir up so much sediment—which then settles to smother eggs, larvae and other ocean creatures—that it leaves a trailing plume visible from outer space.

Protecting valuable habitat areas from trawling provides more spawning adults and juvenile fish, harbors older females with higher rates of reproductive success, and protects complex habitat like kelp forests. The current protected areas have proven themselves beneficial to struggling fish populations—they have helped scallop populations recover, and some species, like haddock, are larger and more abundant inside these closed areas. Fishermen target the edge of the protected areas because they know that more and larger fish can be found there.

Opening protected areas to bottom trawling threatens to instantaneously reverse these benefits. The best scientific evidence is that bottom trawling does not “till the soil”, but that opening protected areas will destroy vital habitat and keep cod populations from recovering. NOAA and the Council should heed the scientific record and make the right decision—to keep bottom trawling out of the groundfish closed areas.

January 28 - New England’s Protected Waters are Threatened - Parts of New England’s waters set aside to protect cod, haddock, flounder, and other important fish could soon be subjected to some of the most damaging forms of large-scale fishing. Learn more about this 5000 square mile area with this interactive map.

January 29 - Investing in the Future: A Down East Groundfish Closed Area - Last week, the Groundfish Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council agreed to analyze a proposal for a new closed area off of eastern Maine that would protect known juvenile aggregations and historic spawning aggregations of groundfish, and important habitat. The current economic impacts of closing this area to groundfishing may be negligible, and this closed area promises significant benefits to the region and to Maine’s small boat fleet.

January 29 - “The Fish Just Aren’t There.” - There is no question that the expected reductions in annual catch limits (ACLs) will be difficult for an industry already in a declared disaster. But while these cuts for cod and haddock limits have grabbed headlines, the real story is that there simply aren’t enough fish. The science, the catch data and many fishermen say the populations of many important species are at or near all-time lows. Fishery regulators are eager to cushion the blow to those whose livelihoods are at risk. Unfortunately, many proposals intended to help fishermen do not address the real problem—a lack of fish—and instead risk further harm to weakened fish populations.

January 31 - CLF Calls to Shut Down New England Cod Fishery - Yesterday the story of New England’s cod fishery took another tragic turn when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to drastically cut catch limits for New England’s two cod stocks—Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod—by 77 and 61 percent, respectively. Now is not the time for denial. It is not the time for timid decisions and unconscionable risk. It is time to make the painful, necessary steps towards a better future for fishing in New England. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should shut the cod fishery down and protect whatever cod are left.

February 1 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, February 1 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the New England Fishery Management Council cuts cod catch limits and debates habitat protection measures and at-sea monitoring costs; Tom Nies is named the new Executive Director of NEFMC; a Gloucester trawler is accused of using an illegal net liner.

Yesterday the story of New England’s cod fishery took another tragic turn when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to drastically cut catch limits for New England’s two cod stocks—Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod—by 77 and 61 percent, respectively.

The Council’s action follows months of scientific debate on appropriate catch limits for cod. Recent assessments showed stocks at the lowest levels ever recorded and declining rapidly:

• Georges Bank cod biomass is at just 7% of healthy, sustainable levels.
• Gulf of Maine cod biomass is at 13-18% of healthy, sustainable levels.
• The last better-than-average year for young Georges Bank cod production was 1991.
• The amount of younger fish becoming available for fishing, known as recruitment, has been at the lowest estimated levels ever for the last five years running.

Confirming this dismal outlook, fishermen have been unable to find enough cod to even come close to filling their small quotas. The fish just aren’t there any more.

Despite this grim outlook, some in the industry asked for interim measures that would allow devastating overfishing to continue for yet another year, and the Massachusetts fisheries agency representative on the Council inexplicably asked for catch levels that were higher than the highest recommendations from scientists. NOAA regional administrator John Bullard rejected these efforts as legally and biologically unjustifiable.

Bullard told the Council yesterday that the “day of reckoning” for the fishery had arrived and that further management denial about the true state of the stocks could not be sanctioned. In this context, the Council chose to cut the catch – even in the face of industry opposition.

But the action to cut cod quota did not go far enough. The options implemented by the Council are the least aggressive cuts allowable by law, and under some assessments they still authorize overfishing. They push the limits of scientific advice and put the short-term economic interests over the long-term health of New England’s cod fishery and the viability of a whole generation of groundfishermen. Years of similarly short-sighted decision-making have caused the current biological disaster.

The Council unanimously rejected a motion to shut down the cod fishery entirely—an option that the NMFS Regional Director labeled as irresponsible, but one that may be the only chance for the recovery of New England’s cod stocks.

Canada took similar action to shut down its cod fishery in 1992, when its stocks were in a state remarkably similar to New England’s current disaster. Even their action in retrospect was too little and too late to avert a social and economic calamity; tens of thousands of people were put out of work, and cod stocks have still not fully recovered.

Unlike Canada, however, New England fishing communities are unlikely to see massive disaster relief funds. The New England Fishery Management Council now owns this problem and will bear full responsibility for the long term biological and socio-economic  consequences of their decision. While CLF hopes that the Council’s gamble is not reckless, decades of bad Council bets in the past and the current scientific advice do not bode well. Time will tell.

Now is not the time for denial. It is not the time for timid decisions and taking unconscionable risks. It is time to make the painful, necessary steps towards a better future for fishing in New England. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should shut the cod fishery down and protect whatever cod are left.

January 24 - Recent paper points to a need for improved ecosystem modeling - Fisheries managers in the U.S., and increasingly around the world, use stock assessments and scientific information about fish populations to set catch limits for fisheries. It is typically assumed that more adult fish means more reproduction, and thus more fish available for us to harvest. But the authors of a paper published last week by several prominent fisheries biologists found that the productivity of fish stocks can be nearly independent of the abundance of adults, and is influenced by other factors.

January 25 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 25 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the SSC sets 2013 Allowable Biological Catch for three stocks; John Bullard denies a request for interim measures; the New England shrimp season begins; the Marine Fisheries Institute will review the groundfish stock assessment process; concern over a loss of fisheries advocates in Congress; an investigation into fisheries rule making finds flaws in record keeping.

January 9 - The Bottom Line: A Better Way to Manage Fish - Some proposed fisheries rules would take us backward, with costly new delays and exemptions that could allow overfishing and reverse conservation gains. Other proposals offer an opportunity to improve the health of our oceans, by managing our fisheries as part of the larger ecosystem. This holistic approach — often called “ecosystem-based fisheries management” — looks beyond the health of individual species to also consider the food and habitat they rely upon.

January 10 - NOAA’s 2011 Groundfish Report by the Numbers - On December 26th, NOAA released its “2011 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2011-April 2012).” Overall, the report indicates that groundfish catch and net revenues are increasing steadily, although some stocks, most notably Georges Bank haddock, are fished at a level far below the annual catch limit. Consolidation and equity issues are still a major concern. Measures of fleet inequality generally improved from 2010 levels, and the decline in boat numbers has slowed noticeably following a sharp drop-off between 2009 and 2010. Here are some highlights of the data.

January 11 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 11 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, fishermen have caught less than half the 2012 catch limit on 14 out of 16 groundfish stocks; Maine lobster landings hit a record high; the House debates Sandy aid; Brian Rothschild calls biological reference points arbitrary; some fishing advocates support Barney Frank for interim MA senator.