Fishery Management Council Takes Important Step Towards Sustainable Fishery, Falls Short on Critical Issue

Contact:
Peter Shelley, VP & MA Advocacy Center Director, 617-510-1404
Sean Mahoney, VP & ME Advocacy Center Director, 207-671-0845

Portland, ME (June 25, 2009) – Today the New England Fishery Management Council took a critical step forward towards transforming the current system for managing the groundfish industry.  Known as “Amendment 16,” the Council’s groundfish fishery management plan establishes sectors, a new system that will ensure that fishermen who catch Atlantic cod, haddock, pollock, various flounder species and other commercially valuable fish that live near or on the ocean floor do so in a more accountable, sustainable and economically efficient manner than the previous “days at sea” system.

“A fishing sector is a group of fishermen who have decided to cooperate with each other to improve their efficiency and flexibility in catching and landing fish,” explained Peter Shelley, Senior Attorney and long-time fishery advocate for the Conservation Law Foundation.  “Sectors will be strictly limited to taking a particular amount of fish over the course of the year, but will be freed from the indirect fishing controls that have been used in the past. These effort controls have historically produced perverse incentives that led to overfishing, bycatch and killing of non-targeted species that had to be thrown back into the water dead.  In exchange for greater accountability, sector members will be given greater flexibility out on the water.  They can choose who in their group should fish, when the timing is best for prices and safety, and their stewardship efforts will be rewarded through continued future access to the fish.”

The Council’s actions this week, however, may have also undercut the very progress they were trying to accomplish. For those fishermen who opt not to join a sector, the Council failed to establish initially a strict limit or “total allowable catch” on the amount of groundfish that can be caught by the non-sector fishermen. “This was one of the most significant choices before the Council this week and we think they ultimately came up short,” said Shelley.

Essentially, those opting not to join sectors will be assigned to a “common pool,” which will continue to fish under the old “effort control” program. The history over the past two decades of use of this system is one of inefficiency, disproportionate impacts on coastal fishermen and smaller boats, and poor stewardship. Effort control programs haven’t worked well because the fishermen and circumstances out on the water are always far ahead of the ability of managers to anticipate. “Because fishermen are always innovating with their fishing methods and because ocean conditions are not static, effort control programs haven’t been able to adequately control mortality on the water,” said Shelley. “Every year, one or more of the species is subjected to significant overfishing, resulting in delays in rebuilding of these fish and limiting the economic returns that the fishery could produce. At the same time, these programs have had to over-regulate fishermen from landing fish that were in healthy condition.”

“By not imposing comparable accountability measures until 2012 on the common pool while loosening up some of the other rules applicable to these fishermen, the Council has approved a program that probably violates federal law and almost guarantees excessive fish mortality in the common pool. This overfishing will eventually punish the sector fishermen who were staying within their limits,” concluded Shelley. “We needed leadership on this issue from the states, in particular from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and it never materialized.  In the end, only Maine and Rhode Island provided the leadership that the sectors and the resource deserve.”

Under new requirements imposed by recent amendments to the federal fisheries law, called the Magnuson-Stevens Conservation and Management Act, fishing managers are now required to ensure that management plans immediately “prevent overfishing” and have science-based annual fishing limits with accountability measures to mitigate any overages that happen and to automatically adjust the fishing program in the following year when overages occur.

The Council’s actions this week made significant progress in meeting these requirements, although much work remains to be done to implement the plan. In particular, an essential condition for any quota fishery is ensuring that an effective and comprehensive monitoring program is implemented. According to Shelley, “There’s no magic to these sectors. But we believe they are a step in the right direction and are pleased that the Council is now committed to making them work.”

The Conservation Law Foundation (www.clf.org) works to solve the most significant environmental challenges facing New England.  CLF’s advocates use law, economics and science to create innovate strategies to conserve natural resources, protect public health and promote vital communities in our region.  Founded, in 1966, CLF is a nonprofit, member-supported organization with offices in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.