February 11, 2012
Cod Limits Eased, but Industry Still Struggles
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — Fishermen and federal officials grappled Friday with the increasingly bleak prospect of finding some way for the historic New England cod industry to avoid collapse amid troubles with the health of Gulf of Maine cod.
Their meeting came in the week after regional regulators bought fishermen a year's reprieve from devastating cuts to the allowed catch in the 2012 fishing year, which begins in May. But projections showed that fishermen still face cuts next year that most will not survive.
"It's going to be hard to preserve the industry at those low numbers, and that's something that concerns us a great deal," said Sam Rauch, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries arm, who led the meeting of fishermen, scientists and regulators.
"This truly is one of the iconic fisheries," he said.
For hundreds of years, cod in the Gulf of Maine have been crucial to New England fishermen, from Cape Cod to Maine, and four years ago, after a major assessment, it was thought to be one of the region's strongest species. It brought in $15.8 million in 2010, the second-highest amount, behind Georges Bank haddock, among the region's 20 regulated bottom-dwelling groundfish.
But data released last year indicated that the fish was so severely overfished that even if all fishing on it ended immediately, it would not rebound by 2014 to levels required under federal law.
As a result, fishermen were looking at an 82 percent cut in what they were allowed to catch last year, a reduction that would have wiped out not only regional fishermen who rely on cod. Restrictions on cod severely limit fishing on other groundfish species with which the cod swim, like flounder and haddock.
Early this month, regional regulators at the New England Fishery Management Council asked NOAA to adopt a one-year emergency rule that would enable regulators to avoid the huge cut. On Friday, Mr. Rauch signaled that NOAA would allow a limit that would mean a 22 percent cut from what fishermen were allowed to catch in 2011, though not nearly as deep a cut as first feared.
The problem, according to new projections, is that after the emergency rule expires in 2013, fishermen are again looking at a severe cut in the cod catch.
From the first indications of cod trouble, fishermen and their advocates have questioned the science behind the new figures. State Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante of Massachusetts, who represents the port of Gloucester, criticized what she characterized as the immense, constant swings in scientific assessments of the fish populations.
0 comments:
Post a Comment