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Feature Articles
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Industry, NMFS cooperate on monkfish survey
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by Lorelei Stevens
This article is reprinted with permission of Commercial Fisheries News, the Northeast's fishing newspaper for over 30 years, ©2003 Compass Publications Inc. Commercial Fisheries News is published monthly; annual subscriptions are $21.95. To subscribe or request a sample issue: call (877) 263-4496; fax (207) 367-2490; e-mail (cfoster@fish-news.com); or click on the hot link.
FAIRHAVEN, MA - Fishermen and National Marine
Fisheries Service (NMFS) scientists gathered around the same table on Jan. 12
to put their heads together and begin planning a survey that they hope will
paint a clear picture of the status of the monkfish resource.
Industry people are convinced the survey, which
will be conducted from late February through March, will prove that the
monkfish resource is not in the dire shape thought by fishery managers.
The motivation behind the effort is to head off
the May 1, 2002 scheduled shutdown of the directed fishery.
During the meeting, Anne Richards of the NMFS
Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and J.J. Maguire, a Canadian
scientist working for the industry group Monkfish Defense Fund, got down to
business by explaining the pros and cons of two survey design options:a "grid" type, with sampling
stations spread equally over waters from the Canadian boundary to Hatteras, NC;
and a "stratified random" type.
NEFSC's Steve Murawski pointed out to the group
that one advantage of the stratified random survey design is that it would
allow about one third of the sampling stations to be designated in places where
fishermen know monkfish are found.
That was all it took.The group decided to go with the stratified random survey.
Fishermen began talking among themselves and
then, one by one, walked up to the overhead projector, picked up a colored
marker, and inked in their survey station idea points from 15 fathoms across
the shelf to the deep outer shelf contour of the map of the Northeast.
The cooperative effort, which was organized by
the Monkfish Defense Fund and NMFS, was reportedly unprecedented.
Several participants, including Murawski,
said they knew of no similar example of fishermen and scientists actually
designing a fisheries survey together.
But then, the monkfish situation is itself
unique.
Avoid a shutdown
The NMFS autumn trawl survey has never caught
many monkfish, basically because it samples only depths to 200 fathoms and
monkfish are typically found in much deeper water.
However, because the autumn survey has been the
best available science, it has been the basis of monkfish assessments. Those assessments have been so bleak that
they have led the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils to
come up with a monkfish fishery management plan that ends the directed fishery
in Year 4 of the plan, a little more than a year away.
"If we're able to find monkfish across a lot
of size categories in a lot of places, the scientists may be able to do a
biomass assessment that may show the Year 4 shutdown is not necessary,"
Rick Marks, the Washington, DC representative of the Monkfish Defense Fund,
told the group.
At the same time, the survey is being carefully
designed to meet rigorous scientific specifications and it's possible it could
confirm previous pessimistic NMFS assessments.
"It's a bit of a crapshoot," Marks
said. "It may not be in our favor,
but we all know what happens if we don't try."
Early proof
However, fishermen and some scientists have long
believed that the NMFS trawl surveys were missing the mark when it came to
monkfish.
Last October, through the efforts of the
Monkfish Defense Fund, scientists from NMFS, the Massachusetts Division of
Marine Fisheries, and Rutgers University joined fishermen aboard the New
Bedford-based fishing vessel Warrior for a six-day pilot survey.
The commercial boat found far more monkfish than
the NMFS vessel had at all the traditional survey stations it sampled and at
other stations that NMFS had never sampled.
The results convinced everyone that more study
was needed. Both fishery management
councils passed motions declaring the work a priority.
The next step was to find the money.
Finding the funding
The response to the Monkfish Defense Fund's
request for support was overwhelming, according to fund members. US Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) and US Rep. Barney
Frank (D-MA) were out in front of an effort that included US Sens. Robert
Torricelli (D-NJ) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), US Reps. Jim Saxton (R-NJ) and
Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), and other members of the Massachusetts delegation, as
well as congressional representatives from most other eastern seaboard states,
to push NMFS hard to find the money. And it did.
According to Northeast Fisheries Science Center
spokesman Teri Frady, the details were still being worked out, but the survey,
which is expected to cost a little over a half million dollars, will be paid
for out of MARFIN and congressionally appropriated cooperative research funds.
Frady said the project will probably involve
NMFS contracting two fishing vessels for 40-55 sea days each to conduct the
survey. The contracts will go out for
competitive bid, possibly before the end of January.
Kathy Downey of Trio Algarvio in New Bedford has
been a central figure in the Monkfish Defense Fund's efforts to bring fishermen
and scientists together to solve the problem.
"I just want to thank everyone for getting
us to this point -- Steve Murawski, Anne Richards, J.J. Maguire, and the
industry. Look at the turn-out
here. A lot of people took time off and
came in early from trips to do this," she said. "We've had industry people working for two years to correct
this injustice in the monkfish plan on a variety of fronts (including genetics
and age/length studies). We couldn't
accomplish this without them."
Gillnetters concerned
Murawski, Downey, and others, including Jim
Kendall, a Massachusetts member of the New England council, and David Pierce,
assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, stressed
that time was of the essence. Industry
people have identified late-February through March as being prime time to get a
handle on the size of the monkfish resource.
While many were anxious to just get down to
mapping out the survey procedures, a number of gillnetters were clearly not
happy with the fact that the survey will be conducted by trawlers.
"If they want a true survey, they have to
involve gillnetters, not just draggers," said Tiverton, RI fisherman Bob
Tolan. "Have you ever seen a
100-pound monkfish? If you use 14"
gillnets, you'll see 100-pound monkfish."
Murawski explained that using gillnets in the
survey would require building nets with different mesh size panels and coming
up with a protocol to record the catch. These steps might be worth taking at some point, he said, but there was
simply not enough time now.
Pierce pointed out that knowing that the
gillnetters were not involved would result in a "minimum estimate of
abundance," but that it would be far better than what scientists and
managers have to work with now.
Downey also acknowledged the gillnetters'
concerns, but implored them to keep their eyes on the potential prize --
continuation of the directed fishery next year.
"We have to focus on getting the best
science that we can. If we try to fight
the gillnet battle, we're going to lose May 1, 2002," she said. "Gillnets should be in, but not in this
survey."
Added Kendall, "If you want to see this
fishery close down, turn it into a gear allocation fight. I've been on the council's monkfish
committee for four years. We have to
base decisions on the best information available. Get us better information.
At some point, (the scientists) will have to work with you. But we want to keep you guys working until
we can get you into the survey."
Tolan and others remained convinced that the
survey will capture only part of the monkfish resource picture without the
gillnetters, they but continued to work with the group.
For more information on the survey or the
Monkfish Defense Fund, call: Kathy
Downey at (508) 993-5868; or Marc Agger at (718) 855-1717.
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