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Feature Articles
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NMFS trawl survey needs fishermen participation
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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.
by Bill Amaru
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Amaru is a commercial fisherman out of South Orleans, MA and former member of the New England Fishery Management Council. (Stephen Kennedy photo)
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On Sept. 11, before a room full of fishermen, managers, and citizens, spokesmen for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) revealed that the survey used in assessments of important East Coast fish species has a "potential problem."
Many in the audience and at the table of the New England Fishery Management Council said the problem was not a potential one but quite real - and it could be at least partially responsible for the major difference between what the survey indices of abundance tell us and what we as fishermen have been catching.
At issue is a critical difference in the length of the tow warps used by NMFS scientists to pull the Yankee 36 net, a relic of our past, during survey tows. Along with this revelation come other questions: What other improperly tuned gear may be producing faulty data for every tow conducted by the Albatross, the boat at issue here, or even the Delaware? And for how long?
While NMFS is now scrambling to correct the errors in the data it has used to determine stock abundance and mortality rates, the progress of Amendment 13 to the groundfish plan continues.
As difficult as this episode has been for NMFS, which bears great responsibility in its inability to live up to its own standards, there could be a silver lining in it for our fleets.
For years, our industries have been asking to play a role in conducting the annual surveys. In response, the service has held the door partly open, and many of us have gone out and observed or even taken part in the survey work.
However, the important role of allowing us to sit at the same table with the NMFS gear team and the scientists and have our comments acted on has been missing.
This does not mean fishermen should be bringing their own nets and gear aboard the research ships or rebuilding the old Yankee nets to make them more efficient, although they need it.
What it does mean is that every time the Albatross or the Delaware go to sea, area fishermen with knowledge of how the gear should work must be paid to be aboard and their opinions should be given equal weight with the NMFS team members.
Also, a commercial vessel, with proper scientific protocols to assess and log data, should sail alongside the service ships and match fishing time and locations.
It is in this way that the true picture of stock rebuilding will finally be revealed. This is how we will bring "the other experts" in and how we will begin to repair the terrible rift that has been growing ever since the groundfish Framework 33 lawsuit was announced. The service will also then be better prepared to adapt the survey to its long-awaited new research ship that will be completed sometime this decade.
While the service has made gross errors in scientific protocol, we should judge it by how NMFS officials respond and change. If a brief effort to involve fishermen ends - as the cooperative research projects of several years ago did - they will have failed to answer and should be taken to task for it.
But if they create positions of equal responsibility for the fishing industry and use the other experts in the field of fisheries science, they will start to earn back our respect and maybe even our trust.
In closing, I have to say the position the groundfish industries find themselves in today appears bleak given the prospect of Amendment 13 reductions. It is analogous to days-at-sea reduction from 120 to 45 days that the scallop fleet has to keep fighting off at a time when scallop abundance is going off the charts.
We only have abundance like that with a few stocks, but we have good solid growth with most of the others. And, like the scallop fleet, we will not just disappear because some numbers on a piece of paper are wrong.
The fact cannot be denied: The fish are coming back. It is wrong to stop the economic spin-off this could mean for the region and the country. Failure to consider the true levels of potential sustainable removal rates will result in massive economic and social turmoil, which will bring to an end before it even starts most of the good this letter describes above.
Good fishing and remember everything that happened on Sept.11.
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