NMFS Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul, left, and NMFS Director Bill Hogarth during a September meeting in Gloucester. The first of two NMFS groundfish workshops has been set for Jan. 14-15 at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, MA. It will address the gear configuration experiments that took place on the Albatross IV. (Peter K. Prybot photo)

    WASHINGTON, DC - Without offering an explanation, US District Judge Gladys Kessler signed an order in early December extending the groundfish Amendment 13 implementation deadline by 8-1/4 months.
    This new order stipulates that Amendment 13 must be implemented by May 1, 2004 instead of Aug. 22, 2003.
    The New England Fishery Management Council estimates that formal public hearings on Amendment 13 will need to be held in August or September to meet the revised deadline.
    Under the original time line, those hearings would have been taking place right now, around the Christmas and New Year holidays.
    The court-sanctioned delay was requested by the four plaintiffs in the Framework 33 lawsuit - the Conservation Law Foundation, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, and The Ocean Conservancy - as well as the three government defendants - the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Commerce Sec. Donald Evans, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
    Industry intervenors in the case also approached Kessler for a delay, asking that she grant enough additional time to allow NMFS and the New England council to conduct several independent peer reviews of the trawl survey problems and biological reference points. Many had hoped for something more on the order of a two-year delay.
    The intervenor states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island informed Kessler that they expected the necessary peer reviews "would require, at the very least, one year to complete."
    The New England council, though not a named party in the case, asked the judge for a deadline extension of "at least" one year.
    What Kessler thought of all these requests and the detailed documentation put before her by all the respective parties remains unknown.
    She signed the proposed order drafted by the plaintiffs and government defendants and handed it down on Dec. 4 without comment.
    Industry intervenors had asked Kessler for more than a delay. They wanted results.
    "(T)he extension should be tied to concrete steps...(and not) an arbitrary set date such as May 1, 2004," said defendant-intervenors Associated Fisheries of Maine, the City of Portland, the City of New Bedford, and the Trawlers Survival Fund.
    The Northeast Seafood Coalition held the same position, arguing that an extension of one year or less was "clearly inadequate" to accomplish all of the necessary peer reviews and stock assessment revisions required for Amendment 13.

    According to NMFS Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul, NMFS does in fact plan to carry out many of these requests.
    Providing time for an independent peer review "on the effect of the discrepancy on trawl survey data...was a primary reason NMFS joined with the plaintiffs" to seek the deadline extension, said Kurkul in a Nov. 25 declaration to the court.
    Kurkul told Kessler that participants in the Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM), which was held in early October, did not believe the information available to them at the time indicated "any systematic reduction in trawl survey fish catch efficiency due to the trawl warp discrepancy."
    Nonetheless, Kurkul said, NMFS is "committed to doing further analysis and review on this issue." She told Kessler the agency is planning to conduct at least two workshops in January.
    The first workshop will address the gear configuration experiments that took place on the Albatross IV in late October and early November. During this "calibration cruise," the fishing vessel Sea Breeze fished side-by-side with the Albatross to provide "a consistent index of fish abundance."
    The second workshop, according to Kurkul, will review:
    l The conclusions of the working group that re-evaluated biological reference points for New England groundfish stocks; and
    l The updated stock assessments conducted by the GARM.
    Kurkul said, "Both workshops are intended to provide all of the parties to this litigation and any other interested person with the opportunity to present their opinions, interpretations, and recommendations concerning the issues to be covered."

    Industry members remain unconvinced that all these reviews, if done properly, can be completed in time to make a real difference for Amendment 13.
    Furthermore, fishermen want new survey data - collected with properly calibrated gear - to be incorporated into the stock assessments. They also want a thorough review of overfishing definitions, a revisitation of the stock rebuilding timelines, and much more.
    But unless Kessler issues a new order or Congress somehow intervenes in the meantime, May 1, 2004 will be the date driving the rest of the Amendment 13 schedule. This will seriously limit the extent of any new work that can be done.

    What's worse is that, unless the rebuilding timeline stipulated in Amendment 13 changes, the 8-1/4 month delay may not be helpful at all. It simply could compress the industry's rebuilding years.
    Most of the groundfish stocks currently deemed to be "overfished" must be rebuilt by 2009.
    Industry members and others have been calling for a renewed rebuilding time line - one that starts afresh with the implementation of Amendment 13.
    If such a change were to pass and if Amendment 13 is implemented on May 1, 2004, the 10-year rebuilding timeframe for most groundfish stocks would be extended to 2014 instead of 2009.
    But if this doesn't happen, the industry will remain bound to the 2009 time line. And stock rebuilding projections will be recalculated for Amendment 13 so they are achieved within a span of time that's 8-1/4 months shorter than originally intended.
    The council, industry, Congress, and even NMFS are investigating alternatives to address this serious problem.
    At its Nov. 5-7 meeting in Gloucester, the New England council voted to include in the Amendment 13 public hearing document "an option to revise the starting date for rebuilding from 1999 to the implementation date of Amendment 13 for all stocks identified by the GARM as overfished."
    Associated Fisheries of Maine and the Trawlers Survival Fund have drafted proposed legislation, which already has been circulated to congressional aides, that they hope Congress will consider to alter the rebuilding situation.
    Even prior to this industry initiative, US Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and John Kerry (D-MA) recognized the magnitude of the problem and authored a bill to clarify that the secretary of commerce has authority to extend the rebuilding timelines under certain conditions.
    This extra flexibility would "allow managers to meet social and ecological needs of the fishery," said the senators.

    The Snowe/Kerry bill passed the Senate on Nov. 20 but didn't make it through the House before Congress recessed.
    While industry members have problems with some of the specifics in this bill, they expressed gratitude for the Senate's attention to the matter and have pledged to work on the details.
    And Snowe, who will chair the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries in the 108th Congress, vowed to remain watchful.
    She applauded Kessler's decision to grant a delay but said, "The onus is now on NMFS to demonstrate that the problems with its science can be resolved. I will stand ready to act if NMFS does not show it has reliable science by the time new regulations are promulgated."