Local fishermen have a new hook in their ongoing battle against environmentalists and the federal regulators of their fishing grounds.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency that regulates fishing in the Atlantic, including waters off the Massachusetts and Rhode Island coasts, recently admitted that their method for gauging the abundance of seasonal fish stock in the waters might be flawed. It was a major admission, because the contentious data they compile will help determine how many fish commercial fishermen can legally pull from the ocean.
On Sept. 3, researchers aboard the federal agency’s trawler Albatross IV discovered that the vessel’s fishing net might not have been properly aligned while being towed in the water, possibly since February of 2000 – leaving questions on the validity of its spring and fall groundfish surveys since that time.
Seifert Systems Invests in Energy Efficiency to Strengthen Operations
For manufacturers, energy is more than just another operating expense. It plays a critical role…
Learn More
“We found that not all of the markers on the trawler were at the 50-meter mark on each side,” said Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the NMFS. “I don’t think anybody knows why they’re not matching up. And it might not be that easy to pinpoint when it started to happen. We don’t know whether that made any difference in the way it was actually fishing.”
Local fishermen have long questioned the accuracy of the government’s fish stock assessments, which directly affect the livelihoods of thousands of fishing families. The issue is especially volatile in New Bedford, where the embattled fishing industry has been identified economically and culturally with fishing cod, haddock, flounder and other groundfish for more than 400 years.
The fishermen and their powerful allies in Washington, D.C. immediately seized on the agency’s admission that Albatross IV’s net could have been collecting fewer fish than possible. They are calling for the delay of a groundfish management plan that is scheduled to take effect next summer, should gear used in fishery surveys be found to have skewed data.
“The error itself in the trawl wires is very significant in the way in which a net functions. There’s no limit in their willingness to downplay that it is a tremendous error,” said Christopher Brown, captain of the Grandville Davis, a trawler that fishes in and around Block Island Sound. “The plan has to be revisited, there has to be consideration given to it. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water, but certainly mistakes have been made.”
A political battle
The U.S. government began regulating local New England fishing grounds in the early 1990s, after scientists at the NMFS determined that the area’s groundfish species fell from 72,100 pounds in 1984 to 27,400 pounds in 1993. At the same time, the local fishing industry was going down the tubes: revenue decreased by almost 50 percent during the same period, dropping from $91 million in 1984 to $46.8 in 1993, according to industry reports.
For most of the last decade, New England fishers have faced increased restrictions on catch, gear and where they can drop their nets. Many people say the measures were a success: Data shows that a variety of species, including scallops and some flounder, began to reappear in vast quantity.
But in 2000 a handful of environmental groups, including the Conservation Law Foundation, sued the NMFS, saying the agency was turning a blind eye toward fishermen who were increasingly violating federal regulations restricting fishing. In fact, they said that if restrictions weren’t increased, groundfish stocks could plummet to such low levels that the fishing industry would face ruin.
Last December a federal judge agreed, ordering the government to come up with additional plans for restoring the area’s depleted fish stocks. NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Patricia Kurkul later wrote in an opinion to the court that new, stricter regulations would result in significant loss in fishing revenues for the industry. Those measures could include year-round closure of certain fishing areas, a reduction in available fishing days for industry workers, and changes in net size requirements.
Currently, the New England Fishery Management Council is working under the court-ordered mandate to complete a new groundfish management plan by next August. The plan will be based in large part on surveys of seasonal fish distribution and abundance – compiled for several years on the research boat Albatross IV.
But on Sept. 3, the Albatross crew discovered that the trawl cables used to deploy the vessel’s fishing net were improperly marked, possibly resulting in the net not being properly aligned while being towed in the water. The problem could date as far back as the winter of 2000, when the gear was last replaced, according to the NMFS.
Exactly how – and for how long – the problem might have skewed the ship’s groundfish surveys is the crucial question.
“We don’t know how it could affect the data,” said Frady. “We might not have caught as much fish as we could have. But the data that has been derived looks as expected, if you will. So far the stocks have performed pretty much as expected – that’s adding up. Our trends are very similar to what Canada is deriving and what the state is deriving in their data.”
This week, a team of scientists and industry observers will inspect the net and conduct a series of experiments to determine whether the problem could have caused the boat to catch fewer fish than possible, said Frady. New gauging equipment will also be installed on the boat, she said.
“It’s a good first step. We’ll gather sufficient information to at least move on from there,” said Frady.
Fishy science
But local fishermen and their political allies are apparently not ready to move on. On Sept. 19, Massachusetts Senators John F. Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy, and Representatives Barney Frank, William Delahunt and John F. Tierney wrote a joint letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald L Evans, urging him to delay implementation of a new groundfish management plan if it is found that the Albatross IV’s data was compromised.
“The potential impacts of this management plan on fishing communities in Massachusetts is severe,” the legislators’ message reads. “We therefore wish to stress the importance of removing questions regarding the science that will go into developing this plan.”
The legislators also called upon the NMFS to establish a task force of state and regional fishery officials, marine scientists and gear experts, including fishermen, to address the Albatross IV’s gear issues.
Experts on both sides say a taskforce composed of federal regulators and fishermen would be unlikely to reach any consensus on how the faulty gear aboard the Albatross IV might have impacted its fish stock surveys.
“Stock assessments are typically very controversial, no matter what, because they will affect how people fish,” said Frady. “It’s a very political atmosphere, and it pretty much always has been in this region.”
Speaking candidly and not for attribution, insiders say the battle for the waters has been defined for many years by hostile perceptions on both sides: Many environmentalists and federal regulators say local fishermen are unconcerned about the prospect of fishing the Atlantic groundfish to non-existence. The fishermen assert that the scientists look down their noses at the fishing industry, and wield questionable science as a weapon in the war.
With the discovery of the faulty net aboard the Albatross IV, the scientists have been caught with their waders around their ankles, many say. The fishermen and their political lobby aren’t expected to let the scientists off the hook so easily.
“If this were a sixth grade science project, they would have gotten a ‘C’ on it. When the repetitive function of their own scientific process is violated, it’s huge,” said Brown. “They started this measuring everything with a micrometer. If I get five feet inside of a closed area, I’ll be fined $20,000. If my cod end is a 16th of an inch under size, I’ll be fined $30,000. They were the ones who raised the bar on keeping everything exact. If I towed my net sideways, I’d go broke in a week. These nets aren’t designed to catch fish being towed sideways. They’re towing this thing around that looks like a Picasso.”
Several industry experts said the groundfish data collected aboard the Albatross IV in recent years is probably not wildly inaccurate, and that the boat’s net is easily repairable – accurate data will start being collected immediately. But that doesn’t mean the government’s public relations nightmare is going away any time soon.
“I think that the science can be fixed relatively quickly. The damage to their credibility will take considerably longer to fix. You know, the difference in trawl wires, and the fact that they didn’t check them for such a long period of time is a little odd,” said David Beutel, a fisheries specialist with Rhode Island Sea Grant at the University of Rhode Island. Sea Grant is a marine research partnership between the nation’s universities and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The industry is saying, ‘how can they make such a basic mistake? Why wasn’t that checked?’ Fishermen don’t all know science really well, but they do know gear really well, and this is something they can sink their teeth into. They know about problems with gear better than the scientists,” said Beutel. “I think that the lawyers are going to make a lot of money on this. It’s going to make a difficult plan more contentious.”
