PROVIDENCE – In an advisory opinion yesterday, the New England Fishery Management Council asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to approve interim rules reducing commercial fishermen’s days at sea by 18 percent, rather than the 70 percent proposed.
The decision came at a two-day session that also included the presentation of new research findings that pollock and many flat-fish species are recovering slowly or not at all.
The 18-percent proposal, submitted by the Northeast Seafood Council, was approved by the council in a 15-to-1 vote. The lone dissenter was federal regulator Patricia Kurkul, the regional administrator for the NMFS, who said tighter restrictions will be needed to allow the fisheries to recover.
The council is one of one eight regional fisheries management groups established under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management and Recovery Act – a 1996 revision of the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 – to manage offshore marine resources. Besides the NMFS regional administrator, it includes the lead fisheries management officials of each of the five New England states; 12 other members nominated by the New England governors and appointed by the U.S. Commerce Secretary to three-year terms; plus four non-voting members from the Coast Guard, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Department of State and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.
By next May, the Gloucester Daily Times noted, the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires that regulators develop either a new set of rules that will restore U.S. fisheries within five years or a set of interim measures.
News and information from the New England Fishery Management Council – including MP3-format audio recordings from the council’s Sept. 3-4 meeting in Providence – is available at www.nefmc.org.
