Peter Baker: Fish council ignores habitat needs

The New England Fishery Management Council recently dealt a serious blow to the region’s ocean health with a vote to sharply reduce the amount of seafloor set aside to protect marine habitat for fish.

If approved, the measure would remove protections for more than 5,400 square miles — an area the size of Connecticut — and open the habitat to damaging forms of bottom-trawl fishing and scallop dredging. The final decision rests with the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA Fisheries), whose officials should reject this risky action.

Over a decade in the making, the council’s Omnibus Habitat Amendment was meant to identify and protect essential fish habitat for all species managed by the council, in accordance with the law. Like all animals, fish need places where they can find food and shelter and reproduce. As I like to say, habitat is where fish make more fish, and New England needs more fish.

The region’s cod population has crashed to a historic low because of decades of overfishing and, more recently, the effects of warming waters stemming from a changing climate. New England is home to more overfished species than any other fishing region in the nation, largely as a result of risky management decisions that have undermined sustainability. The situation became so dire that New England’s fishery for cod and other bottom-dwelling fish was declared a federal disaster in 2012, and taxpayers have funded hundreds of millions of dollars in relief aid for fishermen.

Last December, some 140 noted marine scientists wrote to the council urging more habitat protection, to help recover depleted populations and make those fish more resilient to the stress brought by climate change. When the council’s omnibus amendment was open for public comment, more than 150,000 people spoke up for habitat protection. Unfortunately, the council rejected both scientific advice and public opinion in favor of short- term economic gains for the fishing and seafood-processing industries.

The numbers are striking. The council has voted to slash currently protected areas by about 60 percent throughout the region. East of Cape Cod on Georges Bank, the historically rich fishing grounds where cod and other fish are known to spawn and seek shelter, 81 percent of the areas closed to damaging fishing gear would be reopened.

Some of these closed areas have been in place for more than 20 years, and a large body of science documents their value as fish habitat. Closed areas in the Gulf of Maine are known to shelter some of the last remaining old female cod, which are crucial to the reproductive capacity of the population and the species’ ability to rebound in numbers. But the council’s vote would cut protections in the Gulf of Maine by nearly 15 percent.

The council’s habitat amendment also fails to adequately address the spawning areas where fish aggregate seasonally. The council ignored many of the spawning “hot spots” scientists had mapped out for a variety of species. Even the small closures the council left in place still allow many kinds of destructive fishing, including clam dredges, gill nets and giant mid-water trawl vessels. In addition to killing fish, these types of gear disrupt spawning behavior, dispersing aggregations of fish.

Further, the council did little to ensure an adequate supply of the prey animals that fish need for food. For example, it entirely ignored Atlantic herring in the decisions on spawning and habitat protection. These forage fish, which play a vital role in the ecosystem, are another essential element of healthy habitat as defined by both scientists and the law.

The  Northeast regional administrator  for  NOAA Fisheries,  John Bullard, took note of these many inadequacies as the habitat plan was nearing completion. In a sharply worded letter in April, Bullard warned that the council had “not made use of the best available scientific information” and might “reverse 20 years of habitat protection and recovery.” He concluded that the habitat amendment would probably not meet legal requirements without some major improvements.

The council didn’t heed his warning. As the members prepared for the final roll call vote on June 16, the person who had worked most closely on the habitat amendment throughout its long development, Rhode Island council member Dave Preble, offered a telling comment.

“This council has purposely ignored the science and produced an amendment that is indefensible,” he said. “If you want to have big fish, you have to feed and protect the small fish.”

The amendment will now go to NOAA Fisheries for consideration. I hope that the agency will reject it and send it back to the council demanding a habitat plan guided by science and the public interest. New England’s fish and fishing communities deserve better than what the council is offering.

Peter Baker directs ocean conservation in the Northeast for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Peter Baker: Restore the prey of cod to restore cod

 

(See this excerpt from a Portuguese documentary  about cod fishing.)

A recent study illustrates what has happened to New England’s once plentiful Atlantic cod population, and the findings highlight the big role that little fish play in our marine ecosystems and economy. It’s no secret that New England’s cod are in trouble. Overfishing has so severely depleted the population that federal officials declared a fishery disaster and Congress appropriated more than $30 million in aid. But even as the bottom fell out of cod stocks, many fishermen insisted the fish were still plentiful in their nets and disputed the science supporting tighter catch limits. Why did fishermen see a bounty while scientists in fact called it a bust? Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center say a change in the forage fish, or small prey species, the cod were eating offers an explanation. In an article published in May in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, the authors say that around 2006 the dominant prey for cod switched from Atlantic herring to sand lance — small, eel-like fish that burrow in the sediment of the seafloor. Sand lance were abundant in an area known as Stellwagen Bank, and so cod, too, congregated there. Soon, cod fishermen focused so much effort on the bank that some 45 percent of the cod caught in a year came from just a 100-square-mile area in the region. But scientific surveys assessing the cod population over more than 20,000 square miles in the Gulf of Maine continued to show that the larger population was seriously depleted. Clearly, the abundance in one small region didn’t accurately reflect the overall status of cod. The authors say they hope that the findings can “help fishery managers, scientists and the industry understand and resolve apparent conflicts between assessment results and the experiences of the fishing industry.” While this study helps to explain the recent past, it also holds important lessons for the future of fishing. The switch in cod diet from herring to sand lance held major implications for one of the region’s most important fish. Over the years, through intensive fishing for prey species such as Atlantic herring and menhaden, plus the depletion of other historically important prey such as river herring and shad, the “menu” of forage fish available to cod and other predators has changed. We need a management system that better monitors and responds to the ways prey and predators interact. Such a system is available, and it’s called ecosystem-based fisheries management. Scientists have long known that simply measuring and managing one fish species at a time is insufficient. So they’ve put decades of work into developing the ecosystem-based approach to provide a much more accurate and useful picture of what’s occurring in the water. A good ecosystem-based fisheries management program would take the needs of predator species into account and let managers restore the abundance of prey, causing a resurgence of fish stocks and, ultimately, providing greater opportunity for the fishermen who depend on them.

Peter Baker directs the Pew Charitable Trusts’ U.S. ocean conservation efforts in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. This piece originally appeared on ecori.org.