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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 4
December 2007
NMFS implements monkfish FW 4
GLOUCESTER, MA – Since a new stock assessment for monkfish has concluded that overfishing is not occurring on the resource, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) went ahead in October and implemented the full suite of measures contained in Framework Adjustment 4 to the Monkfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP).
Industry members attributed the positive assessment results and NMFS’s decision to implement Framework 4 to the inclusion of better data in the assessment, much of which came about through cooperative surveys in 2001 and 2004.
“It was certainly painful getting here and we can argue all day about whether there was adequate process,” said Monkfish Defense Fund representative Rick Marks of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh in Washington, DC.
“But in the end,” he said, “there is little doubt that implementation of Framework 4 was a direct result of cooperative survey work between the monkfish industry and NMFS with support from both the New England and Mid-Atlantic councils.”
Added Monkfish Defense Fund representative Nils Stolpe, “It’s tremendously rewarding to see that the effort we’ve put into the cooperative surveys in particular – and into supporting research on monkfish in general – has paid off. Now we have an assessment that more accurately reflects the actual condition of the stock and got us back to fishing under the terms of Framework 4.”
What happened
The New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils developed Framework 4 and submitted the document to NMFS in January for approval and implementation.
But NMFS, concerned about the overfished status of the resource and worried because monkfish already was into year-seven of its 10-year rebuilding program, stepped in and implemented interim measures that took effect May 1, the start of the 2007 fishing year (see CFN April 2007 for details).
The interim measures were far more severe for the Southern Fishery Management Area than those developed by the councils. In the south, vessels under the NMFS rule were restricted to using only 12 monkfish days-at-sea instead of the 23 days agreed to by the councils.
NMFS said it would reconsider whether to approve Framework 4 pending the results of a new monkfish stock assessment this summer.
Monkfish Defense Fund leaders decried the action and met with top-level NMFS representatives to express deep frustration over the agency’s usurping of the councils’ framework.
At the time, Monkfish Defense Fund President Marc Agger told NMFS Director Bill Hogarth that the interim action “showed complete disregard for process and the social impacts on people and businesses involved in the fishery.”
Nonetheless, the NMFS action took effect May 1 and industry waited for the new assessment results, which were released in August.
No overfishing
Although scientists warned that the assessment contained a considerable amount of “uncertainty,” the results overall were extremely positive, and new biological reference points were developed.
Under the new biomass targets and thresholds, the monkfish stock in both the Northern and Southern Fishery Management Areas is no longer overfished. In fact, based on the new reference points, the monkfish resource is fully rebuilt.
This determination, however, did not convince NMFS to make any substantive changes in monkfish management. In its Sept. 21 Federal Register notice announcing the impending implementation of Framework 4, NMFS said the old biological reference points will remain in place until formally changed by a new FMP framework adjustment or amendment. So that means the stock in both the north and south – at least in legal terms – is still designated as overfished under the old reference points.
Instead, NMFS said it based its decision to implement Framework 4 on the fact that overfishing was not occurring.
Scientists did not change the way overfishing was calculated in the new assessment. They simply produced new fishing mortality estimates for 2006.
According to the updated estimates, overfishing was not occurring in either the north or the south.
What now?
Monkfish is considered by scientists and managers to be a “data poor” stock, and Rick Marks emphasized what can happen in fishery management when people don’t have the data they need to make good decisions.
“There is an important message here for the fishing industry, which is that limited stock information leads to precautionary management decisions,” he said. “We almost lost the directed monkfish fishery completely in 1999-2000 due mainly to the lack of fishery-dependent and independent information, especially related to stock condition.”
Marks said Monkfish Defense Fund members realized they needed to help generate “as much assessment-grade information as possible” if they were to have any chance of harvesting the monkfish stock’s optimum yield over the long term.”
And this led to the group’s commitment to cooperative surveys.
Meanwhile, the group also is keeping close tabs on the New England and Mid-Atlantic councils’ development of additional management measures for monkfish.
“Our job now is to see that this new assessment is reflected in future management actions, starting with Framework 5,” said Stolpe.
Janice M. Plante
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