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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 7
March 2009
Groundfish history:
Apollonio, Dykstra book a ‘must read’
Since the creation of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (FCMA), the Northeast US groundfish fishery arguably has been the most controversial and most written-about of all fisheries. Involving complex, never-ending, ever-changing regulatory programs, groundfish has been the major contributing cause of several extensive revisions of what today is known as the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
Spencer Apollonio and Jake Dykstra were there at the beginning. Together, they have written a definitive history of the complex political and scientific situations behind the daunting challenges that faced the original New England Fishery Management Council members and staff and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) officials.
Those challenges continue today as council members wrestle with Amendment 16, Framework 42, and other countless “crises.” These new efforts seek to resolve the dilemma of conserving and managing a mixed-species fishery that involves numerous gear types and user groups with widely differing social and philosophical objectives.
The book is titled “An Enormous, Immensely Complicated Intervention: Groundfish, the New England Fishery Management Council, and the World Fisheries Crisis,” and it should be read by anyone who has an interest or involvement in the complex marine fisheries of New England or anywhere else.
This is an account of good, smart people with the best of intentions diligently paving for 30 years the famous road leading to where we have almost arrived.
Who takes lead?
The book takes the reader through the conditions and events of the 1960s and ’70s that led to US efforts under ICNAF – the International Convention for Northwest Atlantic Fisheries – to preserve coastal stocks from heavy foreign fishing. Concerns about these stocks led many fishermen to call for extension of US jurisdiction. The federal government and states had little or no experience with such extended jurisdiction but they got a new mandate for it with the passage of the FCMA.
The authors described the initial confusion and considerable disagreement in 1977 about the intentions of the FCMA, especially relative to the roles of the main players.
NMFS, with its ICNAF experience, expected to dominate. The agency essentially handed the council its first “Atlantic Groundfish Fishery Management Plan” with simple quotas for three species – cod, haddock, and yellowtail.
The NMFS-devised plan led to a closure of the cod fishery in less than five months and immediately, “The council was faced with a major crisis: the likely disruption of the multimillion dollar fishing industry.”
Little known at the time, this situation became one that was to be repeated all too frequently for the next 30 years (see CFN February 2009 cover story “Industry reels from NMFS groundfish proposal”).
Familiar issues
Issues dominating the early council years included: the length of the review and implementation process, the infamous “horse blanket” described by the authors; management objectives; and maximum sustainable yield and optimum yield, concepts not familiar initially to some council members and highly contentious within the scientific community.
The authors lead the reader through much of the debate and quote frequently from some of the world’s leading marine fishery scientists, including: Drs. Michael Sissenwine, Andy Rosenberg, Lee Alverson, John Gulland, and Richard Hennemuth.
One of the more illuminating and ominous quotes from Dr. Peter Larken in 1972 states, “The consequences of harvesting mixed species continue to haunt us like a can of many kinds of worms.”
Studds’ role
One omission is the lack of mention in the book of the late US Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), who not only was instrumental in the passage and revisions of the FCMA but a true champion of the democracy of fishery management that Congress intended through the council system.
Studds adamantly and explicitly declared in writing that the councils were not simply advisory but policy-making bodies and that NMFS was not intended to be the manager.
Limits of science
Chapter 4 describes the contentious debate surrounding the early era Interim Plan. The authors are too modest about their role in putting forward this much-needed fresh approach that would “get the council away from day-to-day ... crisis and … re-think its purposes and strategies” to create a plan that, “hopefully, would indeed … rebuild and maintain the stocks.”
Regrettably, the new simple plan took nearly three years to implement.
In subsequent chapters, the authors provide illuminating examinations of many continuing issues, such as the role and limitations of fishery science today in the management process.
This quote from Gulland is as relevant now as it was in 1971: It is “a fallacy to think scientists … can produce the complete answer to management problems. … Scientific finality cannot be achieved.”
Several other scientists are quoted remarking on the limitations of fishery science in management.
Management objectives
Several times, the authors note the importance of management objectives. Although this may seem obvious, the difficulty of coming to agreement on this fundamental prerequisite of management is illustrated vividly in a 1982 exchange between council member Alan Guimond and NMFS representative Allen Peterson.
Guimond states, “I don’t feel that we have to guarantee the economic viability of a business,” and Peterson replies, “I think there is a responsibility on us as managers to make sure the US has a healthy and viable industry in the fishing area.”
Reconciliation of the gap between the perceptions of council members and federal managers over objectives and responsibilities can be vexing but it continues to be critical and always difficult to effect.
Contemporary issues
The authors also discuss more contemporary issues. One is biological reference points (BRPs), and they explicitly caution against relying “solely on BRPs for management systems.”
The book reviews the primary fishing gears employed in traditional New England fisheries, examines the dilemma of bycatch, and suggests serious consideration of new concepts for harvesting fish such as methods that take advantage of fish responses to “sensory stimuli” as described by world famous marine scientist Gunnar Thorson.
The ecosystem-based approach being widely considered and urged for many fisheries also is reviewed. The authors suggest that such an approach for groundfish may be too “data hungry” and burdensome and might require greater analysis and more regulations than exist today. There also is continuing debate about whether agreement can ever be achieved on a common definition of exactly what ecosystem management means.
A hypothesis
Finally, in Chapter 11, the authors offer a hypothesis for effective fisheries management that recognizes ecosystem characteristics, including problems of varying abundance, fluctuating recruitment in stocks and species, and how to approach management with this view.
This chapter is not easy reading but the concept and end product should be given serious consideration by anyone truly interested in solving the problem of groundfish management.
The authors suggest a management concept/hypothesis termed “a hierarchical concept of ecosystems.”
Basically, they argue that a management system needs to recognize that species have different growth, reproductive, and mortality rates and that the components with slower rates within the “system constrain the faster rates of other components of the system.” Life history characteristics, in part, determine the relative position of a species within the hierarchy.
In short, the hierarchical concept requires protection of the structure of the hierarchy but not necessarily the output, meaning catches/mortality, of any individual component species. Such a system might be of interest today to those especially concerned about excessive levels of dogfish in the ecosystem, for example.
As we noted in the beginning, this book is a must read. It should, but will not, end the simplistic and ignorant but often cited criticism that the council “simply refuses to bite the bullet” to rebuild groundfish.
For those of us who have been involved in or watched with interest the management of groundfish since 1978, Apollonio and Dykstra also offer a trip down memory lane. It is sometimes a painful journey but one taken with plenty of good company.
Doug Marshall
Rich Ruais
Doug Marshall was the executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council from 1979 to 1996. Rich Ruais began working for the council in 1978 and served in various capacities, including as its deputy director, until 1991. He is now the director of Blue Water Fishermen’s Association and East Coast Tuna Association.
“An Enormous, Immensely Complicated Intervention: Groundfish, the New England Fishery Management Council, and the World Fisheries Crisis” can be purchased online at <www.amazon.com> for $14.95. Search “Apollonio, Dykstra” to easily find the book.
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