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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 8
April 2006
Groundfish observers axed due to funding reduction
FALMOUTH, MA - An early March e-mail from a federal fisheries observer was the first tip-off that something big was going on with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) Fisheries Sampling Branch (FSB).
After moving to a high cost-of-living area and signing a one-year lease on a home, the observer was unceremoniously laid off due to budget cuts.
“We were all under the impression when we took this position that it was going to be for the long term,” the anonymous e-mailer told Commercial Fisheries News. “It was a blow because there was no real notice of … when or if we were losing our jobs.”
It turns out that that observer wasn’t the only one suffering.
AIS, the New Bedford-based company contracted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to recruit, deploy, and manage observers, laid off about 80 observers and another 10 observer program staffers across the region as of March 1.
According to company General Manager Jo Michaud, that leaves just 25 observers and 12 staffers on the payroll from Portland, ME to Virginia Beach, VA. Between 30 and 35 of the laid-off observers were from the New Bedford area alone.
“It was extremely painful and pretty immediate,” Michaud said.
On March 10, the environmental group Oceana put out a press release highly critical of the lay-offs.
“This is the wrong direction for the agency to be moving in with its regional observer work,” said Michael Hirshfield, Oceana’s chief scientist. “Severe cuts in the number of observers and observed fishing trips will mean New England’s fishery managers will not receive the basic information they desperately need to properly oversee regional fish and wildlife populations.”
Minimum coverage
The funding cutback is specific to the observer program for New England groundfish and does not affect other fisheries, according to NMFS.
To put the impact of the funding reduction into perspective, 6,086 sea days were observed in the 2005 groundfish fishery. Under the 2006 revised sea day plan, 3,960 days will be observed.
The first question of concern to fishermen is whether or not the cut in observer days will affect their ability to make groundfish trips.
“The short answer,” said FSB Chief David Potter, “is no.”
NMFS is under a court order stemming from the Amendment 13 case to provide five percent observer coverage in the multispecies groundfish fishery.
Potter said the FSB is assigning sea days to provide a three percent coverage level for A-day trips and a 40 percent coverage level for “B-day complex” trips, including special access program and US/Canada area trips.
Said NEFSC Director John Boreman, “Between A-days and B-days, we will have somewhere above five percent coverage across the board.”
Observers have been retained in strategically located ports based on the revised sea day schedule, Potter said.
Michaud added that some of those who kept their jobs are long-time observers.
“I don’t expect retension will be a problem,” she said, adding that some of the AIS observer program staff people are also certified observers “who can step in if needed.”
What happened?
The difficult funding situation is the result of Congress basically approving the administration’s fiscal year (FY) ’06 budget request of $5.5 million for New England groundfish observers. The actual amount ultimately appropriated was $5.4 million.
The $5.5 million was pretty much the same amount requested during the previous two years and was based on the minimum amount of coverage necessary to meet the Amendment 13 court order.
The difference is that Congress had previously asked the agency and industry constituents what amount of money it would take to do the job right and, in response, appropriated a higher amount – around $9 million in FY ’04 and $8.9 million in FY ’05.
“We had a larger congressional budget in 2004 and 2005, which gave us more flexibility and more options,” Potter said. “We don’t have that this year.”
So many observers had been hired and trained because the NEFSC and FSB laid out the sea day plan in advance. The fact that Congress didn’t appropriate any additional money wasn’t made clear to the NEFSC until just before Thanksgiving, and it wasn’t until some time in January that the FSB became aware that the funding reduction was final.
A case for funding
While the NEFSC and FSB are dealing with the situation, Boreman said he could easily build a strong case for providing much more observer coverage for all Northeast fisheries.
On the regulatory side, observer data is an important factor in monitoring bycatch of species like yellowtail flounder to provide an accurate assessment of how close the fishery is to taking the total allowable catch, he said.
On the science side, data collected by at-sea observers makes it possible for stock assessment scientists to get a much more realistic idea of bycatch and discard levels.
“The discard side is most valuable,” Boreman said. “It’s all part of understanding the fishing mortality picture.”
Lorelei Stevens
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