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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 10
June 2010
New England council initiative
Groundfish, skate, monkfish plan consolidation
MYSTIC, CT – In what could turn out to be one of its most challenging initiatives yet, the New England Fishery Management Council has agreed to “pursue” consolidating three of its major fishery management plans (FMPs) – groundfish, skates, and monkfish.
“It just makes sense to me. This is what we catch when we go fishing in my area,” said Maine council member Glen Libby.
The council took this action during its April 27-29 meeting based on a recommendation from its interspecies committee, which noted upfront that the effort would be especially complicated by the fact that monkfish is managed jointly with the Mid-Atlantic council.
As a result, the New England council said it would “reach out” to its neighboring council for “consultations on monkfish” to determine the feasibility of the proposal and gauge the Mid-Atlantic council’s willingness to allow the consolidation to move forward.
According to Frank Blount of Rhode Island who chairs the interspecies committee, the goal is to streamline and simplify the management process for species that have “so much overlap.”
The committee found that stocks of groundfish, monkfish, and skates seem like perfect candidates.
Long process
But this seed of an idea has a long way to go. According to New England council Executive Director Paul Howard, the council would need to develop an amendment that would apply to all three existing FMPs and fold them into one. The first step would be to put together a broad-based “scoping” document and take it out to the public for comment.
Some council members wanted more details, asking whether or not management measures for groundfish, monkfish, and skates would need to be modified to become more uniform.
Massachusetts council member David Pierce in particular had numerous questions.
“This is a big ticket item,” he said.
But Blount emphasized that none of the specifics had been worked out yet.
“The committee was looking for buy-in from the council first,” he said.
Keep it simple
David Goethel of New Hampshire said that after discussing numerous possibilities, the committee opted to limit this initial undertaking to groundfish, skates, and monkfish.
“We decided to go with fish that swim together,” he said. “If we can’t do it here, then we can’t do it with other things.”
While the committee discussed adding other species that often come up in a multispecies catch to the mix, such as dogfish, it quickly decided against further complicating what was already an enormous endeavor.
Interspecies role
Massachusetts council member Rip Cunningham said it was important to preserve the interspecies committee for projects such as this – large in scope, broad in nature, and far more encompassing than the work of individual species committees.
He likened this plan-consolidation effort to buying a new car. Someone with an old car either could repair it piece-by-piece over many years and end up with a functional vehicle or buy a new car and start off fresh.
“The idea of the interspecies committee is to look at buying the new vehicle,” he said. “If we use this committee to do the piece-by-piece aspect on a continuing basis, then it’s business as usual, just by a different committee.”
The vote to go forward with the groundfish/skate/monkfish consolidation effort passed unanimously.
Janice M. Plante
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