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Q&A HOME • BRAD CHASE • MOLLY LUTCAVAGE
• STEVE WEINER • BARBARA BLOCK • BILL HOGARTH
Bill Hogarth
Bill Hogarth is director of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and is responsible for overseeing the management and conservation of US federal waters fisheries, marine mammals, and sea turtles. He also is the United States Government Commissioner to ICCAT and current ICCAT chairman.
During his career, Hogarth has held several relevant leadership positions. He served as chief of the NMFS Highly Migratory Species Management Division in the mid-1990s, as NMFS Southeast Regional Administrator from 1999-2000, and, prior to joining NMFS, he was the director of the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries from 1986-1994.
Q: How would you characterize the change in the New England bluefin fishery over the last few years?
A: There has been a tremendous change. The general category is not seeing any of the large size fish. We’ve had two bad back-to-back years. It’s been bad for the harpooners and the purse seiners, for everyone except the recreational fishermen with the school fish. The economic impact has been horrible. It’s been almost a bust these last two years.
Q: To what do you attribute these changes?
A: I don’t think we know exactly. There are clearly some environmental changes. The Canadians have had two good back-to-back years. Some fishermen believe forage depletion is to blame. It may be a factor, perhaps due to more efficient gear such as midwater trawls and pair trawls. Those are factors we’re trying to look into.
Also, there are some indicators that the bluefin stock is not recovering as it should be. The eastern quota has been exceeded and they haven’t controlled their catch of small fish in the east.
Some people think the Mediterranean stock has experienced a severe decline to the point of a crash.
There’s a mix between these fish. What happens in the east affects the west and what happens in the west affects the east.
But right now there are a lot of unknowns. We need the results of the stock assessment (due at the end of June) to know where to properly set the harvest limits (in the east). And we’re trying to address the herring issue.
Q: What is the single most important management strategy that the US should pursue domestically?
A: Domestically, I’m not sure we can do any more than we have done. There may be some advantage to increasing the minimum size to at least 81". Our bluefin spawn at a larger size than they do in the Mediterranean.
Some question if we can do more to protect the Gulf of Mexico spawning stock. Should we close the longline fishery in the Gulf of Mexico for two or three months to protect bluefin caught incidentally in the yellowfin fishery? So far we have not seen the need to do that.
As far as the quota is concerned, the quota we’re operating on is valid. We feel like we take a small number of fish in the west, but we need to protect spawners in both the east and the west.
Q: What is the single most important management strategy that the US should pursue at ICCAT?
A: There are three things. Number one, we should reduce the take of small fish, particularly in the Mediterranean.
Number two, we need to get quotas in the east that are in line with the rebuilding plan. We are not making progress rebuilding the stock.
And, number three is data. The eastern countries are not providing the data needed to properly do the stock assessment.
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