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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 11
July 2008
Groundfish stock status stuns NE council
PORTLAND, ME – New and very unexpected information about the status of groundfish stocks has led the New England Fishery Management Council to take a step back and to rethink its potential management alternatives for Amendment 16 to the federal groundfish plan.
At its June 3-5 meeting here, the council received a stock status update from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northeast Fisheries Science Center and learned that its proposed effort reduction alternatives were not putting the needed emphasis on the right species.
“In my opinion, we don’t have a document we can move forward with,” said council Chairman John Pappalardo of Massachusetts.
The problem is that the council’s groundfish committee developed Amendment 16 alternatives under the belief that white hake was the weakest stock in the groundfish complex. But, according to scientists, it now appears that several of the region’s flatfish stocks might be in far worse shape, which could fundamentally change the focus of the effort reduction options.
Taken aback by the news, the council voted to revise – and slightly extend – its timeline for the amendment. Pappalardo said a four-month delay would allow the council to obtain final stock status updates at the end of August and give the groundfish committee a chance to develop more appropriate public hearing alternatives (see story page 16A for more details).
NMFS officials, while “disappointed” with the decision to delay, agreed that everyone might be better served by taking a deep breath and reassessing the situation.
“This is very sobering information here,” said George Darcy, assistant regional administrator for sustainable fisheries at the NMFS Northeast Regional Office in Gloucester.
“The magnitude of the problem is different from what we thought,” he said.
Latest news
Here’s how this latest development unfolded.
Paul Rago, chief of the science center’s population dynamics branch, presented the council with two fundamental pieces of information that turned the tide.
First, he provided a summary of the Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM) held April 28-May 2. At that meeting, the GARM developed preliminary revised biological reference points for the 19 groundfish stocks in the Northeast multispecies complex. This stock status update is required under Amendment 13, which implemented the A-day, B-day, and C-day program fishermen currently work under.
Second, Rago provided a preliminary look at 2006 biomass levels and fishing mortality rates for several key stocks. He emphasized that this particular information was pulled together exclusively by scientists from the Woods Hole, MA-based center and had yet to be scrutinized by the broader group of scientists involved in the GARM.
Productivity down
The GARM used new models to develop revised estimates of appropriate fishing mortality and biomass levels at maximum sustainable yield (MSY), explained Rago. In most cases, these revised biomass targets, which identify the amount of fish needed for a fully rebuilt stock, turned out to be significantly lower than the numbers currently in place.
One explanation for this phenomenon is that scientists accounted for changes in “system productivity,” which, among other things, has resulted in slower growth rates in many groundfish stocks.
According to Rago, scientists now believe that productivity in the entire Northeast ocean system is down significantly from what it used to be roughly a decade-and-a-half ago. The exact cause is unknown, but reduced zooplankton blooms, a staple source of food for many species low on the food chain, could be one factor, along with changes in water temperature.
As a result, fish in general are growing slower, and animals in most age categories are smaller in size, evidenced by the extremely slow-growing 2003 year class of haddock on Georges Bank.
Ocean capacity
Massachusetts council member David Pierce said he wasn’t yet sure how to react to the new information and wondered whether productivity in the ocean had simply shifted toward different species.
“Has the energy within the system been maintained but is now in elasmobranches and pelagics instead?” he asked. “Simply put, have groundfish suffered as a result of the high abundance of herring and mackerel and dogfish and skates?”
Rago said scientists looked into this question and didn’t find a species-shift to be the root cause of the problem. He said the GARM would include more details in its final report.
Mid-Atlantic council member Jimmy Ruhle of North Carolina, serving as the liaison to the New England council, questioned whether it was possible to rebuild all stocks to maximum biomass targets simultaneously as is required by federal law.
“I’m absolutely convinced we’re asking the ocean to do something it cannot do – maximize all species at the same time,” he said. “If our targets are so high that we’ll fail because the ocean can’t support it, then we have to rethink what we’re doing. What cost is it going to be to this country’s fishing industry if we’re trying to do something that can’t be done?”
Rago said scientists were seriously debating this question as well, although no firm conclusions have been reached.
“The science on this is still developing rapidly,” he said. “A lot of advancements have been made.”
According to scientists, biomass targets reflect the population size necessary to support maximum sustainable yield from stocks – or the amount of fish that can be safely harvested while keeping stocks at healthy levels.
These biomass targets, however, are significantly lower than the amount of fish scientists think the ocean system can sustain.
In other words, a biomass target at MSY is a smaller number than the theoretical carrying capacity – or maximum possible stock size – for any particular stock.
Flatfish status
Rago provided the council with specific details about the status of individual stocks, again stressing that the numbers would not be final until the GARM meeting in August.
That said, Rago showed how the “revised” 8,310-metric ton (mt) Amendment 16 biomass target for Cape Cod/Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder compared to the existing target of 12,600 mt, reflecting lower ocean system productivity.
The preliminary estimate of biomass in 2006 for this stock was 1,200 mt – far below the revised 8,310-mt target.
Furthermore, the preliminary fishing mortality rate calculated for Cape Cod/Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder was extremely high, coming in at 0.9 in 2006. The revised fishing mortality target for this stock is 0.24. Significant reductions in fishing effort most likely would be needed to reduce fishing mortality so dramatically from 0.9 to 0.24.
This pattern of very low biomass levels and very high fishing mortality rates was repeated for several other important flatfish stocks – Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, Southern New England and Mid-Atlantic yellowtail flounder, Gulf of Maine winter flounder, and Southern New England and Mid-Atlantic winter flounder.
For Southern New England and Mid-Atlantic winter flounder, for example, the revised biomass target at MSY is 37,608 mt and the revised fishing mortality rate at MSY is 0.26. For 2006, center scientists calculated biomass at 2,544 mt while the fishing mortality rate was 0.9.
This means that the overall biomass of this stock of winter flounder is only a small fraction of what it should be and fishing mortality must be reduced by a large amount.
White hake, cod
The news on white hake, while not totally redeeming, turned out to be better than expected.
When revising the biomass target, the GARM incorporated all sizes of white hake into the assessment model – a major change from the last assessment when only larger fish were factored in.
As a result, the revised biomass target for this stock was on the order of 56,500 mt, and the revised fishing mortality rate at MSY was 0.21.
The bad news was that the preliminary 2006 biomass estimate for white hake turned out to be 15,000 mt, leaving a large gap to fill before fully rebuilding the stock to the 56,500-mt level. However, fishing mortality was in check, coming in at 0.2 for 2006, which was extremely welcome news.
As for cod, both stocks – Georges Bank cod and Gulf of Maine cod – remained significantly below their biomass targets. However, fishing mortality, while still too high, was much closer to target levels than the flatfish stocks.
A heads-up
Science center Director Nancy Thompson herself stressed the preliminary nature of the 2006 information.
However, she added, “We felt it was important to give you this information now. Our intention was to give people a heads-up as soon as possible.”
Several council members expressed appreciation for the willingness of NMFS to come forward with this latest information, which was only days old.
Up to now, the council has been seriously hampered in its efforts to develop Amendment 16 because it had no real sense of which stocks needed more – or less – effort reduction to achieve stock rebuilding targets.
Groundfish committee Chairman Rip Cunningham of Massachusetts summed up the council’s dilemma and the importance of the new stock status information for better guiding the direction of Amendment 16.
“Until today, we felt that white hake was driving the bus,” he said. “Now it appears that flatfish will be driving the bus.”
Janice M. Plante
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