Last week, a Federal District Court judge in Washington D.C. ruled that government regulators have not done enough to protect commercially valuable fish off the New England coast. Environmental groups who brought the suit are haling the decision. But commercial fishermen in New Hampshire and the rest of the region worry the new ruling may result in tighter restrictions. NHPR�s David Darman has more.
Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service has not fully complied with the Sustainable Fisheries Act of 1996. Congress passed the law to help repopulate fish stocks in areas of the Atlantic off the Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts coasts. Roger Fleming is an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation in Maine. Fleming says C-L-F, Audubon, and other environmental groups brought the suit because populations of valuable fish were still below goals that had been set in 1998.
12 really of particular concern are a couple of different populations of cod, the gulf of maine cod, and the georges bank cod. Those have been found to continue to be overfished. Other groundfish populations, including flounder, yellowtail have shown signs of bouncing back�
The court based its decision on information that has been gathered by the New England Fisheries Management Council, the regional arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The ruling covers fish populations in both the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, even though the two areas are separated by as much as 75 miles.
Scientists and fisherman agree the Gulf of Maine population shows signs of rebounding. But New Hampshire Fish and Game�s John Nelson, who also sits on the regional council, says cod populations continue to stay low at Georges Bank, so new, strict limits on fishing there probably makes sense.
04 234 �we probably can�t change the success of spawning if environmental conditions are not opportune for the larvae to survive. So the only thing that we can address are the fishing efforts, so that we can reduce the amount of removal from that population so that the remaining specimens can continue to spawn and hopefully, you will have a spawning take place when environmental conditions are optimal and we�ll have the good recruitment that we need to have the stock recover. 04 314
Despite some agreement that fish populations may be rebounding at different rates in Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine, the judge�s order covers both fishing grounds. This frustrates commercial fishermen like Erik Anderson of Portsmouth, who also sits on the New England Council. Anderson says his boat and others find plenty of cod, haddock and pollock when they head into the gulf of Maine, but they are prohibited from taking it because of established laws that have been in place for years, and that are based on scientific counts that he finds inaccurate.
23 45 there is a tremendous amount of fish there that the industry is having some very frustrating times, trying not to catch, trying not to catch these fish. To the best of their ability, they�re trying not to catch them, but they catch them. And the scientific community says there not there. But the industry says, they are there. 23 105
The judge�s ruling will probably cause fishermen throughout the Northeast to put up with tougher restrictions. And tighter rules may cause some in the industry to give up fishing, especially since the new rules may restrict the amount of fish that are caught unintentionally.
This debate over whether fish populations in two Atlantic fishing grounds are recovering or dwindling troubles Professor Ann Bucklin of the University of New Hampshire. Bucklin is also director of New Hampshire Sea Grant, a federally funded marine research group. She says she thinks the controversies over fishing won�t be solved until a central question is answered.
30 if I had to point to one of the most fundamental problems in fisheries management today, I would have to say it�s the disagreement over how many fish are in the ocean. Until we can agree on the basic data, that is, you know, are we facing an increasing stock, are we further depleting the stock, we can�t possibly agree on what an appropriate fishing management strategy might be. 30 28
Fishermen, researchers, and regulators will soon have the chance to devise a strategy that is in line with the latest federal district Court decision. The judge ordered them to meet and begin implementing her order later this month.
