At a grim daylong session here, a deeply divided New England Fishery Management Council voted to recommend reductions of 77 percent from last year’s catch for each of the next three years for cod in the Gulf of Maine.

It also recommended cuts of 61 percent from last year for one year only to the cod catch on Georges Bank, a vast area off Cape Cod, which was named for the fish. The council’s recommendations are subject to approval by the federal government, which is expected to put them in place by May 1.

“We are headed, slowly, seeming inexorably, to oblivion,” said John Bullard, the regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a member of the council, as he explained his support for the catch limits. “I do not deny the costs that are going to be paid by fishermen, families, communities. They are real. They will hurt.”

The problem, he said, is not government inflexibility, as fishermen have suggested, but the lack of fish. “It’s midnight and getting darker when it comes to how many cod there are,” he said. “There isn’t enough cod for people to make a decent living.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/us/officials-back-deep-cuts-in-atlantic-cod-harvest-to-save-industry.html?ref=us&_r=0

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Video
Cod Fishery in Crisis

Cod Fishery in Crisis - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_7tyyoTDE)

You can only hammer a species for so long. Now it's time to pay the price
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

This move should put the bottom fishing charter boats out of business...9 fish cod limit now...what will it be in May.. maybe 2 fish...who will pay 1200 or so for a cod fishing trip?

300 lb commercial jigging limit will be about 72 lbs., ...not worth going to middle bank

RAP meets on Feb 15th, then their report will go to the groundfish committee and then to the full council. Probably won't know the 2013 rules until Late March or April.

FYI the RAP recommended no change to GOM cod regs for 2013 and an increase in minimum size for GOM Haddock to 21 inches, with no bag limit. Since these recommendations have a greater than 50% chance of staying within the sub-ACL, they will go right to NMFS and bypass the groundfish committee and the council.

Good news, but let's hope they don't just ignore the rap's, again.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Good news, but let's hope they don't just ignore the rap's, again.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

The probability of the RAP recommendations keeping the catch with in the Sub-ACL is greater that 50% (63% IIRC) and so the recommendations will go directly to NMFS and bypass both the groundfish committee and the full council. The council enacted that provision in January. So it seem like they are willing to go along with whatever the RAP recommends as long as it has a reasonable chance of succeeding.

NBC report:

Death knell for cod fishermen? - Video on NBCNews.com (http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/50980891#50980891)

I went to a fishing club meeting and we had a couple DMF speakers present what they do. (count fish, fishermen and data analysis and collection) at the end of their polished PP presentation they asked...any questions? I looked around and no one was making any movements in the audience. I raised my hand and said...Yeah, I have a lot of questions, first, don't take what I am about to say personally, I am sure you are good people but you have done a terrible job and have a real credibility problem as well as a pubic image problem.
Lots of questions but when I got to the Cod status..he said...well cod have been over fished now for decades and we think golbal warming is causeing a problem as well.
I said....Global warming always seems to be the political scapegoat for everything these days but weren't you in charge of regulating fishing limits for the last few decades? How come you didn't do anything if you knew we were overfishing ? How come you let the hoards of fisherman take large breeder cod in known breeding areas when you knew the population was trying to recover? How come you didn't act in a conservative manner so that if you were unsure about the stock size we would not collapse the fishery. You did the same thing for SB! You were in charge when the stock collapsed! How could you let it get to a point where you nearly wipe them out and need to have a moratorium to save the species? That is not conservative management!

...This went on for a while. Nice people but they have their head up their ass and have been pressured by commercial fishing industry to squeeze the fishery for all it is worth.

it's all about MSY

it's all about MSY
It sure is. MSY is just a technical way of saying "what's the most we can take to *hopefully* prevent species collapse."

The problem is that counting fish is a very inaccurate science. As such, they need to take their already terrible data and include a buffer. Making decisions based on poor data is no better than just guessing.

It just makes it an "educated" guess, which in most cases is as worthless as flipping a coin or rolling dice.

The problem is that counting fish is a very inaccurate science. As such, they need to take their already terrible data and include a buffer. Making decisions based on poor data is no better than just guessing.

Counting fish is extremely difficult. Lots of moving pieces, and many moving pieces that we can't even know about...

But does anyone doubt that the stocks are in terrible shape? Let me re-phrase...does anyone who is not economically impacted by this, doubt that stocks are in terrible shape?

I feel for the folks who will be unable to make a living, and I hope that some of my tax dollars are used to help them as best we can. But if the stocks are headed to near-extinction, what's the alternative? If stocks are declining, then the longer we wait, the harsher the inevitable fix will be...