More (Bad News) on Groundfishing

[BasicPatrick]

The emergency Measures announced last week were just the first shoe to drop.

I am at the Council meeting in RI right now. The New England Fishery Management Council is currently working on an action called Framework 53. Today they had very little option but to pass a motion to end "overfishing" of Gulf of Maine Cod in 2015, which meant approving a total overall ABC (acceptable biological catch) of 376 metric tons (or something like that). For comparison I think the starting ABC last year was 1550 metric tons.

There are not many options right now but there will be many debates that will happen tomorrow (Wed Nov 19 at the Newport Marriott). Among the options for recreational (private and for hire) is a pretty straight up copy of the Emergency Action measures...zero possession of cod and 2-3 haddock with all recreational ground fishing only to occur outside of rolling closed areas (pretty much where we fish when we fish).

Some people got mad at me today because I went to the mic and agreed that cod are in the toilet. Oh well. Its the truth and has been for a few years. I don't care whose fault it is as that argument gets us nowhere and Id rather spend my time trying to figure out how we can have measures that allow some recreational ground fishing. The dragger fleet is trying to argue the science is wrong and there are lots of cod but they aren't getting anywhere from my point of view. They are getting press but no solutions thus far.

As far as why the recreational fleet is not getting the increase in haddock that is being reported in the press...in some ways we are. I say that because the 2014 recreational "catch" (kept fish plus discard mortality) was more than 200% of our 30% sub ACL (annual catch limit) of haddock. We were also over on cod. Because of this the AM (accountability measure) has to be regulations that will not allow us to go over our sub ACL for the next fishing year which starts on May 1 2015. When they add the discard mortality of cod caught and discarded while haddock fishing the analysis ends up giving us a measure of zero retention of cod and a 2-3 haddock bag limit...but our discard mortality of cod will still be larger than our sub ACL. As proposed we are screwed.

It might be even get worse before it gets better as no one has even publically discussed pollock yet except that we can't fish for ground fish inside the rolling closed areas and that includes pollock.

Yes, Tuna fishing is allowed inside the rolling closed areas.

Tomorrow we see if we can get something different considered. Im working with a few people to try and get them to analyze a zero discard/combined bag limit where we keep every cod, haddock and if they bring it up maybe pollock until the bag limit is reached. Once an anger reached the bag limit we have to stop fishing for the day. Maybe it could get us up to a bag limit of 5-6 fish but no way to know if we can even get that considered.

Im sure some of the state people have ideas as well. At least I hope they do. Who knows at this point. I just hope people aren't thinking that after May 1 we are going back to 2014 regulations because that isn't going to happen.

That all i got. Will check in later in the week.
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