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For whatever its worth, I too experienced the insanely dense schools of cod on Jeffrey's last year. Not just one trip either..I am talking May-August on different parts of the ledge. Hard to get away from at times. I am not saying the stock is healthy, but it is certainly very understandable that it is hard for these guys to buy that we only have 3% of the sustainable stock biomass in the GOM, when you are literally running from schools of cod to put together a haddock limit...
Cod in general are in very poor shape, maybe more so in the GOM stock than George's, but I too honestly believe we have more fish than they say we do. When you look at some of the recent MASSIVE snafu's made in things like MRIP data... then you really start to question the agency's competence with statistical analysis, which is what all of this modeling is based on.
For those of you who aren't familiar with aforementioned MRIP screw up, they had figured average porgy and sea bass weights in the NY Bight of ~10-15 lbs per fish when calculating quotas for the coming season.... scary. Why did none of the statisticians notice this? Because they are simply not well familiarized with the fish/fishery. Just an example of the disconnect folks...
Last edited by Vogt; 04-19-2017 at 04:59 AM..
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