RESTRICTIONS BEAT CLOSURE

Fishermen, naturally wanting to stay in business, have long fought stringent rules to limit their catches in order to allow depleted fish stocks to recover. With last week’s closure of a portion of the Georges Bank fishery, the risk of that thinking is now too apparent.

Although the closure is small and unlikely to affect more than a couple dozen large Maine boats, it is a warning that current fisheries rules are insufficient. With only one day’s notice, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that it was closing a portion of Georges Bank to all groundfishing because it believes that 90 percent of the cod there has already been caught although the fishing season is only one-third over.

The area, called the Eastern U.S.-Canada Management Area, is the only part of Georges Bank that is managed with strict catch limits. The limits are a result of an agreement between the two countries to split the catch from the waters that straddle the international boundary.

Fishermen who worked in the closed area will move elsewhere in Georges Bank and to the Gulf of Maine, putting pressure on fish species – and fishermen – in those areas. NMFS must monitor this to ensure that stocks here are not depleted. Instead of simply moving fishing effort around the ocean, the overall effort needs to be reduced.

Preliminary stock assessment numbers show that Georges Bank cod numbers have declined between 20 and 25 percent since 2001. This means cod stocks are nearing a record low despite federal rules aimed at rebuilding the cod population.

The closure of the U.S.-Canada area could also be a setback for supporters of gear modifications as a way to help depleted species. Fishermen working there were required to use special nets meant to trap haddock, which are plentiful, while allowing cod to escape. Regulators need to determine if the nets were used as intended, especially since Canadians working in the same area say the separators are successful.

More gear research is part of the answer, but the evidence is pointing more and more toward the need for strict catch limits for the entire fishery, not just a small portion of Georges Bank. Earlier this year, the head of NMFS, William Hogarth, said individual fishing quotas need to be seriously considered. The current system of limiting the number of days that fishermen can spend at sea and putting large sections of the ocean off-limits isn’t working.

Fishermen worry that quotas will allow large vessels to put small ones out of business. A bill drafted by Sen. Olympia Snowe, chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard, begins to address such concerns. It would require that any quotas that are proposed meet national standards that limit consolidation – the buying up of fishing rights by large vessels – and protect local communities.

A quota could not be put in place unless two-thirds of fishermen who voted supported it. Individual quotas that do both have been put in place in other states and countries and can be made to work for Maine.

The alternative, as seen in the hasty closure of fishing grounds, is worse.