A disappointing pace of the rebuilding of inshore cod stocks, which hit the fishing industry with a shock in a new assessment late last year, has now been extended to the offshore cod stock in Georges Bank, according to a new assessment of 13 stocks by the NOAA Science Center at Woods Hole.
The new bad news about Georges Bank cod is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now believes the biomass in the offshore waters is 46 percent smaller than the previous assessment estimated in 2008.
That assessment estimated the offshore cod biomass at 17,672 metric tons. The new assessment estimates the stock at 9,494 metric tons.
Based on the new estimates and modeling, NOAA dropped the hypothetical size of the rebuild stock from 148,084 metric tons to 140,424 metric tons.
