Anger and apprehension about fishing under the new catch share management system that began in May abound, but Northeast groundfishermen finally received a smidgen of good news this week.
They've been concerned about low annual catch limits set for species like pollock. They fear that the ACLs for these fish are too low, and will prematurely trigger an automatic shutdown of fishing on all groundfish stocks.
The ACL for pollock was set at 2,748 metric tons for 2010. But a draft working paper on pollock assessment released on May 28 by the Northeast Demersal Working group yielded some interesting — and welcome — news.
The report finds that the species is "not overfished and overfishing is not occurring." The paper's findings triggered calls for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to accelerate the process of raising the 2010 ACL for pollock.
Then this week came news that regulators will raise the pollock catch limit to 16,000 metric tons. Doing so should give groundfishermen a better chance of reaching their harvest limits on other more valuable species, although low ACLs for other species such as winter flounder and yellowtail flounder pose problems, too.
NOAA has a lot invested in making catch share management work in the Northeast. Raising the pollock limit could be a small but important step in the right direction towards doing so.
Thank you for your time.
Linc Bedrosian
Senior Editor, National Fisherman
www.nationalfisherman.com
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June 21, 2010
