The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) claims there has been a breakdown in its scientific support system, contributing to instability in its catch advice.
A multi-page letter from fisheries management leaders in the NEFMC has brought to light what it said are major issues with the scientific support it requires to make key fisheries management decisions.
SeafoodSource acquired a copy of the 17 December letter from the NEFMC to Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) Science and Research Director Jon Hare, which claims there has been a “fundamental breakdown in the scientific support system for fisheries management in the New England region.” According to the letter, stock assessments, data collection systems and treatments, and the peer review process have deteriorated in quality and contributed to “extreme instability” in the council’s ability to establish catch advice and fishery yields.
“The council has recently expressed significant concern about major issues that are leading to diminished confidence in the scientific products from the NEFSC that are required for fishery management decisions,” the letter states. “The council recognizes that the combined effects of climate change and historic fishery removals have led to reductions in some stocks over time. However, the magnitude of change in estimates of stock biomass in recent years, both in the positive and negative directions, reflects choices made in the scientific process.”
The letter said that NEFMC has had to grapple with multiple issues with the science, including major disruptions to survey operations without any holistic evaluations to address the impacts of those surveys, questions about the applications of survey time series that have been raised for years but never addressed, a lack of biological sampling through the port sampling program, and massive upswings and downswings in catch advice for several stocks due to changes in assessment methods or the application of data sources, rather than due to the data itself.
A spokesperson for the NEFSC told SeafoodSource it is still reviewing the letter and its recommendations “and will consider them as part of our ongoing process of improving science to support fishery management.” The science center reiterated that there was no official response to the letter at the most recent council meeting, as well.
Northeast Seafood Coalition Policy Director Vito Giacalone told SeafoodSource the letter is the result of multiple years of issues between the council and the NEFSC. Giacalone said the NSC has been expressing concerns about the science the NEFMC works with for years with little action on the council’s part, but the process has reached a breaking point in part due to the science center’s lack of response to the criticism.
“We’ve been a student of it and always respectful of the process and the system; without one we wouldn’t have a fishery, right?” Giacalone said. “But, the reality is that the problem has been less about the managers – as far as them coming up with the right decisions on how to manage – and more about their total deference to the science which has failed to show any real humility at all, where they say, ‘You know what? Wow, we didn’t realize that; we didn’t see that huge disconnect.’”
Giacalone said the science center has patronized fishermen and well-informed stakeholders for their questions, to the point that it seems any questions from anyone outside of the NEFSC are dismissed.
Giacalone said while he isn’t a scientist, there are some key questions he’s brought up at council meetings about how survey data is directly counter to the fishing data that’s available, only to be completely ignored or dismissed by the NEFSC. The biggest and most glaring one, he said, is how survey data was used to apportion the quota for the Georges Bank cod and haddock fisheries.
Giacalone, in statements to both SeafoodSource and during public meetings of the council, pointed out that the current apportionment method exclusively uses survey data from the scientific ship BTT Bigelow. Through that data, the NEFSC apportioned 100 percent of the cod and haddock quotas to the eastern area of Georges Bank, resulting in Canada receiving most of the quota.
However, Giacalone questioned how the entire cod and haddock populations are assumed to be in the eastern portion of the fishing area when 94 percent of all U.S. haddock catches in Georges Bank occurred in the western area – a fact verifiable since the fishery has 90 percent observer coverage and full reporting of its catches.
Giacalone said he found that disconnect during the meeting in just minutes of looking at the data.
“Where they said 100 percent of the biomass existed, we only caught 6 percent of our total catch,” Giacalone said. “I pointed that out, people’s jaws were dropping, and nothing has been acknowledged by the science center. Nothing has been acknowledged by anyone that has heard it.”
Giacalone said the science center has continued to dismiss any criticism from stakeholders.
“I shouldn’t even say they’re talking down to just stakeholders; they talk down to any peer reviewer, scientist, or independent scientist who's hired to come in and represent the industry and represent us,” Giacalone said. “We learned, and we paid for our experience by getting the best consultants used globally, and they would literally disrespect those people and circle the wagons on them as soon as the meeting ended and come back with a counter punch. We weren’t punching.”
The letter from the council also mentions clear errors that it said have not been corrected by the science center. The council said during its most recent management process, the science center delivered a late assessment of information for the Atlantic halibut fishery that contained a “repeated error that was previously identified and corrected in 2022.”
The council letter also said major changes in catch advice have resulted from analyst decisions about model configurations and data treatments, while the fishing fleet has had no major changes. It also said some of the recommendations have focused more on fitting models to data, even if cases don’t fit into the realm of “biological plausibility.”
“Recent peer review panels and the SSC [Scientific and Statistical Committee] have questioned some assessment results as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unreasonable’ based on comparisons to previous assessment results, underlying environmental conditions, and information about fishery behavior and performance,” the letter said.
The consequences of the cod and haddock stock assessments are clear for the fishery – continued cuts to allowable catch that leave fishermen struggling, with many already going out of business. Yet, despite the lower fishing pressure and loss of businesses after following scientific advices, the cuts continue.
“Every time we don’t go over the quota, more and more guys go out of business, and the guys who can avoid them do a better job with it; all of those things that we do to adjust, including going out of business, and they just double-down and say we’re going to cut it more,” Giacalone said.
Giacalone said he is begging the council to take an “extraordinary effort” to save the cod and haddock fisheries from the current quota cuts, including bringing the scientists back to the table and to get a comprehensive peer review for the stocks.
“What can that cost us compared to what we’re going to lose when all of these guys go out of business so we have no more fishery?” he said. “The cod assessment is so bad and the haddock assessment on Georges Bank is so bad that ... the number of people going to survive this next year is going to be scary. The infrastructure will crumble. The council’s letter was nice, but they can’t tell me there’s not enough time to do something, for 2025, to save this fishery.”