The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) has revised and resubmitted a controversial plan that will split the New England cod fishery into four individual stocks starting next year.
Amendment 25 would divide the New England cod population – which is currently managed as two stocks – into four distinct stocks for more precise management. Under the new plan, catch limits would be independently set for the four stocks: Eastern Gulf of Maine, Western Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Southern New England. The new plan also slashed the total allowable catch limit across all stocks by 43 percent to 382.9 metric tons (MT).
Amendment 25 has proven unpopular with the commercial fishing sector, which claims the new plan would hurt fishers.
The council previously approved the amendment in December 2024 with the expectation that it would go into effect 1 May 2025, however, the federal government was unable to finalize Adjustment 69 – the regulation governing the Northeast commercial multispecies fishery – in time for the 2025 season. Instead, NOAA Fisheries passed an emergency rule keeping the two-stock cod status quo in place for the 2025 season, while otherwise aligning with the council’s decision to cut the total allowable catch for cod.
Shortly after issuing the emergency rule, however, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it was rejecting Amendment 25 for technical reasons. While agreeing with the council that a four-stock plan represented the best available science, the federal government found the document did not “establish reference points or management measures for the newly defined Atlantic cod stock units” and failed to align with federal standards.
The department invited NEFMC to revise the amendment accordingly and resubmit it, and in July, NEFMC voted to pause some of its other work to focus on revising Amendment 25 in time to enact it for the 2026 commercial fishing season. At its September meeting, the council approved the revised amendment.
Opposition to Amendment 25 remains, and New England fishing groups continued to push the council to reject the plan ahead of its September vote.
In September, the Northeast Seafood Coalition (NSC) and Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund (GFCPF) sent a letter warning the council that the revised Amendment 25 “has done little to rectify the procedural weaknesses” of the original cod management proposal.
“NSC and GFCPF remain concerned that the abbreviated repacking process could also be deemed inadequate,” the groups wrote to the council in September.
The groups also attached a 17-page letter dated 10 April from their lawyers outlining multiple issues with Amendment 25 and arguing that the regulation didn’t meet federal requirements.
Separately, NSC and GFCPF also asked federal regulators to increase cod catch limits for the 2025 fishing year when NOAA Fisheries renewed its emergency rule authorizing commercial fishing in the absence of Adjustment 69 – however, regulators decided to stick with the top-level quota recommended by NEFMC last year.
