The New England Fishery Management Council is deep in the process of overhauling how the region handles its groundfish monitoring, recently approving another set of alternatives to a draft of “Amendment 23.”
Amendment 23 represents, so far, two years of work by the council to improve how the region’s groundfish catch is monitored. At the council’s most recent meeting, which occurred 16 to 18 April, the council approved more alternatives for the wide-ranging amendment.
“It’s a major review of groundfish monitoring in general,” Janice Plante, public affairs officer for the NEFMC, told SeafoodSource. “We’re taking a big step backwards and taking a comprehensive look at the whole groundfish monitoring program, and trying to make the process better.”
Some of those proposed changes include streamlining how sector reporting requirements work, potentially providing more funding for increased monitoring, potentially implementing a dockside monitoring program, and more.
One alternative, for example, hopes to set a specific date for knowing the target monitoring coverage level for at-sea monitoring in certain sectors of the groundfishery. In the past, some sectors haven’t known its level of coverage until after their rosters were due, making it more difficult to plan ahead.
“That’s really important for people who are fishing in sectors, they need to start planning for knowing what their level of coverage will be,” Plante said.
Each section of the amendment comes with multiple “alternatives,” which are different paths to reaching a solution.
On 24 and 25 April, a sub-panel of the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee met in Providence, Rhode Island, to review drafts of the amendment as the organization continues the process of establishing what monitoring methods it wants to examine in greater detail.
“Since the council in April added a few more alternatives to the range that they want considered in that, all of those are going to need to be further developed and expanded on,” Plante said. “We’re trying to make sure we have the complete range of alternatives that we want fully analyzed for public hearings.”
That process is still ongoing, and another council meeting in June will examine the current list of alternatives of Amendment 23. Even then, the process will be far from over, as further examination into the alternatives, followed by more discussions and eventually public hearings, will need to take place before any action is taken.
“We’re a few steps away from scheduling public hearings,” Plante said. “But we hope to hold hearings later this year."
Once the undertaking is complete, the council hopes to have a more accurate account of catches and discards in the New England groundfish fishery.
“We want to make sure there’s more accountability in the fishery, both on the reporting end and the monitoring end,” Plante said.
