ATLANTIC COD NEED YOUR HELP

 Anyone who has spent a few decades fishing in the northeast is all too aware that cod stocks have collapsed and what fishing remains is but a thin and watery shadow of what people once enjoyed.

Fishery managers have tried to rebuild cod stocks, but such rebuilding has been unsuccessful, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

It’s possible that a warming northern ocean has thrown annual plankton blooms out of synch with cod spawns, and so denies larval and juvenile cod the food that they need to thrive.

It’s possible that managers’ misunderstanding of cod stock structure has led to management measures that don’t provide the intended protections to local cod populations, and allow their declines to continue.

It’s possible that, because on-board observers are only required on a small fraction of northeast groundfish trips, more cod are being caught than fishermen are reporting, and that a large number of those fish are being dumped overboard, dead, without fishery managers being aware that such mortality occurs.

And it’s possible that fishery managers just made too many optimistic assumptions when interpreting fishery data, and by doing so failed to impose management measures sufficiently rigorous to end overfishing and rebuild the overfished stock.

In response to managers’ repeated failures to end overfishing and rebuild the stock, the Conservation Law Foundation filed a petition with the National Marine Fisheries Service on August 13 of this year, which requested that the Secretary of Commerce, acting independently from the New England Fishery Management Council, initiate a management plan that would effectively address the problems that have long beset the cod stock.

In its petition, the Conservation Law Foundation asserted that

“Deference to short-term economic interests has dominated decisions by the New England Fishery Management Council (“Council” or “NEFMC”), which has long ignored scientific concerns and sets catch limits for Atlantic cod using:  (1) inaccurate catch data; (2) an arbitrary control rule process that does not reliably end overfishing; and (3) repeatedly overly optimistic interpretations of stock assessment models that routinely underestimate fishing mortality and overestimate stock biomass and produce growth projections that have not materialized.  As the legally responsible party, NMFS has repeatedly approved the Council’s risk-prone recommendations, notwithstanding the failure of these conservation and management measures to achieve core statutory objectives.  Making matters worse, NMFS has neither adequately monitored the fishery (leading to unlawful discarding and unreliable catch data), protected necessary habitat (diminishing the species’ ability to rebuild), nor accounted for the impacts of climate change…

“According to the most recent stock assessment, not only are both Atlantic cod stocks—Gulf of Maine (“GOM”) cod and Georges Bank (“GB”) cod—overfished with overfishing still occurring, but the current scientific understanding reveals that they have been subject to overfishing for decades and all attempts to rebuild the stock as required by law have failed.  The best scientific information available shows that GOM cod has been subject to overfishing since 1982 and overfished in all but two years.  GB cod fares no better.  While no accepted assessment model currently exists for the GB cod stock, undermining the ability to set catch limits and quantitatively assess rebuilding, the most recent accepted assessment concludes that GB cod has been subject to overfishing for the entirety of the time series for which this determination could be made and overfished in all but two years.

“In addition to the persistent overfished stock status, neither stock is on track to rebuild consistent with the legal requirements of the [Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act].  Alarmingly, the probability that GOM cod will rebuild within its scheduled 2024 timeline—the second ten-year rebuilding period allowed for this stock—has plummeted in the two years between the 2017 and 2019 assessments from a zero to 26 percent chance of rebuilding on schedule to a zero to one percent chance of rebuilding on schedule, even in the absence of fishing.  While rebuilding progress cannot currently be quantitatively assessed for GB cod, there is no evidence to suggest that this stock can rebuild within its scheduled 2026 timeline.  It appears, however, that to recent assessments of adequate rebuilding progress for either stock has been conducted—at least there are no review documents or no findings of inadequate progress in documents available to [the Conservation Law Foundation] or the public—despite the statutory requirement of conducting such an assessment and making such a determination at least biannually…”

On August 18, NMFS published a notice in the Federal Register acknowledging receipt of the Conservation Law Foundation’s petition, and seeking public comments on the issues raised.  The public comment period ends at 11:59 p.m. on October 4.

There can be no question that fishery managers have failed to successfully address the problems besetting Atlantic cod, have failed to end overfishing, and have failed to even begin rebuilding overfished cod populations.

It’s a failure that strikes me particularly hard because I have been codfishing ever since I made my first party boat trip, and hooked my first cod, fishing with my family on a half-day party boat out of Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1960.  Since then, I have made many one-day party boat trips out of ports in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York.  I have booked multi-day trips to Georges Bank out of Montauk.  And I have made private boat cod trips from Connecticut and New York as well.

Over all that time, I have watched the cod decline. 

In my teens and early twenties—from the late 1960s to 1980 or so—I enjoyed the midsummer cod fishery on Cox’s Ledge, a fishery that supported party, charter, and private boats sailing from ports in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.  In those days, there were plenty of smaller cod, but fish in the 20s were also common.  To win the big-fish pool on a party boat usually required a cod over 40 pounds, and  50-pound pool fish were far from rare. 

One October day in 1975, on a lark, I joined a couple of college friends and drove down to Pt. Judith, Rhode Island, to go codfishing on one of the local party boats.  We had made no prior plans, had no idea whether fish were biting, and fished on a difficult day when the sea was still heaving from a passing storm.  Despite our lack of preparation, my two largest cod weighed 26 and 32 pounds.  Even though anglers caujght few cod on that trip, neither one came close to taking the pool.

By 1990, a multi-day party boat trip to Georges Bank produced fewer and smaller cod than I once caught on day trips out of Rhode Island.

In the early 1980s, we caught cod on private boat trips out of Connecticut and New York’s Long Island.  The inshore fishery was already declining by then, but anglers fishing on offshore wrecks often caught fish well over 20 pounds during the summer; winter saw some 40-pound cod come over the rail.  50s were rare, but occasionally seen, and every few years, someone would catch a cod close to, if not over, 60.

Today, such fish are just memories. 

I belong to Long Island’s South Shore Marlin and Tuna Club, which has about 100 members, almost all avid and experienced fishermen.  Each year, the club runs a contest for the three largest fish, of various species, caught by members.  Today, nine months into the 2021 season, only a single cod has been entered into our annual contest.

It weighed a pathetic 5.4 pounds.

Thus, it is clear that if we are ever to have a viable cod fishery, management needs to change.  Supporting the Conservation Law Foundation’s petition can help make that happen.

Interested parties can go to the Federal Register notice (which is linked HERE) and click on a link that will allow them to comment electronically.

Those who are looking for a simpler way to comment can click on this paragraph, which is linked to a Conservation Law Foundation website that includes a pre-printed message to NMFS; once at the site, all a person needs to do is fill out his or her name and other relevant information, and hit “SUBMIT.”  By doing so, each person will ask that NMFS

“Stop directed fishing for Atlantic cod, both commercially and recreationally…

“Monitor all New England groundfish trips…

“Protect important cod habitat…

“Require modified fishing gear…[to] help reduce incidental catch of cod…”

and

“Make sure recreational fisheries aren’t killing cod…”

It’s an important message to send, and the Conservation Law Foundation has taken steps to assure that it can be sent easily.

Over the past four or five decades, Atlantic cod have suffered long-term abuse.  Now, it’s more than past time for them to enjoy a little support.