NMFS DELAYS ACTION ON KEY NEW ENGLAND COD MANAGEMENT MEASURE

 

Staffing cuts and the resultant delays, and perhaps an executive order, are going to impact the National Marine Fisheries Service’s ability to conserve and manage fish stocks while striving to maintain healthy marine fisheries.

The most recent example of that occurred on April 29, when NMFS announced an emergency action intended to ensure that the New England groundfish fishery might be prosecuted when a new fishing year began on May 1.  NMFS said,

“Today, NOAA Fisheries signed a temporary rule for an emergency action that establishes measures necessary for the Northeast Multispecies [Fishery] to operate at the beginning of fishing year 2025, on May 1, 2025.  This action ensures that the fishery can continue without interruption by setting interim specifications for 2 stocks of cod and for Georges Bank haddock, and affirming specifications for other Northeast Multispecies stocks previously set in Frameworks 65 and 66…”

The emergency action also addressed other issues such as sector allocations, set commercial possession limits and overall catch limits for each regulatory trimester, and prohibit “common pool” commercial boats—that is, those vessels which chose not to participate in the groundfish catch share program—and recreational vessels from landing any Georges Bank cod.

What the emergency action doesn’t do is incorporate the most recent groudfish management actions taken by the New England Fishery Management Council.  In that regard, NMFS noted that

“These specifications are interim measures that authorize the fishery to operate between May 1 and the potential implementation of Framework 69, and do not undermine or inadvertently preclude approval and implementation of Amendment 25 and Framework 69.  However, NMFS noted in the emergency rule that it does not intend to implement the management transition to the proposed four stocks of cod, if approved, until May 1, 2026, because transitioning management in the middle of the fishing year from two stock units of cod to the four stock units would be challenging for fishery participants and NMFS.  Other measures in Framework 69, if approved, would be implemented during fishing year 2025.”

And that’s a big deal.

Scientists have recently determined that they have been managing cod all wrong.  For decades, managers have assumed that there are just two stocks of cod—designated Gulf of Maine and Georges Banks—off the U.S. East Coast, and have tailored management measures to that assumption.  Such measures haven’t worked out very well; populations have cratered, and even seemingly restrictive measures haven’t been enough to put either stock on an upward trajectory.

A recent research track stock assessment determined that there are at least five separate stocks of cod off the northeast coast.  As a practical matter, distinguishing between winter- and spring-spawning cod in the western Gulf of Maine is too difficult to allow for separate management, so both groups of fish are combined for management purposes.  Biologists have also identified separate stocks that they refer to as Eastern Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Southern New England.

Each of those four stocks has its own status, characteristics, and problems.  Western Gulf of Maine is overfished and experiencing overfishing, but scientists believe that if it is managed properly, will increase in abundance between now and 2027.  However, the same scientists are concerned that their projections might be somewhat too optimistic.  The Eastern Gulf of Maine cod, on the other hand, are expected to show decreasing abundance through 2027, with bycatch in lobster pots thought to be a significant source of removals from the population; since such bycatch can’t be quantified, though, there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the projections. 

Georges Bank cod are very badly overfished, although no overfishing is taking place.  Spawning stock biomass is at its historical nadir while, perhaps unsurprisingly, recruitment is too low to allow rebuilding.  It, too, is in a state of continuing decline.

The final stock, Southern New England, is unique in that most of its fishing mortality is thought to come from the recreational, rather than the commercial, fishery.  However, because there are serious gaps in the recreational data, the level of recreational removals remains uncertain.  The level of recreational release mortality is also unknown.  While the stock is badly overfished, biologists believe that it could increase in abundance over the next few years if recommended management measures are imposed—including a complete closure of the recreational fishery.

The New England Council drafted Amendment 25 in an effort to apply the recent stock assessment's conclusions to cod management in the northeast.

The New England Council intended that both Amendment 25 and Framework 69 would be approved by NMFS prior to the start of the 2025 fishing year.  A notice that the Council released on October 23, 2024 stated that

“To address this new understanding of cod stock structure, the Council is working on an Atlantic Cod Management Transition Plan.  The plan is meant to align the management of cod with the science.

“This detailed transition plan is being carried out in two phases.

“Phase 1:  This first phase is limited to measures that will be implemented by the May 1 start of the 2025 groundfish fishing year.  It includes both Amendment 25 and Framework 69.  [emphasis added]”

Yet the Council’s hopes and expectations counted for little.  It can only recommend management measures to NMFS; that agency, along with its parent agencies, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Commerce, have the sole authority to adopt regulations that conform to recommendations.

And in this case, the agency did not feel a compelling need to have Amendment 25 and Framework 69 in place for the start of the 2025 fishing year, and felt no urgency to conform cod management to the best available fisheries science before May 1, 2026--if it happens then.

That doesn’t necessarily suggest anything sinister.  Completely reordering the cod fishery, so that it conforms to a new understanding of how cod stocks are structured, is a demanding task.  It not only involves new annual specifications, ranging from overfishing limits to annual catch targets, for each of the four newly defined stocks, but also adjusting the quotas of each of the 15 groundfish sectors (as of the 2024 fishing year) to reflect the revised, four-stock management approach.  Such work takes time, and the fact that NMFS only issued its request for comments on Amendment 25 on February 28, 2025 virtually guaranteed that Amendment 25 would not be approved prior to the start of the new fishing year.

Still, it’s impossible to ignore the avoidable delays that kept NMFS from addressing Amendment 25 a little sooner than it has.

The change of administrations, and the resultant, unprecedented disruptions of routine agency functions during the transition period—including draconian restrictions on new legislative actions—undoubtedly also played an important role.  NMFS was effectively paralyzed during the early months of this year, to the extent that, for crucial weeks, it was unable to respond to a gross overharvest of bluefin tuna off North Carolina, a failure that will probably be reflected in lower trip limits for anglers and commercial fishermen elsewhere on the coast throughout the rest of the year.  It’s probably worthwhile to note that the bluefin tuna issue was addressed on the same day that NMFS asked for comments on Amendment 25—the first day that the administration was willing to let fisheries managers again do their jobs.

And once managers could get back to work, there were a lot fewer of them than there were before, due to deep and arbitrary cuts in the number of active NMFS employees.  With fewer people to do the work, it’s inevitable that less work will be done, and that both fish and fishermen will suffer as a result.

Even when NMFS finally manages to take up Amendment 25 for serious consideration, it may well be delayed, or very possibly rejected, though it is based on far better science than is the current cod management plan.

That’s because Amendment 25’s efforts to rebuild cod stocks will result in very small quotas for the foreseeable future, at least in the case of three of the four stocks.  New England fisherman, who have traditionally been willing to sacrifice the future for higher short-term landings, have strongly opposed the measure, with one industry spokesman going so far as to say that the Amendment, if adopted, will

“permanently destroy the centuries-old cod fishing business.”

Strong opposition will slow regulatory progress at the best of times, but now, it will be abetted by an obstacle that fishery managers didn’t have to deal with before:  An executive order from April 17, which calls on NMFS to

“unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation,”

and directs the Secretary of Commerce to

“immediately consider suspending, revising, or rescinding regulations that overly burden America’s commercial fishing, aquaculture, and fish processing industries.”

Since the first efforts to manage New England groundfish, the region’s fishermen have complained that regulations “overly burden” the groundfishing industry, and the current administration seems particularly sympathetic to such claims.

Because such claims have fallen on sympathetic ears before, resulting in management measures that weren’t restrictive enough to conserve cod stocks, and because past management efforts were performed at too coarse a level, and didn’t accord with the actual structure of northeastern cod stocks, Amendment 25’s management measures, deemed necessary to stop the decline in cod abundance, almost certainly will, in the short term, have a substantial negative impact on New England fishermen, making it more likely that their calls for regulatory relief—or, at the least, for no more regulation—will be heard.

Amendment 25 represents managers’ best chance to turn around the decline in cod abundance off the northeastern coast of the United States.  While success is far from guaranteed—the cod stocks have fallen so far that recovery cannot be assured—Amendment 25 reflects a breakthrough in fisheries science which will, for the first time, align management measures with the structure of cod populations.

Yet NMFS has been dilatory in Amendment 25’s adoption. 

While part of its delay is undoubtedly due to practical matters—the spatial restructuring of a fishery is a difficult thing to do, and takes time to get right—much of it is due to pure politics.  And as a result of such politics, the soonest we might see the most critical aspect of Amendment 25—transitioning to a four-stock management approach—put in place is May 1, 2026.

And even that is not guaranteed.

It is very possible that the blind hand of politics, insensible to both scientific concerns and future consequences, will strike down Amendment 25 completely, in the name of “regulatory reform.”

Should that occur, it might well be striking down New England cod stocks and the New England cod fishery as well, as the best chance for their survival is labeled a “regulatory burden” and set aside.