Climatide

If you read any of the news coverage of the recently released assessment of Gulf of Maine cod, you probably came away with three things.

Olga Caprotti / Flickr

1. Fishermen are seriously questioning the new assessment (this was the focus of many mainstream media reports, not to mention a lot of political rhetoric).
2. The 2011 assessment – which indicates that the stock has been overfished in recent years and stands no chance of reaching rebuilt status by 2014, as hoped – was a dramatic reversal from the previous (2008) assessment, which had suggested that Gulf of Maine cod was on the rebound. The discrepancy is one reason fishermen have greeted the report so skeptically.
3. The revised assessment has put the fear of God severe catch restrictions – if not this year, then in subsequent years – into New England fishermen. That’s another reason fishermen and politicians are subjecting the new numbers to such scrutiny.

What you probably didn’t get was a good explanation of why the two assessments were so different. Have cod stocks really evaporated in the past three years? Or was one of the assessments in error? And, if so, which one? A few articles referred to the fact that there were differences in the data and computer model used. But the details I crave were sorely lacking.

So I headed down to the other end of Woods Hole (it’s a grueling two-block walk) and spent a couple of hours with Liz Brooks and Mike Palmer, two of the scientists at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center who were involved in producing the 2011 Gulf of Maine cod stock assessment. Here’s what I learned.

A more nuanced assessment

There’s actually some good news to be found in the 2011 assessment. Both Brooks and Palmer are of the professional opinion that the actual status of the cod stock has not changed dramatically over the past three years, and that it definitely hasn’t crashed. In fact, they think it has been slowly rebuilding over the past several years – the latest three included.
Continue reading →

This afternoon, the New England Fishery Management Council will hear first-hand about the dire 2011 Gulf of Maine cod assessment and take up the question of how to respond, specifically whether to recommend so-called ‘interim measures’ that might be more lenient than the dramatic cuts in catch limits mandated by federal law. In anticipation of that, 19 New England lawmakers have penned a letter to Secretary of Commerce John Bryson asking him to accept any recommended actions and to put serious effort into reviewing and improving the stock assessment process. In statements included in a press release about the letter, members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation also called for financial aid for fishermen if catch limits are slashed, and continued to criticize the catch shares management system and NOAA’s relationship with New England fishermen in general.

At the core of the debate over the new assessment is the fact that it contradicts two things: the previous (2008) assessment, and many fishermen’s sense of the stock’s health. Tension between fishery scientists, who like to rely on what’s known as fishery-independent data, and fishermen, who want their experience on the water to be given greater weight, is as old as fishery management itself (which isn’t really that old, in the big picture, but dates back a few decades anyway). The starkly contrasting assessments are more unusual – the result, it appears, of new data and some changes in the analysis process.

Both raise hard and valid questions: What is the best way to assess the size and health of a fish population? How close are we to that ideal? And how could we get closer?

While the Council is meeting in Portsmouth, NH this afternoon, those are the sorts of questions I’ll be taking up with two members of the cod assessment team here in Woods Hole.

NOAA

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco has denied a request for a new assessment of cod stocks.

Imagine you’ve been asked to redo three years worth of work in three months. Oh, and get a different result this time. I’m guessing you’d be grumpy. I know I would be.

Well, that’s basically what Senator Kerry and others pushing for a new assessment of Gulf of Maine cod were asking federal fishery scientists to do. So I can’t say that I was surprised to hear late last week that the request had been denied. Here’s the (extremely brief) AP story:

BOSTON (AP) _ The nation’s oceans chief has turned down a request made first by Sen. John Kerry for a new assessment of the health of Gulf of Maine cod.

New data indicates cod is badly overfished, and fishermen now face ruinous cuts in their catch. The data has drawn skepticism from fishermen because it’s a reversal of a recent, optimistic study.

In December, Kerry asked for a new cod assessment that fishermen can trust.

In a reply earlier this month, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco said a new assessment can’t be done in time for managers to make decisions for the May start of the fishing year.

She also said the agency doesn’t yet have new data needed to move ahead with further assessments. She assured Kerry she is committed to helping fishermen.

While I’m sure some will label Lubchenco’s comments stonewalling, the kicker is it’s true. Fishery scientists spend months at sea conducting surveys, then combine that with a multitude of other data sources to generate their best estimate of a given fish stock’s size and health. That process can’t possibly be crammed into the three months remaining before the start of the 2012 fishing season.

The alternative, I suppose, would be to reexamine the existing data. But consider this: if such a reassessment did produce a different answer, would what amounts to another reversal really be more trustworthy? Or simply more convenient?