Pallone introduces new fisheries measure
Kirk Moore
Sep. 30, 2011
ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS — New legislation would require federal regulators and their science advisers to offer more detailed reasons before restricting fishing limits on rebuilt stocks like black sea bass, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-NJ, said Thursday.
The bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Pallone and Rep. Walter Jones, R-NC, is similar to their “flexibility act” offered in the last session of Congress. It would allow waivers to the 10-year stock rebuilding deadline imposed during one reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
“Where did 10 years come from? Congress made it up,” Pallone said during a news conference at the town harbor. “When it’s made up – taking a rabbit out of a hat, really – why shouldn’t it be flexible?”
The 10-year rebuilding schedule was adopted at the urging of environmental groups, who argue the fishing industry historically has persuaded regulators to avoid taking tough steps to end overfishing. Those activists have continued to fight attempts like Pallone’s to alter the Magnuson-Stevens rebuilding timetable.
But fishermen argued the fixed timetable is biologically unrealistic – and a management time bomb.
“We should have never given that power to scientists who are not biologists but modelers,” said Thomas P. Fote, a New Jersey commissioner to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. “It’s like a woodland coming back – some species and plants will take over at the expense of others. That’s the nature of things.”
Joe Julian, the longtime operator of Julian’s Bait and Tackle in Atlantic Highlands, said he’s seen peaks and troughs in fish populations his whole life.
“Nature is cyclical. Some years we don’t have crabs, this year we’ve had a lot,” Julian said. “I’ve seen years when we didn’t see any bluefish, and then they’d come back.”
For years the race to meet a 10-year goal on summer flounder cut the permitted catch back every year, until fishing advocates mustered enough political muscle on Capitol Hill to win a three-year extension through this year.
“That kept me in business because it stretched out the rebuilding. We would have been shut down in 2008 and 2009,” said James Lovgren, a commercial trawler captain with the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative of Point Pleasant Beach. “We are almost totally dependent on summer flounder.”
With the three-year extension came a massive brood of baby flounder – the biggest spawning event in nearly 30 years, biologists say – making it more than likely that summer flounder will exceed its target numbers by New Year’s Day as required.
“What we did with summer flounder could be done with all species, depending on the circumstances,” Pallone said.
What’s chafing fishermen now are season limits on black sea bass, a species that’s been considered rebuilt for years, but still treated cautiously by regulators because there is a lot of uncertainty about its population data.
“These boats are tied up because they can’t fish for black sea bass,” said James Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, referring to party fishing boats at the harbor. “We’re 125 percent over (rebuilding goals) and still we can’t fish for them. We want to be rewarded for our sacrifices.”
Pallone said the new version of his bill requires a better explanation of “uncertainty” findings by science and statistical committees – advisers to regional fishery management councils who were assigned a much more influential role during the 2006 rewrite of the Magnuson-Stevens law.
The committees weigh the degrees of certainty behind scientific data points, but the process is not entirely clear, said John DePersenaire, the policy and science researcher for the Recreational Fishing Alliance.
“It’s like you throw out the good news, weight the bad news, and that’s where we get into trouble,” DePersenaire said. The Shore’s party boat fleet still has not recovered its old January-February season for black sea bass – a traditional winter business – despite the species’ numbers being in positive territory for five years, he said.
Kirk Moore: 732-557-5728; kmoore@njpressmedia.com
