May 2012 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 13. MISCELLANEOUS COMMERCIAL FISHING NEWS
people from enjoying the recreational saltwa- ter fishing experience.
“I understand if there are some ques- tions and concerns because this kind of sur- vey has not been done before, but it is not about taking anything away. Rather, I see it as a way to provide a monetary estimate of ‘angler satisfaction’,” he said. “Recreational anglers spend a lot of money to enjoy their passion, and this study will allow us to place a value on the level of satisfaction anglers receive, above and beyond their out of pocket costs. It is a return on investment for everyone: we want to provide the best pos- sible information to enable them to continue to do so.”
“I am a big fan of the endowment effect: once people own something they think about it very differently,” said Ariely, who also serves as a visiting professor at MIT’s Pro- gram in Media Arts and Sciences. “The fact that government agencies are collaborating and doing some experiments or studies like this permit survey rather than relying on intuition or hypothetical responses is a posi- tive thing.”
NOAA Announces New Management Measures for Gulf of Maine Cod for 2012 NOAA announced that fishermen will be allowed to catch up to 6,700 metric tons of Gulf of Maine cod in 2012. This end result of collaborative work with the fishing industry to find a solution that prevented a much larger
cut to the allowable catch for the 2012 fishing year.
In late 2011, a new stock assessment for Gulf of Maine cod found the stock declined unexpectedly, making major reductions in catch limits necessary for the 2012 fishing year, as required under the Magnuson- Stevens Fishery Conservation and Manage- ment Act. NOAA and the New England Fish- ery Management Council, which includes state officials and fishermen, worked with the fishing industry to identify flexibility within federal fisheries law that could both protect cod and provide sustained fishing opportu- nities. As a result, the quota for 2012 will be set at 6,700 metric tons, which is within the range recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council. Without this collaborative approach, the catch limit for this fishing year would have been set below 1,500 metric tons.
“This extraordinary partnership among fishermen, members of the non-governmen- tal organization community, federal regula- tors and scientists has provided us with some discretion to set higher catch limits in 2012 and a little more time for fishermen to plan and for all of us to work together to address the change in stock condition,” said Sam Rauch, acting assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “We are commit- ted to continued evaluation of the current cod status and to working with our partners to develop a long-term rebuilding program
that includes setting catch limits in 2013 that end overfishing.”
NOAA is granting commercial ground- fish sectors (a group of fishing vessels that share an annual allocation) a carry-over of up to 10 percent of the 2011 allocation into the 2012 fishing year. The fishing industry re- quested this carry-over, which is part of the 6,700 metric ton catch limit. In addition, recre- ational fishermen who once had to discard cod smaller than 24 inches can now keep cod as small as 19 inches, decreasing the amount of fish discarded at sea. The daily bag limit will decrease from ten fish to nine.
NOAA will also conduct a new assess- ment of Gulf of Maine cod in 2012, in time to set fishing year 2013 catch limits. NOAA is exploring key science issues prioritized by the Council’s scientific committee, including the appropriateness of currently defined stock boundaries (stock structure), survival rates of discarded fish, and use of new recre-
Commercial Fishing News ational survey data.
“We are looking for ways to work coop- eratively with fishermen in the groundfish fleet to conduct this research and, in particu- lar, to better estimate the long-term survival of discarded cod in commercial and recre- ational fisheries,” said Richard Merrick, chief science advisor for NOAA’s Fisheries Ser- vice. “Fishermen’s on-the-water experience is invaluable, and we hope that closer ties with them will improve our science and our understanding.”
The Gulf of Maine Research Institute has agreed to coordinate a comprehensive look at stock structure, an effort that will involve a variety of partners to evaluate what is known about the number and distribution of various cod stocks. NOAA is also devel- oping new methodology to incorporate new marine recreational fishing data into the cod stock assessment.
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