Council Fumbles Habitat
Protections Again

by Laurie Schreiber

DANVERS, Mass. – New England’s fishery managers are in the midst of sorting through a complex battery of proposals that aim to better protect essential fish habitat for groundfish, scallop, monkfish, herring, red crab, skate and salmon.

At its December meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) reviewed analyses of the impacts of alternative measures for Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2. The alternatives will impact physical and biological habitats; managed species; human communities and the fishery; and protected resources (NEFMC terms these considerations “valued ecosystem components,” or VECs). These analyses are packaged up in what is called a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS).

The full package of alternative measures under consideration comprises many interacting variables. NEFMC aims to understand how all the alternatives fit together and how their various combinations will impact the VECs. With that information, NEFMC expected to be able to select alternatives it preferred. All of the alternatives, including those designated as “preferred,” along with the analyses, would then go to public hearings. NEFMC would then use input from the public to further refine and pinpoint a suite of proposed measures. The final package would then go to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for consideration.

But in December, NEFMC learned the analyses of impacts were incomplete. So NEFMC put off its selection of preferred alternatives until its Jan. 28-30 meeting.

The delay was perhaps not unexpected. The federal shutdown in the autumn of 2013 played a part in delaying the habitat amendment’s progress, NEFMC executive director Tom Nies wrote in a memo to NEFMC. Nies said NEFMC would perhaps be able to finalize its package at its June 2014 meeting.

“This pushes back the likely implementation date of habitat measures to February 2015, at the earliest,” Nies wrote. Nies added that the scallop industry would be most immediately affected by the delay. The industry had hoped to access, as quickly as possible during the 2014 fishing year, any areas that may be opened as a result of the habitat amendment. But the opening of new areas to scallop fishing would first have to be integrated with the scallop management plan. That process would push back implementation of any new scallop access areas to fall 2015.)

Amendment 2 has been in development for a decade.

“Today is the denouement of a 10-year process,” said David Preble, chairman of NEFMCs habitat committee. “The DEIS is a complex piece of writing. It was a classic case of mission creep.”

The DEIS is “groundfish-heavy,” as Preble said. It focuses on protecting habitat essential for spawning and juvenile groundfish – and thus promoting sustainable fish populations in perpetuity. At the same time, NEFMC aims to avoid further debilitating the groundfishing fleet in the near future. Protection for juvenile groundfish “can have positive productivity benefits for managed resources,” the DEIS says. “Scientific data indicate that the year-round habitat management areas and habitats most vulnerable to fishing are not optimally sited to encompass concentrations of juvenile groundfish.”

A second groundfish-specific purpose is to identify seasonal closed areas that would reduce impacts on spawning groundfish. According to the DEIS, essential fish habitat protection is needed in order to meet requirements of the federal Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Essential fish habitat has already been designated for many species through each of their individual management plans. The new goal is to reevaluate and integrate habitat management measures across the fisheries, and to update these measures, given new scientific information about habitat distributions and fishing impacts.

The amendment will consider revisions of rolling closures in the groundfishery, and of year-round groundfish closed areas. Specifically, the DEIS says, NEFMC was concerned that the continued existence of the year-round groundfish closures could undermine new essential fish habitat areas.

For the groundfish analysis, NEFMC is looking at juvenile and spawning hotspots; and assessing the potential for redistribution of fishing effort, and how this might affect fish concentrated outside of the areas included in a particular alternative.

For scallops, NEFMC will evaluate potential scallop yield by management area; evaluate specific area closure scenarios; and evaluate seasonal variation in meat weight to evaluate impacts of spawning closures.

According to the DEIS, the protection of critical groundfish habitat is associated with critical life stages. Juvenile groundfish have the greatest degree of association with habitat type. The plan focuses on groundfish age zero and 1 because those life stages are particularly associated with type of seabed and poor overall stock condition.

“Do we have enough before us to state a preference?” asked NEFMC member David Pierce. Pierce noted that he’s received a lot of communications from lobster fishermen, who are concerned about the potential impacts of the alternatives on their fishery. The analysis for impacts to the lobster fishery is not complete.

But Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney with the Fishery Survival Fund, a scallop fishery association, said the NEFMC had enough information to pick preferred alternatives and should allow the document to go to the public for its input.

NEFMC member Mary Beth Tooley said it would be useful to go ahead and choose preferred alternatives so the DEIS can go to the public.

“I think the DEIS will continue to evolve,” Tooley said. “It won’t be a final document until probably a year from now. We will be most informed on economic and social impacts from public hearings and, to do that, we need to choose preferred alternatives. We’re not tied to the outcome of preferred alternatives.”

Fisherman David Goethel also urged NEFMC to pick preferred alternatives so the document could be released to the public.

“I think you have enough information,” said Goethel. “The information that’s missing isn’t going to materially alter what’s going to happen. Might as well face it, when the going gets tough the tough have to make decisions….This has been going on forever and ever and ever. You’re never going to have enough information to satisfy, to definitely answer most of these questions. Just about everything in this document is qualitative by nature. It’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder….So please don’t send us home again without doing something.”

Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said his association wasn’t so sure.

“We’re torn on this one,” Giacaone said. “I think if people believe the additional analysis that could follow could completely change your preferred alternatives, then maybe the whole thing is too early. We do want to see movement, but doing that without preferred alternatives leaves way too much open, not to know what you all are thinking.”

But Greg Cunningham, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, said the reason preferred alternatives are selected is to focus comments and to offer a sense, early in the process, of what direction the decision-makers are tending toward.

“There’s an increased focus when prefereds are chosen,” said Cunningham. When a DEIS is incomplete, he said, there’s no way to know whether the information to come will substantially influence the selection of preferred alternatives.

“So we would urge you not to take action today on preferred alternatives, and to move that decision to January or as soon as the staff can complete the DEIS,” Cunningham said.

Patrick Paquette, a member of NEFMC’s recreational fishing advisory panel, said the incomplete DEIS does not provide a good picture of potential impacts on the recreational fleet.

One of the things that makes the document complicated is the number of different potential management options for each management area, NEFMC agreed.

Recreational fishermen spoke of the amendment’s potential “economic harm and hardship” to their region, and of the “giant research holes” in the DEIS that precluded their ability to comment.

“The comment period’s going to be a mess if we don’t know what’s in it,” said one man.

The selection of preferred alternatives in January, followed by public hearings, likely means the NEFMC will be able to vote on the habitat amendment in August or September, not in June as originally scheduled.

However, said NEFMC chairman Terry Stockwell, “It’s highly questionable whether this document will be ready for action in January.”