The Council met in Kill Devil Hills, NC October 14-16, 2008 and approved Amendment 10 to the Atlantic Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish (MSB) Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for submission to the Secretary of Commerce. Amendment 10 is designed to rebuild and maintain the long-term health of the butterfish stock, and, to the extent practicable, generally minimize bycatch and bycatch mortality in the MSB fisheries.

For preferred alternatives, the Council voted that in 2010, a 2-1/8" minimum codend mesh requirement would be implemented in the Loligo fishery in Trimesters 1 and 3 (the previously considered fishing circle mesh requirement was removed). The Council also voted to include a seasonally allocated butterfish mortality cap for the Loligo fishery starting in 2011 (i.e. the Loligo fishery would be closed when it caught a pre-specified amount of butterfish). The directed Loligo fishery would be allocated 75% of the butterfish ABC specified for a given year and the cap would be monitored based on existing levels of NMFS observer coverage (the previously considered industry-funded observer program was removed). The allocation of butterfish mortality would be: Trimester 1=65%; Trimester 2 = 3.3%; and, Trimester 3 = 31.7%. There would be no in-season closures in Trimester 2 due to difficulties in tracking the relatively small bycatch amount allocated to the Trimester 2 Loligo fishery, but overages and/or underages would be accounted for in Trimester 3. If Trimester 2 bycatch levels increase and reduce the cap amount available in Trimester 3, the Council could activate the in-season closure mechanism for Trimester 2 in future years. The Amendment would also include a 72 hour notification requirement before Loligo vessels could make a directed Loligo trip, primarily for the purpose of observer placement. If a vessel is selected to take an observer, the vessel would have to carry an observer (if available). Vessels would always have to notify NMFS when a trip is cancelled (even if the vessel is not selected to take an observer). If a vessel cancels a trip after being selected, the vessel would be assigned an observer on its next trip for which an observer is available.

The Council also voted to include a provision in Amendment 10 that the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) will annually review the performance of the butterfish mortality cap program during the specification process and make recommendations on any additional measures necessary to the success of the butterfish rebuilding program. If the Council does not adopt SSC recommendations, then NMFS would implement measures through the MSB annual specifications process to aid the rebuilding of the butterfish stock, consistent with existing MSB regulations.

The Council held its yearly election of officers and elected Richard B. Robins, Jr. of Virginia as its Chairman and Dr. Lee G. Anderson of Delaware as its Vice-Chairman. Mr. Robins owns a whelk processing company on the Virginia eastern shore and manages Chesapeake Bay Packing, a seafood exporting operation. He is also an avid offshore angler. Mr. Robins said he looks forward to working with Council members, staff, scientific advisors, and constituents to build upon the Council's record of achievement in sustainable fisheries management and pledged to work diligently to come to terms with the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act.

Dr. Anderson is Harrington Professor of Marine and Earth Studies at the University of Delaware. He studies the bioeconomics of fisheries management and has worked actively in both the classroom and with various management agencies around the world for the last thirty eight years. Dr. Anderson previously served on the Mid-Atlantic Council. He said he looks forward to working with Chairman Robins, Council members, staff, and the National Marine Fisheries Service so as to achieve sustainable and profitable fisheries.

In addition to the election of officers, three individuals were sworn in as new Council members and two members were reappointed. Howard King will occupy the obligatory seat for Maryland, Jule Wheatly will occupy the obligatory seat for North Carolina, and John McMurray will occupy the obligatory seat for New York. Pat Augustine was reappointed to fill the at-large seat for New York and Dr. Gene Kray was reappointed to retain the obligatory seat for the state of Pennsylvania.

The Council approved Framework 2 to the joint Spiny Dogfish FMP for submission to the Secretary of Commerce. Framework 2 will redefine the stock status determination criteria (biological reference points for spiny dogfish). The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) will meet in November to discuss and vote on submission of Framework 2. If the NEFMC adopts identical measures as the Mid-Atlantic Council, Framework 2 will be submitted to the Secretary by the end of this year.

The Council received a report from Dr. Jim Weinberg of NMFS' Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) on the recent Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM). The GARM was a regional scientific peer review process of benchmark assessments for the 19 groundfish stocks managed by the New England Fishery Management Council under the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan. The GARM Report is available at: www.nefsc.noaa.gov/nefsc/publications/series/crdlist.htm.

The Council also received two presentations during the meeting. The first presentation was by Karyl Brewster-Geisz of the Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Division of NOAA on the consolidated HMS Fishery Management Plan. The presentation focused mainly on issues in Amendment 3 regarding the current status of small coastal sharks. The presentation also touched on information for producing Amendment 4 pertaining to the Caribbean region which would include issues such as improving permitting and data collection and enhancing enforcement of regulations.

The second presentation was given by Tanya Dobrzynski of National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Office of Protected Resources regarding NMFS proposed rule for use of turtle excluder devices (TEDS) in all trawl fisheries throughout the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. Specific changes NMFS is considering include increasing the size of the TED escape opening currently required in the summer flounder fishery; requiring the use of TEDs in the flynet, whelk, calico scallop, and Mid-Atlantic sea scallop trawl fisheries; and moving the current northern boundary of the Summer Flounder Fishery-Sea Turtle Protection Area off Cape Charles, Virginia, to a point farther north. The objective of the proposed measures would be to effectively protect all life stages and species of sea turtles in Atlantic trawl fisheries where they are vulnerable to incidental capture and mortality.

The Council's HMS Committee recommended the Council support Alternatives 2 and 3 in the Draft Amendment 1 to the Consolidated HMS FMP. Alternative 2 would designate a Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC) for spawning bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico while maintaining current HAPCs. Alternative 3 would establish new EFH boundaries based on the 95% probability boundary which includes 95% of the data points and provides a standardized, reproducible, and predictable method for establishing EFH boundaries.

The Ecosystems Committee met and agreed to change their title to the Ecosystems and Ocean Planning Committee. Four other committees of the Council also met during this meeting, i.e., Bycatch/Limited Access, Research Set-aside, Law Enforcement and Executive, to review and develop issues pertaining to their respective charges.

"Commercial fishing is much more than numbers of dollars, numbers of men, numbers of fish. Anyone who strolls down to the docks recognizes that. The average visitor quite likely wouldn't know a croaker from a cod or a sea robin from a sea bass, but that in no way impairs the enjoyment of the docks. On those wharves there is all the romance that so many hope to find near the sea, because fishing is about as close as a man can get these days to earning his livelihood as his forefathers did through countless centuries." From The New Jersey Shore, written by John T. Cunningham and published by Rutgers University Press in 1957. 

The "conservationists" who focus on ocean issues would have us believe that, due to unsustainable fishing practices and ineffectual management, our ability to produce seafood has been severely compromised and that without instant and drastic controls to prevent it, our coastal and offshore waters are on the verge of becoming biological deserts.

Two years back I addressed this issue on a national basis in a FishNet entitled "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" (available at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/then_now.html). Using easily available information, I showed that there hadn’t been any major differences between what the U.S. commercial fishing fleet was catching in 1950, the earliest that comprehensive statistics were available, and what it was catching in 2004 (there’s a two year lag in reporting annual catch statistics). Allowing for the development of a new and massive commercial fishery in Alaska, and for the non-fishing related decline in the Pacific sardine populations, the gross tonnage caught was surprisingly steady.

At the time, I wrote "in the lower forty-eight states the total commercial landings have been what is difficult to describe as anything but surprisingly stable for the last half a century. They started at 1.218 million pounds and finished at 1.186 million pounds. That’s a 3% difference (and a difference in large part accounted for by Pacific sardine landings and the fact that in the early 1950s NMFS credited significant Atlantic herring landings to the Pacific)."

Not only were the gross tonnages virtually identical, so was the species mix. There was no apparent trend of species up the food chain, down the food chain, or in any other direction around the food chain. To a very large extent, what we were catching a lot of then we are catching a lot of now, and most of the difference is easily explained by habitat degradation. In only 2 out of the top 25 species could the differences be attributed to overfishing.

This having been such an interesting exercise, and given the subject of my last article here, "Then and now," I decided to do something similar with New Jersey commercial landings.

(Note that all of the statistics here, as well as those in the FishNet referenced above, were taken from the National Marine Fisheries Service website at http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/commercial/index.html.)

Below are listed New Jersey’s 13 "million dollar" fisheries in 2006, the pounds landed, the dollar value of the landings and, to give you an idea of recent trends, the landings five years earlier. While total landings declined by almost 10 million pounds - about 5%, total value increased by $33 million.

Going back to 1950, the most valuable 13 fisheries were (in descending order) Eastern oysters, quahog clams, menhaden, sea scallops, scup, black sea bass, surf clams, summer flounder, American shad, blue crab, Atlantic mackerel and softshell clams. Allowing for habitat/water quality deterioration (oysters, American shad and softshell clams), and changing consumer demand both at home and abroad (monkfish and squid), the two lists are almost identical.

In 1950 the total state landings were 186 million pounds. Their value of $10.2 million in 1950 dollars is, using the Consumer Price Index to allow for inflation, the equivalent of $86 million in 2006 dollars. If scallop landings in 2006 had been at the same level that they were in 1950 - 1.4 million pounds - the value of the 2006 landings, when corrected for inflation, would be surprisingly close to what they were then, in the neighborhood of $90 million.

Again we have an amazing constancy in landings, particularly considering the advances in vessel and gear design and construction and in fish-finding and navigational electronics. Even the most rudimentary GPS units and fish finders found on the smallest recreational fishing boats utilize technology that was unimaginable in 1950, and, when available, prohibitively expensive in the late 80s and early 90s. High efficiency nets, diesel power, pinpoint navigation, precision sonar and a compromised and ineffectual management system are all supposed to have contributed to the destruction of fishery after fishery internationally, nationally, and in the Mid-Atlantic.

If that’s the case, where’s the evidence? If so many of our stocks are overfished, where’s the decline in landings that would have to accompany that condition? How can landings today be virtually identical to what they were almost 60 years ago, at a time when there were no constraints on what anyone could catch other than those imposed by Mother Nature. There weren’t any trip limits then, any limited entry, any restrictions on how many days you could fish or on the size mesh you had to use in your nets. It was simply "go out and catch what you wanted where you wanted to catch it," and you were only limited by the weather, by your endurance and by the availability of the fish.

The commercial fishing industry has been constrained for far too long by arguments all focused on returning our fisheries to the condition they were in "in the good old days." Even a cursory examination of the landings data shows that for all intents and purposes we never really left them, and it’s past the time when the public and our elected officials recognize this, and our fisheries management policies begin to reflect it. Fisheries - both recreational and commercial - need management, but there’s no justification for that management to result in the stifling complex of regulations that burden today’s fishermen.

By JAMES LOVGREN Asbury Park Press - July 13, 2008

The growing demand for oil and natural gas has pushed their prices to record levels, making alternative --- and more economical --- energy sources such as solar power more attractive. As legislators and the public consider proposals from three companies to supply liquid natural gas to the New Jersey/New York market, it's critical, too, to consider the consequences of these plans.

It's important not to ignore the economic and environmental benefits of solar power as these companies try to convince the public we can drill our way out of our energy problems by spoiling our coasts and importing LNG from politically unstable areas of the world. It's also important not to ignore the fact that each of these three proposals are sited in or near the Mud Hole, a 30-mile-long underwater ravine ranging from 12 miles to 30 miles off Monmouth County's coastline. The Mud Hole is one of the most productive fishing grounds on the East Coast.

The LNG proposals allow no room for fishing, neither around the actual unloading facility nor along the 30 miles to 50 miles of planned pipeline. The New Jersey commercial fishing industry cannot afford to lose this prolific fishing area and survive: The Mud Hole offers prime grounds for numerous fish, including fluke, black-back flounder, whiting, squid, ling, bluefish, lobster and scallops. Given the increasing costs of transporting food to our market, that's a loss neither the industry nor the public can afford.

Two of the oldest fishing cooperatives in the United States, the Belford Seafood Co-op and the Fishermans Dock Co-op Inc. in Point Pleasant Beach, have provided hundreds of millions of pounds of fish to the public for decades. The majority of their catches come from the Mud Hole. Some 80 percent of New Jersey's lobster fishery operates on the sides of the Mud Hole. Scallop vessels trawl the top.

The fishing industry already is suffering from an overzealous attempt by the National Marine Fishery Service to create a petting zoo full of fish that no one can catch. Reduced quotas, plus the confiscation of permits, have severely affected the commercial fishing industry's ability to survive. To have "big oil" come in and industrialize New Jersey's most important fishing ground would be the last straw.

This appears to be an us-or-them decision: food or fuel. There's no denying we need food, with record high prices and riots throughout the world underscoring the current food crisis. But without energy, the world stops. Record high prices for oil and gas are underscoring another hunger --- the insatiable appetite humans have for fuel.

That is why solar power makes sense now.

Consider this: Do we really need LNG facilities off New Jersey's beaches when there are three LNG unloading facilities off the East Coast operating at only 20 percent of their capacity? That allows for years of increased growth.

In addition, New Jersey has a few older power plants that need to be replaced or upgraded. LNG certainly is cleaner than coal, but do we need to import more fossil fuel into this country?

We have one of the world's largest gas fields in the Appalachian Mountain range. Why don't we tap that? Why keep sending our dollars and jobs overseas?

According to the Energy Information Administration, we exported more than 500 million barrels of petroleum products last year, mostly in the form of refined gasoline and diesel fuel. Yet we're told there's a shortage. Why?

The real question is this: Can we continue to use fossil fuels recklessly in light of the undeniable evidence of the environmental catastrophe being created by global warming from greenhouse gases?

I have seen, firsthand, major shifts in fishery migrations that can be explained only by warming waters. Many plant and animal species will not be able to adapt to these changes. We are creating an environmental Armageddon.

But, fortunately, we have the power to stop it. That power lies in the sun, the caretaker of all life on Earth.

Solar power has come a long way in the last few years, with nano-solar technology vastly increasing its cost-effectiveness. By using solar power, we can help become energy independent of foreign fossil fuels, while reducing global warming.

The biggest problem with solar power right now is we cannot produce solar panels fast enough to meet demand. That's why I am proposing a solar-power initiative for the state of New Jersey.

The plan would involve installing solar panels on every house and every building in the state within the next 25 years. To do this would require the construction of our own solar power manufacturing plant (or two). Instead of our power companies building new fossil fuel-burning plants, give these companies tax incentives to build solar power manufacturing plants.

By doing this, homeowners will see drastically reduced electric bills; new power plants won't have to be built. Tens of thousands of jobs would be created in the manufacturing, installation and maintenance of these solar panels. All of this would happen courtesy of collecting free energy from the sun.

Add it up: numerous jobs created; an economic stimulus that would drive New Jersey's economy for decades, all the while benefiting long-suffering taxpayers with reduced electric bills; the reduction of greenhouse gases; keeping our dollars in America; and our troops at home, instead of fighting in the Middle East.

When you finish tallying the benefits, solar energy is a bargain. But if the residents of New Jersey do not put pressure on our legislators and our governor, we will continue to suffer from fossil-fuel pollution, the manipulations of big oil --- and, if the LNG plans go through, the loss of a prime source of local food and our fishing industry.

*James Lovgren is the owner and captain of Viking II out of the Fishermans Dock Co-op, Point Pleasant Beach, and on the boards of the Garden State Seafood Association and Clean Ocean Action.*

GSSA is asking you to please call Governor Corzine's office in support of bill S1553 Marina Access Legislation and bill 1390 Abandoned Vessel Bill.

The Governor's office phone is (609) 292-6000.

You can respectfully request he sign both bills.

Below is a brief description of the legislation

Thank you for your support.

Greg DiDomenico
GSSA