New fish count raises flap: Results fuel debate over new restrictions

by Kay Lazar

Thursday, December 12, 2002

New federal data on fish counts off New England's coast show a huge jump in the amount of cod, haddock and pollock - reigniting debate over the science the feds have used to create tough new fishing restrictions that threaten thousands of jobs.

``There's vindication for the fishermen, who have all along been saying there's more fish out there than anyone had officially estimated,'' said Ann-Margaret Ferrante, attorney for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, which represents dozens of fishermen on Boston's north and south shores.The new numbers come from the National Marine Fisheries Service fall trawl,where the feds drag fishing nets along the ocean floor to gauge the amount and sizes of 15 species of groundfish, such as cod.

In September, the service admitted its trawl gear was miscalibrated for thepast two years. Fishermen say that led to undercounting, a snafu that missed stocks that have been rebounding after years of overfishing. But the fisheries service has said its ongoing review of the mistake shows it had little effect on fish counts.

The new data is among the first collected since the feds started to correct their mismatched gear.``Some of what was wrong was fixed, and it obviously caught significant amounts of certain things,'' said Barbara Stevenson, a Portland, Maine, fish boat owner and member of the New England Fishery Management Council.

But the feds yesterday said their new data may just be an anomaly and that previous trawls also have recorded spikes in some stocks.``We would be reluctant to attribute anything to it. It's one part of a larger puzzle and we don't have all the pieces yet,'' said Teri Frady, a fisheries service spokeswoman. Frady said the new numbers for some species, such as yellowtail flounder, show significant declines. She said if their gear mismatch truly affected fish counts, they would have expected to see a jump in the numbers of many species and in many of the 334 areas they measured between North Carolina and Canada.

Yet one area where the feds' new trawl found the largest load of cod by far - 4,253 in one tow - was in Ipswich Bay. Those North Shore waters are among the ones regulators have proposed closing year-round because previous data have shown overfished cod stocks not rebounding fast enough. The Conservation Law Foundation, which successfully sued last year to win tighter restrictions, said the new data should be viewed in context with years of previous trawls that show stocks rebuilding more gradually.