Cooperative Research Pays Off

(from the October, 2007 issue of National Fisherman)

Two of the most unfortunate words associated with fisheries management are “anecdotal” and “best available.” The first is used far too often to discount on-the-water observations by fishermen and the second to justify important fishery management decisions based on sometimes inadequate information.

            Together, they have arguably cost fishermen and the businesses that depend on them millions of dollars and countless opportunities for recreation – and the antis, of course, use them to bolster their arguments for precautionary management and the harshly restrictive regulations that demands.

Fortunately, a mechanism is available with the potential to obviate much of this: cooperative research.

            While NOAA is now the proud possessor of new, state-of-the-art research vessels, these boats were designed, and will be crewed, to do many scientific jobs, perhaps the fisheries research equivalent of a Swiss Army knife or a Leatherman tool. When it comes to working on specific fisheries, their observations will differ significantly from those generated by a boat, crew and captain with years, decades or sometimes generations of hands-on experience in how, where and when to fish in that fishery. They don’t have a net designed to sample several dozen species, they don’t rig it or fish it to sample them all, and if it’s the right boat and crew, they operate as a fine-tuned machine to catch one or several species. Tools, if you will, designed for a particular job.

            While some people will argue that a carefully designed sampling program, sophisticated statistical manipulations and the right computer model are all that are needed, this doesn’t quite ring true, particularly when dealing with fish that are or aren’t available based on a schedule determined by Mother Nature, not by a team of researchers and administrators with limited or no sea time. They researchers are sampling stations. The fishermen are catching fish.

            The researchers are hesitant to use the fishermen’s data, and from a rigorous scientific perspective that might be understandable. But, if we can get the researchers out on the real fishing boats, crewed by working fishermen and captained by a high liner, then we have the best of all possible worlds – particularly if the data that’s generated can be combined with that from the survey fleet. Cooperative research lets us do that.

            Take the monkfish fishery as an example (only because I’m familiar with the fishery and several cooperative monkfish surveys; other fisheries also have dynamic research programs designed and operated jointly by government and academia and industry). The NMFS Autumn Trawl Survey used to be the “foundation” of the monkfish management program In 2001 a total of 620 pounds of monkfish were caught on the 339 stations sampled. In the cooperative monkfish survey done the same year, the two commercial boats used caught over 18 tons of monkfish on just over 300 stations. This doesn’t invalidate the results of the “official” survey, but it sure puts things in a different perspective. And that perspective played a part in the newest monkfish assessment, which found that the stocks weren’t overfished and overfishing wasn’t taking place in either of the two management areas.

            Will this result in higher landings? Perhaps, but it will definitely result in a fishery that’s managed better. And that’s what we’re aiming for.

            Cooperative research is under-funded in the NMFS budget, and the cost of chartering commercial boats and staffing them with researchers and their equipment is high. So I’m urging you to devote some serious effort to lobbying both NMFS and your representatives in Washington to pump up the cooperative research budget.

From the industry side, participating in the organization and administration of these programs chews up a lot of hours, but it’s your fishery and you should be involved. It’s more than worth it, because it makes the “best available” information much better, and it turns “anecdotal observations” into useable data. It’s the best mechanism available to show what’s really going on in the fisheries.

Nils E. Stolpe