New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
A warming Gulf of Maine Spells Trouble
Wednesday 04/29/2015
Troubles at Sea
I recently called New Hampshire Fish and Game Marine Division chief Doug Grout to dig into what is happening along our coast with our fisheries. I’d like to tell you I heard some good news. But I can’t. Trouble is brewing at sea with a whole host of species we love to catch or eat.
Striped bass started our conversation. Sure I had read that the limit is being cut from two to one fish a day and I wanted to dive deeper into why. I had worked with Doug for over two decades at Fish and Game and the last twenty years before I retired in 2007 was out of the Region 3 office in Durham that covered the coast as well as the southeast part of the state. In fact although I was a wildlife biologist I pitched in at times when staff was short for the Marine folks such as dive tending or herring counting and Martine staff were quick to help me out when I needed a hand. I knew Doug had decades of experience on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) and would have the facts I wanted.
Two things triggered the reduce limit. One was the bad news that the last stock assessment in 2013 showed that the overall fishing mortality is above goal and as required under the ASMFC long term plan the mortality must be reduced. Secondly the recent spawning stock assessment was well below target numbers. Cuts were needed in both recreational and commercial quotas. Under the compromise settled on, coastal states needed a 25 percent reduction in take. The hope is to get the harvest down and bring up the spawning stock to goal by 2017 or 2018.
As it turns out cod stocks are in much worse shape. In fact spawning stock biomass is at an all time low with only three or four percent of what is needed. Despite recent cuts in fishing quotas we are still overfishing cod. During a September Council meeting they decided they needed to take an emergency action to reduce the take of cod in the Gulf of Maine. That is from Cape Cod to Canada. As part of an interim action there will be blocks of the Gulf that will be closed to fishing, both commercial and recreational. These closures will be by rolling blocks by month. There will be no gear allowed for bottom fishing and no possession of cod will be allowed.
Things are no doubt changing in the Gulf of Maine. One need only look back at the last couple of years of closure of the Northern shrimp commercial fisheries. Shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Maine was a 12 million dollar industry. This spiral down of numbers actually started five years ago with dramatically lower catches until three years ago when the shrimp pretty much disappeared from the Gulf.
For shrimp the clear indicator for the loss in numbers was the warming of the Gulf. According to a recent NOAA report the Gulf of Maine has warmed on average a half a degree a year since 2004. For shrimp the warmer temperatures are far too warm for reproduction to occur. They are a northern species and New Hampshire was on the southern fringe of that range. Here no doubt it is climate change that has driven them north. Doug says the gut feeling amongst marine biologist that this too may be the underlying cause of the cod decline. To the far north where the seas have not warmed cod stocks are fine. It is only in the warming waters of the Gulf of Maine that the numbers have dramatically declined despite recent efforts to stem that decline.
