When NOAA Fisheries recently cancelled four fishery and ecosystem surveys because of pandemic-related health and safety concerns, it was no real surprise that the Northern shrimp survey was one of the casualties.
It's was just another indication of the star-crossed nature of the once-thriving regional shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine.
The imperiled fishery, which has suffered debilitating declines in its ability to sustain biomass and recruitment, has been closed since the end of the 2013 fishing season. Six times, the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission looked at the numbers generated by stock surveys and six times it saw no recourse but to shutter the fishery.
Matters devolved to the point that in late 2019, the ASMFC abandoned the previous policy of single-season closures and closed the Northern shrimp fishery for three years, ending in 2021.
The survey cancellations, announced by NOAA Fisheries on Aug. 4, include three surveys run out of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.
In two of those surveys, the agency said it may have potential avenues for "mitigating the data gaps" caused by the cancellations.
For the Autumn Bottom Trawl survey, which has been conducted annually since 1963, NOAA Fisheries said the data loss could be mitigated by a future bottom long line survey "and new work on an industry-based source of data."
For the Summer Ecosystem Monitoring survey, the agency pointed out there there have been other seasons in its 33-year history where the survey wasn't conducted and "methods have been developed to bridge these data gaps."
The closure of the Northern shrimp fishery through 2021, however, provided the agency with some breathing room on data collection.
"The 2020 survey would continue a time series, but the 2021 survey would be more informative for management," Teri Frady, spokeswoman at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said in an email response.
The Northern shrimp fishery, which runs primarily through the winter months, at one time was a lucrative alternative to some local groundfishermen and a source of a highly coveted regional species of shrimp.
But the stock has been in free fall since 2013 and managers had hoped the seasonal closures would give it a chance to rebound through improvements to its spawning biomass and the number of new fish introduced each year through growth or migration — otherwise known as recruitment.
But the no improvement has occurred in either category and fishery managers now believe the fishery is under siege by environmental forces.
Contact Sean Horgan at 978-675-2714, or shorgan@gloucestertimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanGDT
The Link LonkAugust 12, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Pandemic scraps local shrimp study | Fishing Industry News - Gloucester Daily Times
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