Our View: Congress can help NOAA support groundfishermen

The science, expert experience and anecdotes shared Wednesday at a forum on groundfishing in the Northeast were quite convincing that the fisheries could be better managed. The problem comes into focus when we see how difficult it has been for NOAA surveys to deliver reliable data. UMass Dartmouth’s School of Marine Science and Technology has been able — on $450,000 of government funding — to run innovative surveys with video cameras on trawls that show a nonstop stream of fish in the bottom 6 to 8 feet of the water column. SMAST’s data suggest populations of yellowtail flounder and Gulf of Maine cod multiple factors higher than NOAA’s. Read the rest here  16:51

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