A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is not measuring up to bycatch-monitoring standards.
In its 60-page report, GAO outlined a number of ways in which NFMS has failed to adequately tackle bycatch issues and harm to marine mammals and other species. According to the report, a central failing from the NMFS was a lack of observer coverage of fisheries.
“NMFS’s efforts to track its performance in reducing and monitoring bycatch do not align with key elements of evidence-based policymaking related to performance management,” the report stated. “Specifically, the agency’s bycatch-reduction implementation plan lacks measurable performance goals.”
According to the GAO, the NMFS and regional fishery management council officials have not gathered enough information from various U.S. fishing regions on what resources they need to support fishery observer programs and have also not communicated any information on what is required to external stakeholders such as Congress.
“By doing so, NMFS could ensure that stakeholders are more informed when making resource decisions,” GAO said.
The GAO also said that NMFS has taken steps to enhance its database to compile bycatch estimates but that it does not have any comprehensive plan on how to actually report those estimates.
“Developing such a plan could help the agency better monitor bycatch levels, trends, and information gaps, and demonstrate progress over time to internal and external stakeholders,” GAO said.
GAO pointed out that a key method of gathering bycatch data is fishery observers and that the NMFS itself has found fishery observers are essential to bycatch reduction due to a number of different factors – including how bycatch-reduction measures are highly fishery-specific due to a range of biological and technical factors.
Despite that, observer coverage can be incredibly different from fishery to fishery.
“We found that the level of observer coverage can vary widely across fisheries, and the recruitment and retention of observers is an ongoing challenge,” GAO said. “NMFS officials and council representatives told us that various factors influence the observer coverage rate for a given fishery, including the availability of funding, any protected species concerns, and the size and geographic range of a fishery’s fleet. Additionally, NMFS officials told us that noncompetitive compensation and difficult working conditions hamper the recruitment and retention of observers.”
While the NMFS said it is difficult to recruit fishery observers, GAO said that in its investigation it found the NMFS did not do enough to actually describe why limited observer coverage was such a limiting factor on bycatch estimation or what additional resources it needs to address the challenges it says it has.
“For example, in its recent budget justifications to Congress, there is some discussion of observers and resources, but no discussion of specific resource needs, resulting in stakeholders lacking a complete picture of the agency’s resource needs,” GAO said. “NMFS officials said that, while some regions have outlined their resource needs for observers, the agency has not gathered this information from all regions or communicated these resource needs externally.”
GAO made four different recommendations on actions the NMFS can take: ...
