Tracking Stakeholder Perceptions and Outcomes in the Implementation of Amendment 23
Amendment 23 (A23) to the Northeast Multispecies (groundfish) Fisheries Management Plan (FMP) will be implemented in May, 2021, and will remake the system of fisheries monitoring for the Northeast commercial groundfish fishery. The amendment will require monitoring on 100% of groundfish fishing trips while federal funding is available for the next four years. However, even in the absence of available funding, the groundfish fleet must meet a minimum of 40% monitoring coverage until the policy is revisited by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) in 2025. In addition to its changes to the monitoring requirements, A23 also provides fishers with the option to utilize electronic monitoring (EM) technologies in place of human at-sea monitors. Substantial social and economic impacts are expected as outlined by the amendment’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), but the EIS is limited by virtue of the predictive and anticipatory nature of its analyses.
Done in partnership with researchers at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, this research aims to address the gap in information between expected and actual fishing community impacts by tracking the implementation of A23. Specifically, the proposed study seeks to answer the following questions about how fishing industry stakeholders are experiencing the impacts of new monitoring requirements: 1) How do fishing industry stakeholders vary in their communication and coordination with governmental and non-government organizations (NGOs) involved in implementing new monitoring requirements? 2) What are the gaps in communication and coordination between industry, NGO, and governmental stakeholders? And, 3) How do those gaps influence outcomes—in terms of whether or not industry stakeholders adopt EM vs. human at-sea monitoring, as well as the positive and negative impacts of those choices?
This project will represent Phase 3 of a broader study of stakeholder networks working to improve fisheries monitoring and implement EM in Northeast fisheries. Phase 1 involved a social network analysis of two years of Twitter data to map the structure of communication networks arising from fisheries stakeholders’ interactions related to EM in the Northeast. Phase 2 includes content analysis of public comments and key documents pertaining to the development and approval of A23. Phase 3 will track the impacts of A23 on fishing communities in an investigation of stakeholders as they coordinate the logistical and financial aspects of implementing the new monitoring system for the Northeast groundfish fishery.