The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) spring 2005 trawl survey of fish stocks off the Northeast coast showed moderate to steep declines from last year’s survey in nearly every groundfish species of importance to commercial and recreational fishermen.
The numbers from this spring’s bottom-trawl survey hardly mirror those from the fall 2003 and spring 2004 surveys, which indicated that the combined populations from the species sampled had maintained a steady rise since the 1990s. For more information, visit ww.nefsc.noaa.gov.
The following numbers were among the findings:
68 Percentage cod stocks fell since last year. Cod showed the steepest decline, according to the survey, with the lowest numbers in more than ten years.
45 Percentage haddock stocks declined despite previous hopes of a rebound.
25 Percentage summer flounder dropped from last year’s trawl survey.
1987 The last year in which herring failed to break the 1,000-pound threshold in “total pounds caught,” according the NMFS. Herring reached their lowest levels this spring since 1984.
