Courtesy of NOAA Fisheries
BOSTON – Due to the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, NOAA Fisheries has cancelled three of its research surveys off the Northeast United States.
The cancelled surveys include those for sea scallop and Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog.
“These are difficult decisions for the agency as we strive to balance our need to maintain core mission responsibilities with the realities and impacts of the current health crisis,” said a statement from the organization.
“Since March, we have been rigorously analyzing various options for conducting cruises this year and we are taking a survey-by-survey, risk-based approach. After much deliberation, we determined that there was no way to move forward with these surveys while effectively minimizing risk and meeting core survey objectives.”
The organization added that while the two cancelled resource surveys are important fishery-independent sources of data for sea scallop, Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog, they will continue the annual surveys next year when the national health crisis improves.
In the meantime, they said that they will be working with the two regional fishery management councils to mitigate the impacts from the loss of survey data this year.
The sea scallop fishery is managed by the New England Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic surfclam/ocean quahog fishery is managed by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
NOAA Fisheries said that they are continuing to assess the status of other surveys in the region.
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