Contact: Scott Smullen FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Teri Frady 7/15/96
Both Canada and Greenland will allow modest commercial harvests of Atlantic salmon this year, but not without the international community on record opposing the harvest.
Andrew Rosenberg, U.S. Commissioner to the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO), led the coalition that favored following the scientific advice on Atlantic salmon populations provided by the International Council for Exploration of the Sea, which recommended zero take in the ocean fisheries off Canada and Greenland.
"Even though both Canada and Greenland decided to go ahead with small fisheries this year, we were extremely pleased that there was strong support within NASCO for more effective conservation measures," Rosenberg said. "The international community clearly supports a sound scientific basis for fish management and is prepared to make some tough decisions based on such advice."
While a majority of NASCO countries, including the United States, voted in favor of zero catch, a consensus was not reached, thus leaving Canada and Greenland free within the NASCO treaty to set their quotas unilaterally.
The United States is presently considering listing several Atlantic salmon stocks as endangered. While research continues to define endangered stocks here, there is no U.S. commercial fishery, and recreational anglers are limited to a catch-and-release fishery. Some of the salmon caught in the Labrador and Greenland commercial fisheries are from U.S. rivers.
The United States will continue to work with Canada and Greenland through NASCO to ensure that their fisheries are very limited and carefully controlled, and consistent with the spirit of the scientific advice, and to gain their full cooperation and support in the future.
The vote on commercial harvest of salmon in Labrador and off Greenland was taken at the June meeting of NASCO, a treaty organization established in 1983 as an international forum for managing Atlantic salmon. These fish originate in each of the countries represented, but live a portion of their lives in international waters and are subject to harvest both on the high seas and closer to their country of origin. Given the decline in these stocks over time, NASCO was established as a way to coordinate management and conservation efforts as well as to advise those studying these transboundary stocks on needed research.
As recently as the late 1980s, thousands of tons of salmon were being caught in the ocean fisheries. Through NASCO, the member nations have reduced this catch to a few hundred tons of fish, harvested in a more responsible manner.
Members of NASCO include Canada, Denmark (with respect to Greenland and the Faroe Islands), the European Union (including Finland and Sweden, which were NASCO members before they joined the EU), Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the United States.
Rosenberg is also Northeast regional director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is part of the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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