Hard to Get Money to Assess New England's Gray Seal Problem: 'No Funding for Species Rebounding'
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Cape Cod Times] by Doug Fraser - December 13, 2016
As David Pierce sat at the table at the Nantucket Seal Symposium last month, he said one image came to mind: private pilot Aaron Knight's video from April of miles of gray seals, a dozen deep, cheek by jowl, banding the Monomoy shoreline.
Recently appointed as director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, Pierce is a veteran of decades of fisheries negotiations as former director Paul Diodati's proxy on the New England Fishery Management Council. Fishery managers live and die by population estimates - known as stock assessments - that help set sustainable catch levels for commercial fishermen, so it was disconcerting to hear that the same level of science had not been applied to the predators who eat them...
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