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data continued to be insufficient, the assessment community was forced to 

 operate with little or no funding, and decisions determining possible 

 yields were based on political and social factors rather than biological 

 factors. 



At the present moment, nearly all species of finfish in the Northwest 

 Atlantic are overutilized. Estimates by the scientific community calculate 

 that the total biomass of marine life found in the waters off New England 

 has been reduced by approximately one-half. Recent development of multi- 

 species fisheries often operated under lax enforcement or had no regula- 

 tions at all. Yet the Northwest Atlantic has long been managed by the 

 International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (ICNAF), an 

 organization recognized by the world assessment community as practicing a 

 high assessment state-of-the-art. However, within the space of a few short 

 years, it became clear that the single-species orientation of assessments 

 had to be broadened toward understanding of aVl^ species as well as their 

 interactions . Part I of this report indicates that the development of 

 comprehensive single-species understanding is itself an extremely demanding 

 task, particularly today with the recent expansion of offshore fisheries 

 toward species for which there previously existed no assessment information 

 whatsoever. 



The Georges Bank haddock example demonstrates that assessments have, 

 since the late 1960s, been forced to operate in a "catch up" manner with- 

 out a clear awareness of the validity of existing methods. Inadequate 

 catch and effort data, constant technological changes in fleet activities, 

 and improper feedback to the assessment community (due to the nonbiological 



