212 



Also on the East Coast, several fish stocks have been 

 severely depleted (herring, haddock, hake) as a result of 

 overfishing in the Georges Bank marine ecosystem off the coast 

 of New England. The effect of this overfishing is not fully 

 understood, but it may be causing, or be the result of, 

 systemic injury. 72 



On the West Coast, overexploitation of the Pacific 

 sardine has led to a number of questions regarding ecosystem- 

 wide impacts in the California Current region. It has been 

 observed that " [r]emoval of a major component such as the 

 Pacific sardine (unexploited biomass averaging about 3 million 

 tons) from the California Current food web would presumably 

 have measurable effects on other components of the 

 ecosystem." 73 Notable in this context, concurrent with the 

 crash of the Pacific sardine fishery, brown pelicans, which 



72 ln response to this depletion, the United States Department of 

 Commerce ( "DOC" ) has recently imposed an emergency rule prohibiting haddock 

 fishing in certain areas of Georges Bank The DOC noted: 



[Hjaddock stocks on both Georges Bank and in the Gulf of 

 Maine . . . are at all-time low levels of abundance. 

 Adult stock biomass is lower now than at any point since 

 the inception of stock assessments. Haddock landings in 

 1993, which reflect the stock condition, are expected to 

 be the lowest in recorded history. 



59 Fed. Reg. 26, 27 (January 3, 1994). 



73 Alec D. MacCall, Changes in the Biomass of the California Current 

 Ecosystem , in Variability and Management of Large Marine Ecosystems 33, 40 

 (Kenneth Sherman and Lewis M Alexander eds., 1986). 



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