Social and Cultural Impact Assessment of the Highly Migratory Species Fisheries Management Plan and the Amendment to the Atlantic Billfish Fisheries Management Plan performed by The Ecopolicy Center for Agriculture, Environmental, and Resource Issues New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station Cook College Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey for the National Marine Fisheries Service A Social and Cultural Impact Assessment of the Highly Migratory Species Fisheries Management Plan and the Amendment to the Atlantic Billfish Fisheries Management Plan performed by The Ecopolicy Center for Agriculture, Environmental, and Resource Issues, Rutgers University. Completed under contract with the United States Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Highly Migratory Species Office. New Brunswick NJ, July 1998 Contributing authors: Doug Wilson, principal investigator and corresponding author; Bonnie J. McCay, co-principal investigator; Danielle Estler; Marla Perez-Lugo; Johnelle LaMarque; Sheri Seminski; and Agnes Tomczuk. Please direct any comments or questions to: Doug Wilson Institute for Fisheries Management and Coastal Community Development North Sea Centre, Willemoesvej 2 P.O.Box 104, DK-9850 Hirtshals, Denmark phone : +45 98 94 28 55, fax : +45 98 94 42 68 e-mail :
[email protected] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This document is a social and cultural impact assessment of the Fisheries Management Plan (FMP) for Highly Migratory Species and the current amendment to the FMP for Atlantic Billfish. It focuses on such impacts in the five states of Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and in Puerto Rico. These places were chosen for study because they each had important affected fisheries and because they are fairly evenly spread around the coast.