Book excerpt: "New England, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) is charged with developing management plans that meet the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (M-S Act). The Northeast Skate Complex Fishery Management Plan (FMP) specifies the management measures for seven skate species (barndoor, clearnose, little, rosette, smooth, thorny and winter skates) off the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts. The FMP has been updated through a series of amendments, framework adjustments and specification packages. Amendment 3 to the FMP established a control rule for setting the Skate Allowable Biological Catch (ABC) based on survey biomass indices and median exploitation ratios; the ABC was set to equal the Annual Catch Limit (ACL). This framework action would implement changes to specifications based on updated data and research and would revise the Vessel Trip Report (VTR) and seafood dealer reporting requirements. The need for this action is to set the annual catch limit specifications for FY 2014 and FY 2015 to maintain the skate fisheries while adequately minimizing the risk of overfishing the seven skate stocks. A revised ACL is needed to address overfishing of winter skate. This action also proposes to change the skate wing VTR and dealer reporting requirements by removing the unclassified code and the codes for species not landed in the fishery --little, little/winter, rosette and smooth skate. It also proposes to remove the unclassified code for the bait fishery. This is expected to improve fishery-dependent data on skate landings by species, which is a requirement of the FMP. There are several purposes: to adopt specifications, to adopt possession limits and to modify the VTR and dealer reporting requirements"--Executive summary.