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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 2
October 2005
Yellowtail TAC reduction stuns fleet
PROVIDENCE, RI – The 2006 total allowable catch (TAC) for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder will be less than half of the 2005 TAC. As a result, the US fleet will have to drastically cut back on directed yellowtail fishing next year and make concentrated efforts to avoid yellowtail bycatch while working on other species, including haddock.
Otherwise, the TAC will be filled too quickly, triggering an early shutdown of both the Eastern and Western US/Canada Management Areas, which would force offshore boats inshore and eliminate access to the huge biomass of Georges Bank haddock.
Furthermore, the limited-access scallop fleet, which will be fishing in Closed Area I, Closed Area II, and the Nantucket Lightship Closed Area during 2006 on access-area trips, is only authorized to harvest 10 percent of the US yellowtail quota. Once that 10 percent is taken – and it’ll be a small amount in 2006 – scallopers will need to leave Georges, too.
This grim reality hit industry hard at the Sept. 13-15 meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council, where the council formally voted to accept the Georges Bank TACs as is required under the US/Canada Resource Sharing Understanding that’s part of Amendment 13.
Fishermen are all too aware of the seriousness of the situation. Already this year, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) shut down the Eastern US/Canada Area on Aug. 26 – for the rest of the 2005 fishing year – because the cod quota had been reached.
Although that has been devasting to countless offshore fishermen, the limited yellowtail quota could trigger a far bigger closure, encompassing both the eastern and western areas and directly impacting even more people.
US/Canada TMGC
Word of the yellowtail situation began circulating in August after the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee (TMGC) met in Nova Scotia. There, the TMGC reviewed the latest stock assessment information, which was prepared by the joint US/Canada Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee (TRAC), and then set 2006 allocations for the three major “shared” Georges Bank stocks.
The TMGC is made up of two government and four industry members from each country. This year, the US team included four industry representatives from the New England council. George Lapointe of Maine led the US delegation and served as the US co-chair of the TMGC. Jim Odlin of Maine, John Pappalardo of Massachusetts, and Phil Ruhle of Rhode Island also participated in the meeting.
The two government representatives were Tom Warren of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Fred Serchuk of NMFS’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
Cod, haddock
Oddly enough, the TMGC actually raised the US quota for cod a bit, increasing it to 374 metric tons (mt) for 2006 vs. 260 mt in 2005.
Although overall biomass declined and the Georges Bank cod stock has been suffering from poor recruitment in general, the 2003 year class turned out to be “substantially stronger” than the others. The TMGC determined that it was appropriate to increase the cod quota because roughly half of the 2006 catch is expected to come from this bigger 2003 year class.
The TMGC dropped the haddock TAC just slightly from the 2005 level of 7,600 mt to 7,480 mt next year. The total adult biomass of haddock fell slightly in the assessment due to poor 2001 and 2002 year classes. However, the TMGC said “biomass is projected to increase by a factor of two-to-three after 2006 … as a result of the exceptional 2003 year class.”
The TMGC did note, “Initial indications for the 2004 year class suggest it is relatively weak.”
Yellowtail
The troublesome yellowtail flounder status report came as a surprise to the TMGC. After reviewing the data, the committee agreed to set the 2006 US TAC at 2,070 mt. The US TAC for 2005 was 4,500 mt and in 2004 it was 6,000 mt.
Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, referring to the drastic quota drop between 2005 and 2006, said, “2,000 mt is a huge reduction. The yellowtail fishery is an extremely important fishery to the United States.”
The cut will take a particularly heavy toll on New Bedford, the yellowtail capitol of the region.
New Bedford Mayor Frederick Kalisz Jr., though City Solicitor Matthew Thomas, submitted a formal request to the council asking it not to accept or approve the TMGC’s 2006 TACs. Kalisz said the numbers were developed through an “understanding” and that the US Congress itself had never approved a formal US/Canada agreement for Georges Bank.
However, since the understanding is part of Amendment 13, the provisions are now embodied in US fishery regulations.
Two models
According to Lapointe, the negotiations were extremely difficult.
Complicating matters was the fact that two different approaches were used for the yellowtail assessment, and the biomass figures from each model were significantly different.
The model selected by the TMGC – the “Base Virtual Population Analysis” (VPA) model – is known for exhibiting a “retrospective pattern,” which means it consistently overestimates biomass levels in the most recent year of an assessment, potentially leading to an overharvest of the stock if the TAC is set too high based on the higher biomass number.
To account for this overestimation, the TMGC adjusted the yellowtail TAC by a factor of .65, which reduced the quota by roughly a third of what it might have been had the model been used at face value.
The model not selected by the TMCG was called the “Major Change VPA.” The committee said the approach used by this model “appears to have merit and should continue to be applied” in future years. But it wasn’t the choice for this year.
Given the consequences of the outcome, industry members quickly made themselves familiar with the terms “base model” and “major change model” and used them while asking questions at the council meeting.
Reconsideration?
Massachusetts council member David Pierce expressed grave reservations about adopting the low yellowtail TAC. He urged the council to support the cod and haddock TACs but to first allow the council’s groundfish committee, technical advisers, and US TMGC members to further review the yellowtail situation and develop a strategy to present to the full TMGC for additional consideration.
“We could benefit from more discussion on the US side. We need to revisit this to make sure we all clearly understand what’s going to happen,” he said.
Although the council might end up with the same position in the end, Pierce thought the added review was critical given that “Amendment 13 is still a new world to us.”
“This has caught a lot of people by surprise,” Pierce said of the yellowtail development. “It cuts across numerous fisheries. This has huge implications and the industry is perplexed.”
Hard call
All of the TMGC members on the council said they found the experience in Nova Scotia to be difficult and extremely sobering. But none thought the outcome would change by calling for another meeting.
Both models used to assess yellowtail found that fishing mortality on the stock was “substantially above” what it should be and the overall biomass was “low relative to a healthy state.” Both models found that “rebuilding” was “required.”
Pappalardo acknowledged that this was a very different picture from what was painted a couple of years ago when the council thought the Georges Bank yellowtail stock was in good condition and warranted the development of a special access program in Closed Area II.
“This stock has been like a yo-yo over the past couple of years, which makes it hard for people to have faith in any of the models,” said Pappalardo, clearly sympathetic to the audience’s obvious distress.
But, he added, “I don’t know if we’re going to get any different result if we meet again. There was a chance we could have ended up with a lot less. I think we did as best we could given the information we had. We had to be precautionary.”
Ruhle echoed that position.
“This was a tough battle,” he said. “But we had to ask ourselves, ‘Are we going to look at the retrospective model or not? Are we going to use the number that looks good or the number that holds?’”
The US team ended up taking the position they found to be most scientifically sound, recognizing that coming home with the news would be hard and affect half of them personally as active fishermen.
Numbers stick
Council member Tom Hill of Massachusetts urged the council to adopt the TMGC decisions, even for yellowtail, because he believed the stock assessments for cod, haddock, and yellowtail were solid.
“I don’t like the results either,” he said, “but we probably have the best group of assessment scientists in the world that participated in the TRAC process. To suggest that because we’re unhappy with the number we want to re-engage in (another meeting) would be a mistake. I believe the process of working with the Canadians is a productive thing.”
Following this tense discussion, the council voted overwhelmingly to adopt the TMGC numbers. It next will develop yellowtail rebuilding measures as part of Framework Adjustment 42 to the groundfish plan.
Janice M. Plante
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