COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 2
October 2005
Herring industry to comment on limited access, Area 1A purse seine/fixed-gear-only season
NEWBURYPORT, MA " During the month of October, fishermen throughout the Northeast are expected to turn out in large numbers for public hearings on proposed monumental changes to the Atlantic herring fishery.
The first pivotal issue " the one that drove the New England Fishery Management Council to develop Amendment 1 to the federal herring plan in the first place " is who will be allowed to participate in the directed fishery.
It"s almost certain the council will pick one of the six limited-access options in the document when it makes a final decision in November. In fact, the only non-limited-access option is "no action" Alternative 1, and those who have followed the process closely note that the council wouldn"t have spent two years on an amendment to leave things as they are.
The question the council really wants comment on is: How strict should the qualification criteria be for Area 1, which covers the Gulf of Maine, and for Areas 2 and 3, which cover the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic region and Georges Bank respectively?
The second major issue involves a highly controversial purse seine/fixed-gear-only season within part or all of Area 1A.
Such a measure would prohibit midwater trawlers from fishing in the inshore Gulf of Maine for up to four months during the summer.
One package
The council first developed Amendment 1 primarily to address capacity in the Atlantic herring fishery and new stock assessment information.
Over time, however, more than a dozen other issues were added to it, including adjustments to management area boundaries, a new definition of midwater trawl gear, and recognition of the importance of herring as a forage species.
But the limited-access and purse seine/fixed-gear-only area remained the backbone of the amendment, and both were analyzed as a package in each of the seven alternatives.
That means the council is not likely to pick the limited-access criteria in Alternative 6, for example, and then pick the purse seine/fixed-gear-only option in Alternative 7.
However, some industry members are expected to request such an approach during the public hearings.
Preferred alternative
The council has identified Alternative 7 as its "preferred" alternative.
This alternative contains the most restrictive limited-access criteria and the biggest and longest purse seine/fixed-gear-only area/season in the entire document.
To qualify for future access to Area 1, current permit holders would have to provide documentation that they landed at least 500 metric tons (mt) of herring in one year between Jan. 1, 1988 and Sept. 16, 1999. To qualify for Areas 2 and 3, permit holders would have to provide documentation that they landed 250 mt in one year between Jan. 1, 1988 and Dec. 31, 2003.
Anyone wanting to qualify for a limited-access incidental catch permit to land up to 15 mt of herring in the future would need to provide documentation of landing at least 15 mt in one year between Jan. 1, 1993 and Dec. 31, 2002.
The purse seine/fixed-gear-only proposal in Alternative 7 would prohibit midwater trawling in all of Area 1A from June 1 through Sept. 30 annually.
Some of the other alternatives call for "no action" regarding a purse seine/fixed-gear-only area or propose a smaller area and less restrictive season than Alternative 7.
Several alternatives also propose less restrictive limited-access criteria.
Council undecided
The council is emphasizing that Alternative 7 is its "favored approach" for managing the herring fishery "at this time," but has not made any final decisions yet.
Those decisions will be made in November after the council considers all the public comment from the October hearings, as well as written comments.
In the end, however, the council is expected to pick one of the seven alternatives and then decide which of the other dozen-plus measures it wants to include in the amendment.
Other measures
These additional issues involve:
• Establishing a maximum sustainable yield level for the fishery, with the preferred alternative being 220,000 mt;
• Determining the distribution of area-by-area total allowable catches (TACs);
• Establishing TAC set-asides for research;
• Establishing TAC set-asides for incidental catch in the mackerel fishery;
• Determining the timing of the specification process, with the preferred alternative being to set specifications for three years at a time;
• Adjusting management boundaries;
• Establishing an open-access incidental catch permit for vessels that harvest small quantities of herring, primarily for the bait market, with proposed possession limits being 1 mt, 3 mt, or 5 mt;
• Considering vessel monitoring system (VMS) options, with the preferred alternative being to require VMSs for all limited-access permit holders;
• Establishing vessel upgrade restrictions, with the preferred alternative being to make them consistent with upgrade restrictions in other fisheries;
• Establishing measures to address fixed-gear fisheries;
• Selecting measures to address haddock bycatch and bycatch monitoring;
• Establishing a new definition for midwater trawl gear; and
• Establishing a process for the creation of sectors and determining sector allocations.
And, assuming it moves ahead with limited access, the council intends to establish measures to govern vessel sales, permit transfers, permit splitting, and other issues related to limited-access fisheries.
Janice M. Plante
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
