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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 2
October 2005
Scallopers wait for new ’06-’07 rotation schedule
PROVIDENCE, RI – The limited-access scallop fleet will be operating under a new area rotation schedule during the 2006 and 2007 fishing years once Framework Adjustment 18 to the federal scallop plan is put in place.
At its Sept. 13-15 meeting here, the New England Fishery Management Council selected numerous “preferred alternatives” for the framework but held off casting its final vote until November.
 I don’t see where it (eliminating crew limit) hurts anything. You’ve got the quota anyway.
—Roy Enoksen
That means the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) may not have time to review and implement the package by the March 1, 2006 start of the next fishing year.
The fleet will be able to continue fishing in open areas but, as a contingency, the council voted that scallopers who use days-at-sea between March 1 and the eventual implementation of the new rule will have those days deducted from their 2006 allocations.
The council weighed the consequences of voting in November vs. September but decided the framework would benefit greatly from further analysis.
“If we miss the start of the 2006 fishing year, the Hudson Canyon area opens,” said NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul when asked about the consequences of a delay.
The Hudson Canyon area, which has been closed since 1998, is currently scheduled to automatically revert to an “open” area on March 1.
The council, however, is proposing to maintain Hudson Canyon as a “controlled access area” until Feb. 29, 2008 exclusively to allow vessels with unused 2005 Hudson Canyon trips to take them in the area during 2006 and 2007 after the smaller scallops inside the boundaries have had a chance to grow.
 “We’ll be giving these boats 52 days in open areas with no place to fish. They’ll have to move entire operations north.
—Trevor Kenchington
However, without Framework 18, Hudson Canyon will simply open up to everyone for a short time until the final rule is implemented.
Andy Applegate, the council’s scallop plan coordinator, didn’t view this as an enormous problem given that most of the bigger scallops in Hudson Canyon have been harvested, making fishing outside of the area more attractive.
“In reality, very few vessels would fish there anyway even if it opens,” he said.
Nothing in Framework 18 is a given yet, but the council is hoping that most of its September decisions won’t be revisited in November. At that meeting, the council intends to review a few lingering items, such as whether to adopt a seasonal turtle closure in the Mid-Atlantic, and then vote on a final document.
Crew size
One of the more significant changes made at the September meeting related to the crew size limit on access-area trips.
The council initially debated increasing the crew size limit from seven to eight. According to the scallop plan development team (PDT), the move would increase daily shucking capacity by roughly 20 percent but would have “few biological effects in access areas where large scallops predominate.”
Industry members supported the increase to improve safety and allow vessels to carry and train new crewmembers.
However, Kurkul questioned whether a crew limit was necessary at all given that vessels on access-area trips are bound by an 18,000-pound trip limit.
“As long as they’re constrained by the trip limit, that’s going to address mortality,” she said.
Massachusetts council member David Pierce challenged that line of thought, fearing that without any cap on crew, vessels could bring several extra shuckers and harvest smaller scallops that would be better off staying in the water.
“Then it would be within their means to go into these areas and deckload large amounts of small scallops and go to town. I think this has an adverse conservation affect and it’s counter to what we’re trying to do,” he said.
But Rhode Island council member Phil Ruhle didn’t see it that way.
“There’s an economic disincentive to land smaller scallops,” he said. “The people themselves should be able to decide how many they want to have onboard.”
Vessel owner Roy Enoksen of New Bedford strongly supported lifting the crew limit completely, arguing that it would give vessel owners more flexibility.
“I don’t see where it hurts anything,” he said. “You’ve got the quota anyway.”
In the end, the council voted to completely eliminate the crew size limit. This measure would only apply to boats making access-area trips.
Rotation schedule
The council also voted to allow scallopers to make trips into all three Georges Bank access areas in 2006 since no new access opportunities will be available in the Mid-Atlantic. In 2007, however, the Elephant Trunk Area will be open for access trips, which will shift effort again into the Mid-Atlantic.
The proposed schedule for full-time permit holders, assuming the calculations don’t change between now and November, is:
• 2006 fishing year – Two trips in Nantucket Lightship, one trip in Closed Area I, and two trips in Closed Area II with 52 open-area days; and
• 2007 fishing year – One trip in Nantucket Lightship, one trip in Closed Area I, zero trips in Closed Area II, and five trips in the Elephant Trunk Area with 51 open-area days.
Elephant Trunk
The Elephant Trunk Area in the Mid-Atlantic has been closed since July 2004 to protect two “very strong” year classes of scallops. The biomass appears so large that the area potentially could support numerous trips per boat in the years ahead.
However, Applegate said the PDT was urging the council to take a “precautionary approach” due to a “higher level of uncertainty” in the PDT’s projections based on 2004 survey data.
“We are projecting a very high level of biomass,” he said, “but the precautionary approach allows for a buffer in case the biomass is less than we projected. It also reduces the effect of concentrating fishing activity in the Elephant Trunk Area.”
The council reviewed alternatives that would have allowed up to nine trips in the Elephant Trunk starting Jan. 1, 2007. However, it selected the five-trip precautionary approach, which was strongly supported by industry.
Adjustments
The council also adopted a mechanism that will allow it to adjust 2007 Elephant Trunk trips based on new estimates of exploitable biomass in 2006.
At first, the council reviewed a proposal to increase open-area days if updated surveys showed an increase in Elephant Trunk biomass, but both council members and industry protested.
Trevor Kenchington of the Fisheries Survival Fund said, “The Fisheries Survival Fund has always supported this basic concept (of making adjustments based on new data). There’s no doubt about that. But it troubles me a lot that we’d say, ‘There’s extra biomass in the Elephant Trunk Area so let’s increase the effort in the open areas.’”
In addition, Ron Enoksen of New Bedford urged the council to be cautious about increasing trips at all in the Elephant Trunk.
“Five trips is quite generous,” he said. “I think you’re better off keeping a cap. I’m concerned that if you put too much pressure on it, things are going to sour.”
Harriett Didriksen, also of New Bedford, echoed that sentiment.
“We want to avoid anything like what happened in Hudson Canyon,” she said.
Yellowtail bycatch
One issue that potentially could complicate things for scallopers during 2006 is the reduced quota available for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder.
The yellowtail bycatch allowance for scallopers is capped at 10 percent of the overall US total allowable catch. That hasn’t turned out to be a problem so far. But during 2006, scallopers will be concentrating effort on Georges Bank because no access-area trips will be allocated in the Mid-Atlantic.
That means there’ll be more fishing activity on Georges under a significantly lower yellowtail bycatch allowance.
The council agreed to include a provision in Framework 18 to allocate scallopers additional open-area days to compensate for any lost access trips due to early fulfillment of the yellowtail bycatch allowance.
But the council needed a bit of convincing first.
Phil Ruhle expressed concern that scallopers wouldn’t have any incentive to avoid yellowtail if they knew they’d be allocated extra open-area days in the event of a closure.
“They could just fish in a different area,” he said.
But industry members insisted that wouldn’t be the case.
“We really need this as a back-up, but I can’t image anyone would do this unless they absolutely had to,” said Barbara Bragdon of Cape Cod. “As a boat owner, I would much rather make trips in the closed areas.”
Vessel owner Dan Cohen of Cape May, NJ also emphasized that scallopers would take every precaution to avoid yellowtail because they understood the implications.
“We’re here to contribute to solutions, not create problems,” he said. “But we have to make this yellowtail quota stretch over five trips now. What if that trigger is reached? This is a necessary (provision).”
Delmarva closure
Framework Adjustment 18 now contains a new but highly controversial three-year closure in the Delmarva Area to protect a strong 2003 year class of scallops. The area will close in 2007 when the Elephant Trunk Area becomes part of the rotational access schedule.
Mid-Atlantic scallopers in particular fear the closure will give them nowhere to use open-area days in their own backyard. With the Elephant Trunk Area available only for access trips and the Hudson Canyon area off limits except for 2005 spill-over trips and the large swath of bottom in the Delmarva Area closed completely, scallopers will be left with a narrow strip of scallop bottom west of the Elephant Trunk and Hudson Canyon area.
Trevor Kenchington pointed out that Hampton Roads, VA is the second largest scallop port in the country for limited-access scallopers.
“We’ll be giving these boats 52 days in open areas with no place to fish,” he said. “They’ll have to move entire operations north. The fishing mortality rate in the open areas on Georges is higher than in the Mid-Atlantic. I think that, on balance, this closure does not have benefits to outmatch its negatives.”
After listening to the pros and cons, the council – on a very close split vote – supported adding the Delmarva closure to Framework 18.
Vote in November
Framework 18 contains many more elements, including a complex schedule to allow scallopers to exchange trips between access areas during the next two fishing years.
It also includes four options for imposing a seasonal closure during warm water months to protect turtles when they’re supposed to be prevalent in the Mid-Atlantic.
The turtle options include: no action; a five-month closure; a two-month closure; and a 3-1/2 month closure, which was added during the September meeting.
The council will cast its final vote on the package during its Nov. 15-17 meeting in Hyannis, MA.
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