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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 2
October 2007
NE council nixes herring 1A quota adjustment
PLYMOUTH, MA – Despite strong appeals from the directed herring industry and scientific and anecdotal information about an upsurge of herring in inshore waters, the New England Fishery Management Council voted against asking the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to boost the 45,000 metric ton (mt) quota for Area 1A for 2008 and 2009.
The decision was a bitter blow to herring industry members who had presumed the quota could be revisited before the start of the next fishing year.
“My fear is that this council process is not deferring to the science enough,” said Peter Moore of the American Pelagic Association. “I just want to know why we can’t reconsider the data.”
The issue was debated during the council’s Sept. 18-19 meeting and began with a stock and fishery update provided by herring plan coordinator Lori Steele.
In addition to general information about landings and recent regulatory actions, Steele presented the latest information available from stock assessment surveys conducted by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
Pointing to the zigzag lines going up and down on a chart showing overall survey results, she said, “It’s hard with all of these surveys to identify any type of trend for herring.”
However, Steele did note that when the inshore Gulf of Maine survey strata were separated out from the overall bottom trawl survey information, the fall 2006 data point turned out to be the second highest in the 1963-2007 time series.
The spring 2007 data point also “increased slightly” but from very low levels in 2005 and 2006, she added.
The news was significant because previous low inshore survey data points contributed to NMFS’s decision to implement a 45,000 mt total allowable catch (TAC) for Area 1A for 2008 and 2009 instead of 50,000 mt as recommended by the council.
Pelagics committee Chairman David Pierce of Massachusetts considered the fall survey upswing to be extremely good news and wanted NMFS to review its previous decision.
“In light of this information – the second highest data point in the time series – a reconsideration is warranted,” he said. “It’s appropriate for us to at least make that request.”
Adjust Area 1A
Pierce took the next step and made a motion stating that the council ask NMFS to “reconsider” the 45,000-mt decision and instead implement the council’s 50,000-mt recommendation.
But NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said “reconsideration” of the specifications, which were published in April as a “final rule,” procedurally wasn’t possible. The council would need to submit a new specification package containing updated information and justification for a change.
However, Kurkul said NMFS did have the authority to make an “inseason adjustment” if new information warranted altering the TACs.
“I don’t think a change is appropriate based on what I’ve seen,” she said, but she suggested the tactic because “this seems to be the best way process-wise” if the council intended to pursue the request.
As a result, council members changed Pierce’s motion to seek an inseason adjustment instead of a reconsideration of the final specifications.
Spring survey
Science center representative Jim Weinberg was quick to express concern about the way the council was viewing the latest information.
“It’s true the fall survey in ’06 is the second highest on record,” he said, “but if you look at the spring data, there isn’t a big blip there.”
New Hampshire council member John Nelson said he didn’t put as much weight on the spring survey because of intense flooding experienced along the northern New England coastline in 2006.
The enormous influx of fresh water into the coastal environment “had a tremendous impact on our fisheries,” he said.
Maine council member Dana Rice strongly supported an inseason adjustment. He said the numerous measures in herring Amendment 1, which included limited entry and a June-September ban on midwater trawling in Area 1A, already were having positive impacts.
Furthermore, fishermen were seeing “a lot of herring along the coast of Maine,” and the fish were coming in farther north than in recent years, he said.
“Herring is very important to me,” Rice said. “If I thought the herring resource could not support 50,000 mt in Area 1A, I’d be the first guy to tell you to go down. But that’s not the case.”
Risk analysis
Numerous audience members on both sides of the issue had plenty to say about the council’s proposed request, and several referred back to the “risk analysis” conducted last year when the council was considering a three-year package of specifications to cover 2007-2009.
Among other things, the risk analysis highlighted the “retrospective pattern” exhibited in herring stock assessments, meaning the model used to assess the stock tends to overestimate abundance and underestimate fishing mortality in the most recent years of the assessment. The analysis also cited high exploitation rates in the inshore Gulf of Maine, among other things.
Jeff Kaelin, representing Ocean Spray Partnership, said he found it “highly unusual” for NMFS to use retrospective bias to reduce a TAC.
“We are very conservatively managing these stocks,” he said. “Even staying at 50,000 mt is very conservative.”
John Williamson of The Ocean Conservancy said he agreed it was “very rare” to cite a retrospective problem in a TAC decision.
But he added, “We’re glad that was done. That is how you adjust for the uncertainty that sometimes those stock assessments can be wrong.”
Williamson further emphasized that the 2006 fall data point was “raw data” and not yet incorporated into a full assessment.
Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation added that his group was looking at the situation in much broader terms.
“I think the time series that we care most about is the early 1900s when thousands and millions of pounds of herring were caught in weirs,” he said. “We want to see something of that older coastal fishery and fish populations restored.”
Swarms of fish
According to Al West of Stinson Seafood/Bumble Bee, which operates the last cannery on the East Coast for Atlantic herring, the fish this year have been extremely abundant inshore.
West said fishermen and processors throughout the area were witnessing this phenomenon.
“This year we have had better availability of all different size classes and, in my mind, the fish are rebounding,” he said. “For the last two days, we’ve had a million pounds sitting at the dock. The availability is good and the sizes are there. We’re seeing everything from 4" to 12" fish.”
Vito Calomo, executive director of the Massachusetts Fisheries Recovery Commission, said fishermen in Gloucester and numerous neighboring smaller ports were seeing “large clouds” of baby herring – fish of roughly 2" in size and under – filling the harbors, and spotter pilots were seeing “large amounts of fish” as well.
Calomo strongly supported the council’s move to request an inseason adjustment.
What’s being landed
Steve Weiner, chairman of CHOIR – the Coalition for the Atlantic Herring Fishery’s Orderly, Informed, and Responsible Long Term Development – didn’t take a position on what the TAC actually should be for Area 1A.
Instead, he said, “The concern that CHOIR has with any TAC discussion is we don’t believe we have a handle on what is being landed today and we don’t have a handle on what is being caught and discarded.”
Weiner used the opportunity to again ask the council to highlight herring as a “priority” workload item for 2008 “so we can have this discussion.”
He concluded, “I don’t know where our TACs are going to go, but we do know that a lot of fish is being dumped.”
Few council members spoke in opposition to the recommendation for an inseason adjustment, but it became clear after the vote that the majority of the council opposed the idea.
The motion failed in a 5-10 vote, and only Pierce, Rice, Nelson, and Maine’s Terry Stockwell and Jim Salisbury supported it.
Pierce warned the council, “I may be back next year requesting an inseason adjustment if indeed we see the fall 2007 data point being as high as 2006.”
Janice M. Plante
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