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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 3
November 2006
Herring Amendment 1 out for public comment
GLOUCESTER, MA – With one exception, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published a proposed rule for Amendment 1 to the federal herring plan containing all the provisions developed by the New England Fishery Management Council.
The two most significant proposals are the limited-access program and a June 1-Sept. 30 ban on midwater trawling in Area 1A, the inshore Gulf of Maine. Both elements are described in detail in the proposed rule, which was published in the Federal Register on Sept. 27 and is out for public comment until Nov. 13.
NMFS’s goal is to have a final rule in place by Jan. 1, the start of the 2007 herring fishing year.
The one measure NMFS didn’t put out for comment was the council’s proposal to exempt the Downeast Maine Fixed Gear Fishery east of Cutler from the total allowable catch (TAC) established for Area 1A.
The council determined that the fixed gear catch east of Cutler, which utilizes weirs and stop seines, could be “assumed” to come from the New Brunswick weir fishery during the TAC specification setting process. Under this scenario, the fixed gear fishery could have kept going even if the Area 1A TAC was filled early.
But NMFS said the proposal was “inconsistent” with National Standards 1 and 3 of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
“The measures would essentially allow a portion of the fishery to remain completely unregulated without corresponding conservation benefits,” stated NMFS in the Federal Register notice.
The exemption also would have run counter to the “requirement to manage an individual stock unit throughout its range,” said NMFS.
Seasonal gear ban
By far, the measure generating the most controversy and public attention in Amendment 1 is the summertime ban on midwater trawling in Area 1A.
Technically, the measure is called the “purse seine/fixed gear only area,” and it stipulates that vessels “using single or paired midwater trawls” would be prohibited from fishing for Atlantic herring in Area 1A from June through September.
Midwater trawl gear still could be used in Area 1A from Oct. 1 through May 31. However, under its proposed specifications for the 2007-2009 fishing years, the New England council has recommended that vessels be limited to harvesting only 5,000 metric tons (mt) of herring in Area 1A from January through May.
NMFS gave no hint in the proposed rule as to whether the measure was approvable, but it was widely known that government attorneys were carefully scrutinizing the proposal to be sure it was legal.
In the Federal Register notice, NMFS outlined the council’s rationale for proposing the seasonal ban.
“(T)he council adopted this measure in response to significant and growing concern about the status of the inshore component of the herring resource and the potential impacts of midwater trawl fishing effort, which can be highly concentrated at times, in the inshore Gulf of Maine,” stated NMFS.
“These concerns relate primarily to the importance of herring as a forage species for other fish, marine mammals, and seabirds, and the impact that midwater trawl fishing effort may be having on localized schools of herring in nearshore areas,” the agency wrote.
Midwater trawl impact
The economic impact of the proposed seasonal ban would be significant for the affected vessels, according to the proposed rule.
An analysis cited in the proposed rule determined how many midwater trawl vessels were expected to qualify to fish in all of the herring management areas, including Area 1A, under the new limited-access program. The number turned out to be 22 – six single trawl boats and 16 pair trawlers. Of those, four single and 13 pair trawl vessels were known to actively fish in Area 1A during the June-September period.
The analysis also showed:
• “During 2002 through 2004, the affected midwater trawl vessels landed an average of 12 million pounds of herring (5,472 mt worth about $892,000) and the pair trawl vessels landed 47 million pounds of herring (21,298 mt worth about $3,472,000) per season (June through September) from Area 1A.” And
• “These landings represent 68% and 60% of the total Area 1A landings by these single and paired midwater trawl vessels, respectively.”
NMFS noted that the impacted midwater trawl vessels “would have the choice to either seek alternative fishing grounds or fisheries and/or re-rig to purse seine in Area 1A” during the seasonal ban, but the agency added, “All of the above choices have financial costs.”
Limited-access program
The primary purpose of Amendment 1, at least initially, was to develop a limited-access program for the Atlantic herring fishery.
To that end, the amendment proposes to establish four classes of vessel permits with various possession limits as follows:
• An “All Areas Limited-Access Herring Permit,” which would authorize vessels to fish in all management areas, including Areas 1A and 1B, without any possession limit until 95% of an area’s TAC is filled;
• An “Areas 2 and 3 Limited-Access Herring Permit,” which would authorize vessels to fish only in Areas 2 and 3 without a possession limit until 95% of an area’s TAC if filled;
• A “Limited-Access Incidental Catch Herring Permit,” which would authorize a vessel to harvest up to 25 mt or 55,000 pounds of herring per trip – with one landing allowed per calendar day – from any management area until 95% of a TAC is filled; and
• An “Open-Access Incidental Catch Herring Permit,” which would authorize a vessel to harvest up to 3 mt or 6,600 pounds of herring per trip from any area until 95% of a TAC is filled, at which time any open-access vessel landing more than 2,000 pounds of herring in any week would be required to report its catches on a weekly basis through the interactive voice recording – or IVR – reporting program.
Vessel owners will need to meet specific qualification criteria to obtain any one of the three proposed limited-access permits described above.
NMFS is proposing to “specify that the transfer of fish at sea can occur only if the vessel transferring the herring complies with the possession limit restrictions.”
How to comment
Amendment 1 contains numerous other proposals, including changes to the management area boundaries, a multiyear specification process, a set-aside for fixed gear fisheries, a research set-aside, a new midwater trawl gear definition, and more.
Comments on the amendment can be mailed, faxed, e-mailed, or submitted electronically by Nov. 13 as follows:
• Mail to: Pat Kurkul, NMFS, Northeast Regional Office, One Blackburn Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930 in an envelope marked Comments Herring Amendment 1;
• Fax to: (978) 281-9135;
• E-mail to: <HerrAmend1@noaa.gov> and identify the subject line as “Comments HerrPropRuleAmend1;” and
• Electronically through this web site: <www.regulations.gov>.
For more information, call NMFS’s Eric Dolan at (978) 281-9259.
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