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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 3
November 2006
Industry recommends 151-day shrimp season
PORTLAND, ME – Industry members are asking the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Northern Shrimp Section to adopt a 151-day season for the 2006-2007 shrimp fishery from Dec. 1, 2006 through April 30, 2007 with no days off.
ASMFC’s shrimp advisory panel and other interested fishermen and processors met Oct. 11 in Portland to develop this advice after receiving preliminary but very positive information from the commission’s Northern Shrimp Technical Committee (TC).
According to TC Chair Maggie Hunter of Maine, none of the “triggers” established last year to safeguard the stock were tripped, and the 2003 year class, which will contribute the most to this year’s fishery, is “very strong.”
Furthermore, the 2004 year class, which will factor into the commercial fishery next year in a significant way, is “astounding,” she said. It is without question the largest year class recorded in the history of the shrimp survey.
Advisory panel Chairman Terry Alexander said industry members who attended the Oct. 11 meeting felt confident the recommendation for a 151-day season was appropriate. Furthermore, he said, the group will be asking the Northern Shrimp Section to commit to a 183-day season for next year running Dec. 1-May 31.
“The stock looks really good,” he said. “The product is out there to catch.”
The section will officially receive a stock status update and obtain additional information from the technical committee at a Nov. 6 meeting in Portsmouth, NH at the Urban Forestry Center. The meeting will begin at 1 pm. That is also when the section will consider industry’s recommendations.
Triggers
Last year, the section established a 140-day season running seven days per week from Dec. 12, 2005 through April 30, 2006. At the same time, the section made a public “commitment” to maintain a 140-day fishery for the 2006-2007 season provided that the following “triggers” weren’t tripped during the 2005-2006 fishery:
• The number of fishing trips didn’t exceed 5,600;
• Landings didn’t exceed 5,200 metric tons (mt); and
• Fishing mortality didn’t exceed 0.20.
According to very preliminary data, fishermen last winter completed only 2,276 trips and landed only 1,876.6 mt of shrimp. Fishing mortality was somewhere between 0.03 to 0.08.
Hunter said the technical committee expected those numbers to increase by 15%-20% as late reports continued to trickle in, but the increase wouldn’t be enough to change the situation.
Last winter, 119 vessels participated in the fishery – six from Massachusetts, 11 from New Hampshire, and 102 from Maine.
Of the Maine vessels, 48 used traps. However, trap fishermen only accounted for 11% of the landings.
Survey cruise
This summer’s stock assessment cruise aboard the Gloria Michelle was fraught with technical and financial problems and, as a result, the survey team was only able to complete 29 random tows compared to the more desired 40-45 tows.
However, the tows that were completed had very high abundances of shrimp with mean kilograms-per-tow and mean numbers-per-tow two-to-three times greater than anything on record, said Hunter.
The numbers were so high, in fact, that technical committee members double-checked their figures and conferred with biologists who participated in the survey to be sure the numbers were accurate. Those onboard confirmed that many, many shrimp were caught on most of the survey tows.
Technical committee members have a few reservations about the survey in general since the 2003 year class appeared much larger this year than in the past two surveys, which, Hunter said, cast “some doubt on the ability of this small number of tows to accurately represent the Gulf of Maine stock.”
Furthermore, scientists were voicing a bit of caution about the 2005 year class, which so far appears to be only “mediocre” in size.
But the high numbers of shrimp seen in this summer’s survey overall and the “strong” and “astounding” size of the 2003 and 2004 year classes respectively point to a large biomass that should provide decent fishing opportunities for the next couple of years.
Markets an issue
Armed with this information, Alexander said industry members thought their request for a 151-day season this year and 183 days next year was completely warranted.
“We’re going to ask the section to set next year’s season so people can look ahead and invest money in this fishery if they have to, especially on the processing end,” he said. “There will never be more markets if we’re not allowed to go out there and catch the product.”
Selling shrimp proved to be extremely difficult last year and was the primary impediment to the fishery. Few expected the marketing end to be easy this year either.
But Alexander said many fishermen were remaining “cautiously optimistic.”
“If we can get a little more market and a little more money for the shrimp, that will help everyone,” he said.
Last winter, shrimp prices at times bottomed out to practically nothing and never really exceeded 50 cents per pound on a regular basis.
Still, fishermen want a solid crack at finding new markets and didn’t think it was unreasonable to ask for the full month of December this year and the addition of May next year.
“We never came anywhere close to the triggers we set last year, and we have a decent safety net around everything now,” said Alexander.
In fact, industry advisers were planning to ask ASMFC’s shrimp section to downsize the number of triggers and instead focus exclusively on fishing mortality. They intend to argue that, if the fishing mortality rate remains low, the number of trips and level of landings will remain in check as well.
For more information about the upcoming Nov. 6 meeting, contact Brad Spear, ASMFC’s shrimp plan coordinator, at (202) 289-6400. His e-mail address is <bspear@asmfc.org>.
Janice M. Plante
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