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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 3
November 2006
NE council advances GC scallop Amendment 11
PEABODY, MA – Later this winter, general category scallopers will have the chance to comment on a vastly expanded draft of Amendment 11 to the federal scallop plan.
The document now includes broader qualification criteria for the amendment’s proposed limited-access program and a host of new management options to regulate the traditional 400-pound fishery.
At its Sept. 26-28 meeting here, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to forward a broad range of proposed amendment alternatives to the scallop plan development team (PDT) for further analysis. The council expects to hold public hearings on the alternatives in February or March.
From day one, the foundation of Amendment 11 was supposed to be a general category limited-access program.
But the amendment got hung up in June when the council’s scallop committee presented the council with potential qualification periods that several council members found too restrictive.
Those alternatives, which are still part of Amendment 11, are March 1, 2000-Nov. 1, 2004, which is the control date, and March 1, 2003-Nov. 1, 2004.
At its September meeting, the council voted to include a third option – March 1, 1994-Nov. 1, 2004 – to encompass more of the traditional participants in the fishery.
Under all three options, vessels must have held a general category permit prior to the control date and have landed a specific poundage of scallops during the qualification period.
The scallop poundage alternatives are:
• At least one trip of 100 pounds or more;
• At least 1,000 pounds in one year; or
• At least 5,000 pounds in one year.
That means the public hearing document now will include three “qualification criteria” options involving the three very different poundage levels and then three “qualification time period” options involving the actual years those scallops had to have been landed.
The council voted that possession of the permit and the landings had to be from the same fishing year.
Opposition
The council didn’t universally support the addition of the third 1994 alternative, which would qualify fishermen as far back as the initial implementation of Amendment 4. Four members, in fact, voted against it.
Massachusetts council member Tom Hill was particularly opposed and viewed the move as an enormous mistake.
“We included everyone on the bus with groundfish, and it led to 10 years of pressure, forcing us to do things the council was historically reluctant to do in a small-boat fishery,” he said.
If the council is trying to address capacity in the general category fishery, Hill argued that including all fishermen who held a permit from 1994 up to the control date wasn’t a realistic way to do that.
“It seems to me the council has to be sure if it includes an alternative in the document, it’s consistent with what we want to see in the end,” he said.
“This (inclusion of 1994) will lead people to believe that it’s a reasonable alternative,” Hill continued. “I urge the council not to do this. We’ve been down this road before. It has profound implications for participants in the fishery. This will do what we did in groundfish. Honestly.”
Support for 1994
Maine council member Dana Rice, however, supported the 1994 option. He said the council initially began work on a general category amendment to address a problem of excess and largely new effort from “down south” – not to restrict traditional fishermen in the north, especially in the Gulf of Maine where there has been little activity in recent years.
“I don’t see why people who haven’t prosecuted the fishery (or) put it in danger should be punished,” he said.
Terry Stockwell, also of Maine, added, “We felt the addition of this would round out the document. We’re just trying to open up the level of qualification criteria to maintain some sort of supplemental access in the future.”
The council’s general category scallop advisers discussed the issue extensively.
“Among the advisers, the vision was to be more inclusive than exclusive,” said John Stuart of Portland, who served on the advisory panel. “I think we’re working in the right direction here.”
Gulf of Maine
Another reason the council rejected Amendment 11 back in June was that it lacked options for the northern Gulf of Maine.
The document contained a “no action” alternative regarding this area, which, if selected, would mean that whatever management program is adopted under the amendment would be applied equally throughout the range of the fishery.
This time, the council voted to include two options that would create a new Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop Management Area.
The options are as follows.
• Amendment 11 would not apply – Measures adopted for Amendment 11 would not apply in the northern Gulf of Maine under one of two suboptions: A) within the Gulf of Maine Scallop Exemption Area north of 42°20’N, or B) within the EEZ north of 43°N. General category 1B permit holders could continue to fish under an open-access fishery with a 400-pound possession limit until a hard total allowable catch (TAC) was reached for the area. And
• Establish a limited-access program for the northern Gulf of Maine – One of the two area options above (A or B) would be regulated under a separate limited-entry general category program with a separate TAC.
Hill expressed concern about the whole course of action.
“Why would we carve out that particular area as being especially unique when we don’t do it for anybody else?” he asked. “We’re not doing it for coastal Cape Cod or coastal Massachusetts or coastal New Jersey.
“The stocks in the Gulf of Maine are as depressed as anywhere else,” Hill continued. “That’s why those fishermen are fishing in New Jersey. We have more of a resource problem in the Gulf of Maine than we do in any other part of the fishery.”
Stockwell, however, didn’t think it was appropriate to lump the Gulf of Maine into the rest of the mix because the area currently isn’t included in the annual federal scallop stock assessment survey.
“We would like to move forward with a stock assessment for the Gulf of Maine and manage that area differently,” he said.
IFQ, hard TAC options
Besides making those key additions, the council added several new management and allocation alternatives to Amendment 11, including a new option for determining each vessel’s “qualification amount” or allocation level under individual fishing quota (IFQ) management.
It also voted to take the IFQ options in Amendment 11 and establish additional alternatives so that each one would contain a way to issue qualified permit holders a certain number of trips instead of pounds.
On a different front, the council added an option to establish a limited-access program with quarterly hard TACs instead of IFQs. It also agreed to review an analysis of hard TACs issued by trimesters instead of quarters.
Broader measures
The council debated other issues that impacted not only general category scallopers but also the fleet at large.
For one, the council agreed to propose modifying the 50-bushel in-shell scallop possession limit to 100 bushels east – not shoreward – of the vessel monitoring system demarcation line.
It also agreed to clarify that vessels fishing under a groundfish or monkfish day-at-sea will not be restricted to the scallop plan’s 144' net sweep restriction.
In one decision that bitterly disappointed limited-access scallopers, the council defeated a motion that would have considered annual management of scallops instead of the current biennial cycle.
Trevor Kenchington of the Fisheries Survival Fund said, “With the biology of scallops, you have to management them annually. Things happen too fast.”
Illustrating his point, Kenchington added, “Why did we lose Hudson Canyon? Because it was the second year of a biennial cycle and we couldn’t make adjustments. This biennial thing is going to cripple scallop management.”
The vote for annual management failed 4-8.
After significant debate and two separate votes, the council decided against including an option to allow for the creation of sectors in the full-time, part-time, and occasional limited-access fishery. An option for establishing sectors among general category fishermen is already part of the draft amendment.
A detailed list of all the proposed Amendment 11 alternatives can be found on the New England council’s web site at <www.nefmc.org/scallops/index.html>.
Janice M. Plante
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