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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 3
November 2007
Council ‘suspends’ work on groundfish sectors
PLYMOUTH, MA – In a remarkable turn of events, the New England Fishery Management Council has put the development of new groundfish sectors on hold until it makes further progress “on a plan to meet the May 2009 biological targets” as required under the groundfish plan’s biennial adjustment process.
The plan may include – but won’t necessarily be limited to – modifications to days-at-sea, accountability measures (AMs), annual catch limits (ACLs), and recreational measures “as necessary.”
AMs and ACLs are now required by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which was reauthorized in January.
The council made this tactical decision at its Sept. 18-19 meeting and agreed to “suspend work on sectors” until the primary Amendment 16 effort control measures and catch limits are developed.
However, the council was extremely divided and the motion to take this approach just barely passed in an 8-to-7 vote.
The council then considered a second motion to form an ad hoc committee to “concurrently continue to develop groundfish sectors,” but that motion was tabled in a 9-to-5 vote with one abstention. Several members said they worried a second committee would merely drain time and resources from the council staff and groundfish plan development team (PDT), which needed to focus on meeting 2009 biological targets as required by law.
The groundfish committee was scheduled to meet Oct. 16, just before Commercial Fisheries News went to press, to work on effort control measures and catch limits, and then the full council was expected to debate whether to proceed with sectors at its Nov. 6-8 meeting in Newport, RI.
The course change came as a shock to industry members who have been immersed in the development of their own sectors. Seventeen different groups are proposing to establish brand new sectors through Amendment 16, and the two existing groundfish sectors – the Georges Bank Cod Hook Sector and the Georges Bank Cod Fixed Gear Sector – are proposing significant changes to their operations plans.
Rhode Island council member Dave Preble said, “If we drop the sector part, we’re really letting down a lot of the industry people. There’s an attitude change going on. That process will be interrupted and we’ll be back to square one.”
Numerous council members expressed support for sectors but worried they couldn’t be properly formed under the extremely limited Amendment 16 timeframe. To stay on track, the council must vote on the suite of measures to be analyzed for public hearing purposes at its February meeting.
“I do support sector management,” said Massachusetts council member David Pierce. “But it’s incredibly complex. I just don’t think we can get them in place for 2009.”
Pierce added, “Forming an ad hoc committee doesn’t solve the workload issue. It will just be another committee. We have the same staff and the same PDT that will have to do all the work.”
National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul agreed with the approach of first focusing on biological targets.
“I support sectors,” she said. “I supported the committee continuing to discuss sectors, but not at the expense of getting the midterm adjustment done and in place by May 1, 2009.”
Kurkul also said, “The last time the council failed to make the deadline, the agency stepped in and implemented measures nobody liked.”
How it happened
At its June meeting, the council voted by a large majority to consider new sectors in Amendment 16, even though the groundfish committee had recommended against it (see CFN August 2007 for details).
So as a result of the council vote, the groundfish committee took the council’s new sector guidelines (see CFN August 2007 for details on this, too) and began working on sector baseline issues while the groundfish PDT worked on technical sector issues, explained groundfish plan coordinator and PDT Chairman Tom Nies.
The PDT and groundfish committee both recognize they still have work to do on sectors, but they’ve already accomplished quite a bit, said Nies.
To make further progress, the committee and council now need to address policy questions such as: Should sectors have hard total allowable catch (TAC) limits for every stock? And how should the nonsector people – those in the “common pool” – be treated?
“If half of the industry will be in sectors, they need to work right,” said Nies. “You’ve got 17 new groups that say they want to operate under sectors. You basically have the majority of the fishery saying they want to be managed under a hard TAC.
“There are pros and cons to hard TACs,” Nies concluded. “But you may meet your mortality objectives.”
Baseline options
Groundfish committee Chairman Rip Cunningham of Massachusetts said the committee had made considerable progress on sectors, but the process of developing baseline options to determine quota allocations for sector members had been extremely contentious.
He said the committee had come up with three different baseline periods for analysis:
Fishing years 1996 through 2001;
Fishing years 1996 through 2006; and
Status quo, which, under Amendment 13, uses a permit holder’s last five years of groundfish landings as history.
Then, explained Cunningham, the committee wanted to look at three different ways to calculate history. These involved:
Landings history alone;
Landings history and used days-at-sea under two different scenarios – 50% landings and 50% used A-days, as well as 75% landings and 25% used A-days; and
50% landings history and 50% fishing “capacity” under a formula that considers vessel length and horsepower multiplied by allocated (not used) A-days for 1996-2006.
Given this multitude of potential baseline/history combinations, Cunningham said, “What we need at this time is judicious paring of the alternatives.”
He acknowledged that making these decisions was difficult.
“It’s human nature. People don’t want to make the hard decisions,” he said. “But I emphasized as chair that we needed to start making some of these hard decisions right from day-one to get this amendment done in time.”
Despite these comments, the council did not take action to whittle down the baseline alternatives.
Cunningham then asked the council what it wanted to do with sector proposals that came in under Amendment 13.
John Nelson of New Hampshire, who chaired the council’s sector policy committee, considered the question to be already answered.
He said, “When we adopted the sector policy in June, we said all new sectors would be evaluated based on the new policy, not Amendment 13.”
Industry reacts
Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine, whose members are forming the Sustainable Harvest Sector, agreed that the potential number of baseline alternatives was too much for the PDT to analyze.
“I think we need some simplification of what’s already on the table,” she said.
However, Raymond urged the council to continue considering sectors in Amendment 16 and to select baseline alternatives so that sector proponents could move forward with developing operations plans and environmental assessments in time to meet the May 1, 2009 implementation deadline.
“I agree we need to quickly develop measures to meet the biological objectives, but it’s also imperative to figure out measures to mitigate the economic impacts,” she said. “Right now, you only have sectors to do that.”
The economic impacts of Amendment 16 are expected to be substantial. Although final numbers won’t be available until after the Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting – known as the GARM – concludes next August, the council understands that some stocks are behind in their rebuilding schedules and may need additional reductions in fishing mortality.
Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition also urged the council to go forward with sectors.
“We are looking quite seriously at the sector program as being the only life preserver for the sinking days-at-sea program,” he said. “You have a lot of people who are really anxious to make this work.”
Giacalone did not think the obstacles were insurmountable.
“Once you get past the allocation issues, we’ll get through the policy issues,” he said. “But we can’t skirt or avoid the big issue of allocation.”
More sector support
Eric Hesse, a member of the Georges Bank Cod Hook Sector, said, “The more you push the days-at-sea system, the more you bleed people. You need to continue to work on sectors.”
He added, “I guess the greatest thing about the sector I’m in is we have a hard TAC on codfish and we account for discards.”
Dan Holland of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) in Portland, ME told the council that GMRI has been helping industry groups develop sectors, but most were at the point where they needed more guidance from the council about basic requirements such as baseline periods.
“There’s a lot of work that groups have to do to get their own plans in place to meet this 2009 timeframe,” said Holland. “The sectors need to have a sense of what those policies are going to be in order to move forward.”
Equity concerns
New Hampshire council member David Goethel remained unconvinced that the council could adequately develop sectors in Amendment 16.
“This is an extremely contentious issue because it involves divvying up the fishery,” he said. “We operate now under a days-at-sea program. The days are an opportunity to fish. We need to provide an equitable conversion to this currency. Some things will give some people a leg up on their neighbors. We need to nip this. We’re here to represent everybody.”
Goethel strongly opposed considering any history later than 2003 – the year leasing was first allowed – saying it would “pit neighbor against neighbor.” And, he said, the council needed to find a way to fairly apportion stocks to various regions, which would be extremely difficult to do.
He used Georges Bank haddock as an example.
“We all paid a price to rebuild Georges Bank haddock,” he said. “When we closed those areas offshore, boats went elsewhere. They didn’t go away. They went into other people’s backyards.”
As a result, people who didn’t fish on Georges Bank haddock still sacrificed considerably during years of harsh restrictions, Goethel said.
“We’ve got to find a way so we don’t allocate Georges Bank haddock to the handful of permit holders who have accessed it for the past four or five years,” he said. “Once we allocate this fishery, only a handful of people will be able to harvest that resource ever again.”
Greg DiDomenico of the Garden State Seafood Association strongly supported this line of thinking.
“I know we’re in the minority in the Mid-Atlantic, but we want to preserve the right to access the fishery in the future,” he said. “People in the Mid-Atlantic had limited days-at-sea and they leased them out. They’ll be able to retain the history but they’ll have to forfeit landings.
“We’re asking for some consideration to be made,” DiDomenico said.
Hard TACs
Connecticut council member Sally McGee wasn’t ready to put aside sector development in Amendment 16.
“If we just get down to business at the next committee meeting, and if we can spend a day looking at these specific mortality controls, then we can get back to what we’re doing with sectors,” she said.
Furthermore, McGee made a motion “to direct the groundfish committee to consider hard TACs for the common pool as a means for mortality control,” which the council approved. McGee said she intended the common pool hard TAC to be a “backstop” to effort control measures, not a “stand alone” measure.
John Williamson of The Ocean Conservancy was adamant that the council needed to focus on meeting biological targets in Amendment 16 above all else.
“I admire the work that’s been done with sectors,” he said, “but what I’m here to tell you today is you’ve run out of time.”
Williamson said, “You’ve got barely enough time to answer these really tough questions that have to be answered under the law. We are aware of the issues surrounding ACLs and AMs. You have a lot of work to do if you’re going to meet the basic requirements of the law.”
Janice M. Plante
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