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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 3
November 2009
Scallop Amd. 15 advances; spring hearings likely
PLYMOUTH, MA – After nearly two years of wrangling over complicated and immensely controversial issues, the New England Fishery Management Council met here Sept. 22-24 and signed off on a wide range of alternatives for Amendment 15 to the federal scallop plan.
The alternatives cover roughly a dozen different topics, including permit stacking, days-at-sea leasing, essential fish habitat (EFH) in Closed Area I, and potential trip limit increases for limited-access general category individual fishing quota (IFQ) boats.
The council’s scallop plan development team (PDT) and staff must now analyze the alternatives and prepare an environmental impact statement and public hearing document. Hearings are likely to take place in March or April.
The amendment has three primary goals, according to the council, which are to:
Bring the scallop plan into compliance with the new Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) requirements for annual catch limits (ACLs) and accountability measures (AMs);
Address excess capacity in the regular limited-access scallop fishery and provide more flexibility for efficient use of the resource; and
Consider miscellaneous measures to make the scallop plan more effective.
The council’s intent is to select final alternatives in June 2010 and submit the completed amendment to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in August for review and approval. This timing should allow NMFS to implement a final rule by March 2011, meeting the MSA’s deadline for ACL and AM implementation.
While the PDT has invested a large amount of time in the ACL and AM section of Amendment 15, industry members have been consumed by the permit stacking and days-at-sea leasing proposals, which have deeply divided the fleet.
Closed Area I access
On the other hand, one issue on which the industry is united is an Amendment 15 proposal to modify the EFH areas that were closed to scallop gear under Amendment 10 to match the EFH closures under the groundfish plan’s Amendment 13.
The council attempted to take this action back in 2004 under a joint scallop/groundfish framework adjustment known as Framework 16/39. However, the environmental group Oceana sued over the move because the change was proposed under a framework instead of a full amendment.
Since then, industry has fought to line up groundfish and scallop EFH closures, which, in the case of Closed Area I, would open up a chunk of prime bottom that surveys show contains high densities of large scallops.
Speaking before the council in September, Drew Minkiewicz of the Fisheries Survival Fund said, “We need access to this area in order to effectively prosecute our rotational area management scheme.”
Gib Brogan of Oceana, however, questioned the council’s attempt to make an EFH change in Amendment 15 when it already was working on an omnibus habitat amendment to review EFH areas for all fisheries.
The council’s position was that including the EFH change in Amendment 15 would allow the council to proceed with scallop rotational area management until the EFH omnibus amendment is fully implemented.
Community associations
The council also is proposing to establish a process that would allow people to create Community Fishery Associations (CFAs).
Another example of a “catch share” system, CFAs are nonprofit organizations that can hold quota – and, possibly, permits – on behalf of a specific “community,” which could be a homeport, for example.
The proposal generated considerable concern among some council members and numerous fishermen, who were worried that fully developing a CFA process would delay implementation of Amendment 15.
“I support the concept in general,” said Pat Kurkul, NMFS’s Northeast regional administrator. “But think about how long it took to do sectors in groundfish. There are still a number of issues that need to be addressed here.”
Ron Smolowitz of the Fisheries Survival Fund also expressed concern.
“Conceptually it might be great,” he said. “But this is so far from developed that the only outcome will be to drag down Amendment 15.”
Tom Dempsey of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, which is the lead backer of the proposal, had worked with NMFS and council staffers to develop the CFA language. He seemed taken aback by those arguments, especially in light of the controversy over the stacking proposals in the amendment.
“Given permit stacking and de-stacking, how could this be construed as bogging this amendment down?” he asked.
“(The CFA option) is a good idea,” Dempsey continued. “There are some minor details that need to be ironed out, but I don’t think any of those points is a deal breaker.”
However, general category IFQ scalloper Bob Maxwell opposed the idea completely.
“I believe this opens Pandora’s box to participants who are not even in the fishery,” he said.
The council agreed to leave the CFA proposal in the document but with numerous caveats, including that:
CFAs would apply only to limited-access general category permits and quota;
CFAs could hold no more than 5% of the IFQ allocation; and
CFA-held quota could only be harvested by limited-access general category fishermen.
General category
Amendment 15 also contains a number of potential adjustments to the limited-access general category fishery itself.
Among the proposals under consideration are:
Allowing IFQ permit holders to carry over up to 15% of unused IFQ allocation to the following fishing year;
Modifying the per trip possession limit from its current 400 pounds to “up to 1,000 pounds;”
Eliminating the possession limit completely and allowing IFQ fishermen to fish their quotas at their own discretion;
Modifying the current 2% per vessel quota maximum to 2.5% of the total general category allocation; and
Allowing limited-access general category IFQ permit holders to permanently transfer their quota allocation to another IFQ permit holder or, possibly, a permit bank or CFA.
Other measures
Amendment 15 contains other proposals intended to make the overall scallop plan more effective, such as:
Measures to adjust the current overfishing definition to be more compatible with area rotation;
Measures to improve the research set-aside program; and
An option to change the start of the fishing year from March 1 to May 1 to “improve integration of the best available science into the management process.”
According to the council, a change in the fishing year would make it easier to use new survey data in the specification-setting process.
Janice M. Plante
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