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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 4
December 2005
Council greatly alters herring permit qualification criteria
HYANNIS, MA - The New England Fishery Management Council adopted the following qualification criteria for its new limited-access program in the Atlantic herring fishery.
The council must still cast one final vote on the package at its Jan. 31-Feb. 2 meeting in Portland, ME, and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must review and approve the program before it can take effect.
According to NMFS, Amendment 1 in all likelihood won’t be implemented until early 2007.
Here is a summary of the council’s actions.
All three proposed limited-access permit categories now have the same qualification dates of 1993-2003.
When compared to the dates initially used in Alternative 7, this means five years were cut off the starting point and almost four-and-a-half years were added to the end point.
Here are the permit categories:
Area 1 – To qualify for a limited-access permit to fish in Area 1 in the future, vessels will need to possess a “current” permit and show documentation that they landed at least 500 metric tons (mt) of herring in any one year between Jan. 1, 1993 and Dec. 31, 2003. The original qualifying dates under Alternative 7 had been Jan. 1, 1988 through Sept. 16, 1999. Sept. 16, 1999 was the control date established for the herring fishery.
Areas 2 and 3 – To qualify for a limited-access permit to fish in either Area 2 or Area 3, vessels will need to possess a “current” permit and show documentation that they landed at least 250 mt of herring in any one year between Jan. 1, 1993 and Dec. 31, 2003. The original qualifying dates under Alternative 7 had been Jan. 1, 1988 through Dec. 31, 2003. And
Limited-access incidental catch permit – To qualify for this lesser limited-access permit, vessels will need to show documentation that they landed at least 15 mt of herring between Jan. 1, 1993 through Dec. 31, 2003. The cut-off date in Alternative 7 had been Dec. 31, 2002. Vessels that meet the qualification criteria will be allowed to possess 25 mt of herring, a change from the Alternative 7 proposal of 15 mt.
A “current” permit is being defined as any federal herring permit – either Category 1 or 2 – held as of Nov. 10, 2005.
Pair trawl vessels will be allowed to divide their catch history if desired so that both boats qualify for limited-access permits.
Carrier vessels and at-sea processors that “do not harvest fish” will not be required to obtain a limited-access permit to possess fish.
All boats still will be allowed to possess up to 3 mt of herring simply by obtaining an open-access incidental catch permit.
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