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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 4
December 2007
Council lifts Elephant Trunk Area turtle closure
WAKEFIELD, MA – Concerned it might do more harm than good, the New England Fishery Management Council on Oct. 25 decided against including any seasonal turtle closures in Framework Adjustment 19 to the scallop plan.
The Elephant Trunk Area this year was subject to a two-month closure from Sept. 1 through Oct. 31 to reduce potential interactions with sea turtles.
However, recognizing that turtle distribution varies from year to year and is unpredictable – and not necessarily concentrated inside the access areas – the council voted to lift the Elephant Trunk Area closure for the 2008 and 2009 fishing years. Furthermore, it did not adopt a proposed August-October turtle closure for the Delmarva access area.
The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) expressed support for the decision.
“The industry certainly wants to do anything that can be done to reduce the potential interactions with turtles,” said FSF’s gear expert Ron Smolowitz.
“But the turtles are in patches and sometimes they’re outside of the access area,” he said. “If you get the season wrong or the location wrong, you could create a bigger problem. It could increase the amount of bottom time to get scallops and increase potential interactions with turtles.”
Turtle chains
Scallopers working in the Mid-Atlantic are required to rig dredges with chain mats – commonly called turtle chains – from May 1 through Nov. 30.
The chains cover the mouth of the dredge and keep turtles from entering the bag. Although the chains have been mandatory since 2006, numerous scallopers voluntarily modified their gear even beforehand.
Gib Brogan of Oceana argued that turtle chains should not be the council’s sole tool for turtle protection. In January 2007, Oceana challenged the government’s implementation of turtle chains, though, as of mid-November, the lawsuit was on hold pending the results of a new biological opinion on turtles.
Saying the loggerhead turtle population was in “sharp decline,” Brogan urged the council to support seasonal turtle closures for both the Elephant Trunk Area and Delmarva.
“There is very little cost to industry,” said Brogan. “This is a proactive tool and the closures benefit the scallops too.”
Scallop industry advisers initially supported the seasonal closures, but more to protect scallops, which tend to have smaller meats during the summer months due to spawning activities and are subject to increased discard mortality due to warmer air and water temperatures.
But scallop committee Chairman David Simpson of Connecticut said committee members did not want to impose a scallop conservation measure under the guise of turtle protection.
“There was a lot of concern that we not do something for sea scallops and call it a turtle action,” he said.
Northeast Fisheries Science Center Science and Research Director Nancy Thompson said the National Marine Fisheries Service currently was revisiting its status reports on turtle populations, and the situation with loggerheads was complicated.
“Clearly, we’re seeing that the number of loggerheads in the nesting areas are declining,” she said. “At the same time, we are seeing juvenile and subadult indices increasing in other areas.”
Following the discussion, the council decided against imposing seasonal closures given the uncertainty involved with turtle locations and closure benefits.
Smolowitz said the turtles were being protected nonetheless.
“We’ve taken strong action by putting chains on the dredges,” he said. “We’ve raised the awareness in the fleet.”
Janice M. Plante
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