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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 4
December 2007
Debate intense; herring stays as council ‘priority’
NEWPORT, RI – Following weeks of intensive lobbying by the Herring Alliance and CHOIR coalition, the New England Fishery Management Council voted on Nov. 7 to make herring a workload priority during 2008.
As a result, the council will initiate Amendment 2 to the federal herring plan to develop a better monitoring system for the fishery.
Despite the full-court press by proponents of the decision, which included press conferences, extensive media coverage, and a letter writing campaign that generated on the order of 8,000 to 10,000 similarly worded e-mails, the victory was by no means a landslide. A motion to replace herring with whiting as a priority failed by only one vote, with the tally coming in at 8-to-9.
Dozens of Herring Alliance and CHOIR members attended the meeting donning red baseball caps indicating their affiliation with the campaign.
CHOIR, which stands for the “Coalition for the Atlantic Herring Fishery’s Orderly, Informed, and Responsible Long-Term Development,” describes itself as “an industry coalition made up of commercial and recreational fishing organizations, fishing and shoreside businesses, and eco-tourism companies.”
The Herring Alliance, which is under the wing of the Pew Charitable Trusts, describes itself as “a coalition of environmental and other public organizations dedicated to protecting and restoring marine wildlife populations and Northeastern US marine ecosystems by reforming the Atlantic herring fishery.”
Several members of the directed herring fishery also were in the audience. Frustrated and angered by the allegations against their fishery by CHOIR and the Herring Alliance, impacted fishermen and processors formed their own group – the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition – to counter what they called “lies” and “numerous misrepresentation of facts.”
Adding further tension to the situation, two other organizations – the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association in Maine and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, both represented by Earthjustice attorney Roger Fleming – petitioned Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Oct 12 to “issue emergency regulations and initiate permanent rule-making” to “exclude midwater trawlers from New England groundfish closed areas not later than Jan. 1, 2008.”
The council was well aware of all this activity when it weighed the pros and cons of making herring a 2008 workload priority.
What about whiting?
Council Executive Director Paul Howard opened the discussion by explaining that the council’s executive committee had drafted a priorities list for the full council’s consideration. He went through each species and the recommended actions in detail.
Rhode Island council member Dave Preble, a member of the executive committee, then made a motion to have the council adopt the list as drafted.
The executive committee identified herring as a priority for 2008, but whiting did not make the cut. Instead, the executive committee recommended that work on whiting resume in 2009.
David Pierce of Massachusetts, chairman of the council’s pelagics committee, which deals with both herring and whiting, was quick to express concern.
“We’ve been working on whiting for a long time,” he said. “We had to slow down our progress because of a lack of data. But a lot of people put in quite a bit of time on this. I need to know: Are we going to put whiting in the dustbin?”
Data problems
The council had been working on a whiting amendment to develop a limited-entry program for the fishery, but it temporarily shelved the amendment this summer when it became clear that existing landings information was inadequate to fashion an effective program.
According to Howard, scientists at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center were planning to address these data problems, but finding the time to do so was difficult because scientists were deeply involved in the Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM) for groundfish Amendment 16.
Explaining why the executive committee chose not to include whiting on the 2008 priorities list, Howard said, “The same folks who are working on the GARM are working on whiting. Resources are limited, so there was concern that doing groundfish and whiting together would be a stretch.”
New Hampshire council member David Goethel said he saw problems with landings data across all fisheries and thought the council needed to go forward now to address the situation with whiting.
“Whiting is a good tune-up,” he said. “If we can’t figure it out for whiting, which is a relatively small fishery, what are we going to do in groundfish?”
Switch priorities
Having spent years working on whiting first as an industry adviser and then as a council member, Goethel said, “I’m not prepared to let it go.”
He moved that the council replace herring with whiting on the 2008 priorities list.
“We just did a major herring action,” said Goethel, referring to herring Amendment 1 and its limited-entry program and four-month ban on midwater trawling in Area 1A, which the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) implemented earlier this year. “We haven’t even allowed the dust to settle.”
Maine council member Jim Odlin agreed.
“These are sweeping changes, and the ink isn’t even dry on this amendment. Plus, the herring stock is one of the healthiest we have,” he said.
Odlin supported the continued development of a limited-entry program for whiting.
Referring to the thousands of e-mails from the Herring Alliance and CHOIR campaign, he said, “If that’s the way we’re going to manage fisheries now – by letter writing – then I think we have problems.”
What about monkfish?
Maine council member Jim Salisbury raised other issues.
“I understand people have concerns about herring and I think there are ways to address those concerns,” he said.
But Salisbury wanted to make sure the council reserved adequate resources to deal with groundfish sectors, and he urged the council to seriously reconsider its priorities regarding monkfish.
The executive committee proposed developing monkfish Framework Adjustment 6 in 2008 to develop alternatives to the “backstop” measures in Framework 4 that could shut down the fishery in 2009.
However, despite pleas from industry, the executive committee did not support developing a full amendment to potentially change days-at-sea allocations or trip limits until 2009 and 2010, even though a new stock assessment has concluded that the resource is rebuilt.
“We need to start working on this now,” said Salisbury of the monkfish amendment. “The monkfish fishery is holding this whole thing together. I think it’s critical that we deal with monkfish and the new assessment we have before us.”
River herring
Salisbury’s attempt to move monkfish up the priority list didn’t go any further because other council members steered the discussion back to herring.
Pierce said he thought many people were concerned about the alleged bycatch of river herring by midwater trawlers – a significant issue being addressed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).
“If we assume river herring is a problem, can this council do anything about it?” Pierce asked. “I think it’s going to be an ASMFC issue.”
Council member Sally McGee said the executive committee, of which she is a member, discussed the herring fishery in broader terms. She said the committee identified the need for better monitoring not just to address bycatch concerns, but to have better information about herring catches in general, which would be necessary if industry members wanted to form herring sectors in the future.
“Without a better monitoring system, we’re not going to realize that step,” she said.
McGee strongly opposed the motion to substitute whiting for herring on the priority list.
“Monitoring is the foundation for the herring fishery,” she said. “We need a better way to monitor if we are going to successfully manage under catch limits.”
Can it be done?
NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said, “People seem to think we have some other way to do monitoring for herring other than the way we’re doing it now.”
She added, “There is no way to increase observer coverage, for example, without thinking about things like industry-funded observers. We would need to change the plan to do that.”
McGee said the council could consider such an alternative in Amendment 2 and could investigate why fishermen in other parts of the country pay so much less for observers than in the Northeast.
Massachusetts council member Rodney Avila thought the bycatch issue was being blown out of proportion. He said previous data presented to the council indicated very low bycatch percentages.
“We do not have a resource problem, and whenever we’ve had the observers in front of us, they couldn’t identify a big bycatch problem,” said Avila. “I think we’re just responding to 8,100 e-mails saying there’s a boogeyman in the closet.”
Industry speaks
Jeff Kaelin, speaking on behalf of the fishing vessels Providian and AJ, emphasized the industry was still adjusting to enormous changes as a result of herring Amendment 1.
He also pointed out that herring fishermen would be spending considerable time with ASMFC dealing with herring spawning closures and other issues in the year ahead.
As for CHOIR and the Herring Alliance’s demand for additional monitoring, Kaelin said, “I’m really confused that anyone could look at this fishery management plan and say there’s no monitoring in this fishery.
“We’re required to call in before we unload. We have significant dockside monitoring. We take observers out whenever we’re asked, and the observer reports identify groundfish bycatch as extremely low. Plus, the industry has been on Capitol Hill asking for additional funding for the observer program,” he said.
Referring to the 8,000-plus e-mails, Kaelin added, “Frankly, the dog-and-pony show we see going on in this fishery today is a travesty.”
Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, who works with herring processor NORPEL, said herring had become a “major staple” in New Bedford and was helping to fuel the economy there.
However, Kendall also acknowledged that New Bedford was one of the region’s biggest groundfish ports.
“So we understand the need for a good forage base for other fisheries,” he said.
Armed with excerpts from a report titled “The 2006 Bycatch Survey in the Northeast Herring Fishery” produced by the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Kendall pointed to bycatch figures that were a fraction of a percent of total landings in the study.
“The size of the problem has been magnified way beyond the scope of the problem,” he said.”
Referring to the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by the Herring Alliance and CHOIR to “target the herring industry,” Kendall said, “If they had spent that money on a monitoring system, we’d be much further ahead.”
CHOIR speaks
Paul Parker, executive director of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, supported having herring as a council priority in 2008.
“Our organization was one of the founding members of the CHOIR coalition five or six years ago out of concern for what was happening in the herring fishery,” he said.
“We’ve watched how river herring runs have diminished over the years. We need monitoring. I think it’s been good to see people step forward from industry and ask for more uniform monitoring,” Parker said.
In conclusion, Parker referred to the directed herring fishery this way.
“I think in many instances this may be a clean fishery, but we need to move forward with a better platform of understanding,” he said.
CHOIR Chairman Steve Weiner said CHOIR was “a very broad based alliance made up of basically everyone who is using the Gulf of Maine.”
Of the directed herring fishery, he said, “We want to know what’s happening and we want to know what’s being landed.”
Regarding previous comments made about the letter writing campaign, Weiner said, “The day we ignore 8,000 e-mails will be a sad day because it’s a broad representation of what people are feeling along the coast.”
Weiner said CHOIR had numerous concerns about herring.
“We don’t believe it’s a healthy fishery and the only way we’re going to find out is to get better monitoring. What’s the fear of getting better monitoring?” he asked.
Herring/whiting vote
Following this extensive debate, the council, split down the middle, voted 8-to-9 on the motion to replace herring with whiting, so herring stayed on the 2008 priorities list.
Council Chairman John Pappalardo then quickly called for a vote on the main motion to adopt the list of priorities as drafted by the executive committee, which seemed to cut off further discussion about giving monkfish or any other species a higher priority.
The main motion passed 15-2 with Goethel and Salisbury voting no.
Janice M. Plante
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