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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 4
December 2007
Scallop FW 19 to cut ’08-’09 open-area days
WAKEFIELD, MA – Limited-access scallopers will be allocated five access-area trips but fewer open-area days during the 2008 and 2009 fishing years under Framework Adjustment 19 to the federal scallop plan.
The framework was finalized by the New England Fishery Management Council at a special Oct. 25 meeting here but still must be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) before being implemented.
The cut in open-area days was strongly opposed by the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), which called the reduction “unwarranted” and argued that the status quo allocation of 51 open-area days “would allow the scallop resource to continue to build.”
Full-time limited-access scallopers are scheduled to be allocated 35 open-area days in 2008 under Framework 19, which marks a 16-day or 31% percent reduction over 2007’s 51-day allocation.
In 2009, full-time scallopers would be allocated 42 open-area days, which is nine days or 18% less than 2007.
“What’s driving the cuts here is not scallop resource concerns. It’s the habitat closed areas,” said FSF attorney David Frulla.
“You can’t de-link those habitat decisions from scallop discussions. Twenty-one percent of the resource is locked up in habitat closed areas,” he said.
No scallop fishing is allowed in essential fish habitat (EFH) closures.
Habitat closures
The scallop EFH closures on Georges Bank cover enormous portions of Closed Area I, Closed Area II, and the Nantucket Lightship area, and this greatly limits the amount of bottom available under the scallop rotational access area program.
Given this reality, some industry members questioned the appropriateness of including the EFH-area biomass to determine the percentage of resource available to scallopers under open-area days or rotational access trips.
According to the scallop plan development team (PDT), only 9% of resource is located in open areas on Georges Bank and only 8% is located in open areas in the Mid-Atlantic.
That means a total of 17% of the entire estimated biomass is in open areas while 83% is inside EFH areas, multispecies closed areas, or scallop rotational access areas.
Survey area
Aside from the habitat issue, FSF’s gear expert Ron Smolowitz argued that the resource in open-areas was being underestimated.
“A vast part of the open-area fishery takes place in areas that are not being surveyed, so we don’t really know what’s in the open areas,” Smolowitz said, pointing to charts showing open-area fishing activity – more inshore than offshore – occurring outside of the survey range.
Having recently conducted gear research in the Mid-Atlantic, Smolowitz added, “There are four year classes of scallops in areas that are not being surveyed. They’re being protected by 4" rings, limited days, and everything else.”
Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting also argued against an open-area days-at-sea reduction and urged the council to consider the extremely large size of the scallop biomass.
Scientists who conducted the latest stock assessment for scallops calculated a new biomass target of 108,600 metric tons (mt) and a new threshold – the minimum stock size before the resource is considered to be overfished – of 54,300 mt.
They also estimated the biomass in 2006 to be at 166,000 mt, equivalent to 365.2 million pounds of meats, well above both reference points (see CFN November 2007 for assessment details).
“We have a biomass that’s much higher than the target, yet we strive to have more,” said Kendall. “I’m very bothered by the fact that we’re continuing to ask for a decrease in days-at-sea. This is restricting landings.”
In 2006, the total scallop catch was valued at roughly $361 million. According to Framework 19’s economic analysis, scallopers might be able to generate roughly the same revenue in 2008 and 2009 – despite the reduction in open-area days – if scallop prices increase to accommodate what could be an 18%-20% drop in landings.
Counterpoint
In a highly unusual divergence of opinion within the Fisheries Survival Fund, two prominent members of the group supported a decrease in open-area days.
Dan Cohen of Atlantic Capes Fisheries Inc. and Bill Wells of Seaford Scallop Company, who both planned to attend the Oct. 25 council meeting but ran into complications at the last minute, faxed comments to the hotel where the council was gathered.
“The scallop industry has proven in the last few years that the harvest of dense beds of large scallops with high catch-per-unit-effort maximizes scallop harvests while minimizing dredge bottom time, bottom impacts, and groundfish bycatch,” wrote Cohen and Wells.
Allowing more open-area days, where catch-per-unit effort currently is low, is “the wrong thing to do,” they said.
“The most important thing the New England council can do to maximize scallop harvests is to more selectively redraw … the habitat closures and to open more of the productive but non-essential habitat of Nantucket Lightship, Closed Area I, and Closed Area II to allow some of the areas currently ‘permanently’ closed to be available for rotational controlled harvests with their high catch-per-unit-effort,” wrote Cohen and Wells.
“Over-allocating days-at-sea in the open area will cause additional loss of catch-per-unit-effort and significant burning of more nonrenewable imported diesel fuel,” they concluded.
Council verdict
The council supported much of the same rationale for reducing fishing effort in open areas and voted 13-1 to set open-area days at 35 for 2008 and 42 for 2009.
The council, through the same motion, also established the following rotational area management schedule for the limited-access fleet:
Fishing year 2008 – One trip to Nantucket Lightship and four trips to the Elephant Trunk Area; and
Fishing year 2009 – One trip to Closed Area II, three trips to the Elephant Trunk Area, and one trip to the Delmarva area.
The motion also specified that any unused 2005 Hudson Canyon trips would expire on Feb. 29, 2008.
Janice M. Plante
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