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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 4
December 2009
Groundfish FW 44 sets ACLs, common pool limits
NEWPORT, RI – The New England Fishery Management Council has decided to sharply reduce Gulf of Maine cod and pollock trip limits for fishermen who elect to remain in the common pool come 2010.
For Gulf of Maine cod, the new limit will be 800 pounds per day-at-sea with a 4,000-pound-per-trip cap, a big reduction from Amendment 16’s proposed 2,000-pound-per-day limit and 12,000-pound-per-trip cap. For pollock, the new limit will be 1,000 pounds per day, up to 10,000 pounds per trip. Amendment 16 did not have a pollock trip limit for common pool fishermen.
The new trip limits are part of Framework Adjustment (FW) 44, which the council approved during its Nov. 17-19 meeting here.
Framework 44 is a supporting document to Amendment 16 created as a vehicle for implementing annual catch limits (ACLs) for all groundfish stocks for the 2010-2012 fishing years. The ACLs determine how much fish is available for both sectors and the common pool.
The council decided in September to include additional restrictions for common pool fishermen in Framework 44 after learning that their ACLs will be extremely small – much smaller than almost everyone expected (see CFN October 2009 for details).
The preliminary numbers are grim. The amount of Gulf of Maine haddock available for all common pool fishermen is projected to be 39 metric tons (mt) in 2010. For Gulf of Maine cod, it’s 337 mt, and for pollock, it’s 118 mt.
According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the reason the numbers are so small is that more than 90% of all catch history will be going into sectors. That’s because the people who caught the most fish and were most active in the fishery largely opted to join sectors.
Based on preliminary information and initial sector rosters, the council estimated that 757 permits remained in the common pool, although at press time, it was clear that some of those permit holders had changed their minds and decided to join sectors by the new Nov. 20 deadline.
The initially analyzed 757 permit holders collectively held 3,600 days-at-sea and had vessels that averaged 39.7' in length.
Of the 757, the council further determined that:
477 permits had no days-at-sea and the remainder averaged 12.8 days;
Of the 280 permits that had days, 105 never landed a Gulf of Maine cod;
79 didn’t fish in 2007; and
98 didn’t land groundfish, monkfish, or skates in 2007.
On the surface, it appeared that the number of active participants in the common pool would be small, but it still was expected to be the lifeline for potentially dozens of people with a stake in the fishery who hoped to scrape by.
2-for-1 counting
Acting on the council’s September decision, the groundfish committee met on Nov. 5 to review options developed by the plan development team to further slow down catch rates in the common pool.
The committee voted to recommend not only the lower trip limits for Gulf of Maine cod and pollock, but also 2-for-1 counting of days-at-sea in a large area of the Gulf of Maine. The 2-for-1 counting was proposed to be layered on top of the 24-hour clock, which will be imposed on common pool fishermen through Amendment 16.
News of these harsh restrictions spread quickly and stunned the industry.
The full council reviewed the proposals on Nov. 18, and Maine council member Jim Odlin expressed growing reservations.
“I’m worried that we’re going too far here and we’re going way astray of our initial thinking in Amendment 16 for the common pool,” he said.
Massachusetts fisherman Ed Barrett worried that the cumulative common pool measures would push many to the breaking point.
“What we have here is excessive, and to me, it’s especially excessive around the 2-for-1 counting,” he said.
Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition went farther.
“We think the 2-for-1 counting is more than excessive. It feels punitive at this point,” he said. “The common pool has taken quite a beating in this whole thing.”
Giacalone said the coalition hoped the council would not adopt the committee’s proposed 2-for-1 counting rate in Framework 44. He also encouraged the council to eliminate the authority it previously gave the NMFS regional administrator to make “in-season adjustments” to common pool measures once the fishing year gets underway.
Despite this request, the council did not remove the regional administrator’s authority to make in-season adjustments before casting its final vote on Framework 44.
However, Maine council member Terry Stockwell, who said he had spent considerable time since the groundfish committee meeting thinking about the magnitude of the common pool measures, moved to delete the 2-for-1 counting proposal from the framework.
The council supported this motion in an 8-7 vote. But New Hampshire council member David Goethel said he thought it was a big mistake.
Given the extremely small ACLs available for the common pool, Goethel said the council essentially just shifted the burden onto the NMFS regional administrator, who now will need to quickly impose in-season adjustments to prevent the ACLs from being exceeded.
As for dropping 2-for-1 counting, Goethel said, “A lot of people will take this decision and say, ‘Hey, there’s light at the end of the tunnel in the common pool.’ And there’s not.”
Janice M. Plante
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