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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 5
January 2006
NE council sets 2006 priorities
Scallops, whiting, herring ‘in’; red crab, monkfish, hagfish ‘maybes’
HYANNIS, MA – Industry members will have to wait at least another year before the New England Fishery Management Council tackles any new groundfish issues once Framework Adjustment 42 is done.
That’s because groundfish didn’t make it onto the council’s 2006 priorities list, which dictates workload and staff assignments in the year ahead.
At its Nov. 15-17 meeting in Hyannis, the council decided that a new amendment to the scallop plan and a whiting amendment both needed to be top priorities during the year ahead.
The scallop amendment will be devoted exclusively to general category issues, and the whiting amendment will focus on a long awaited limited-access program for whiting, red hake, and offshore hake – all small-mesh species.
The sole groundfish activity that made it on to the list was continued support for the council’s participation on the joint US/Canada Transboundary Management Guidance Committee (TMGC). The TMGC annually recommends country-specific quota shares for Georges Bank cod, haddock, and yellowtail flounder.
Based on a recommendation from its executive committee, the council selected 10 items for its 2006 priorities and further voted that, “if there is time available to address them,” it will consider actions related to red crab, monkfish, and hagfish.
Top 10
In addition to scallops, whiting, and the TMGC, the council’s 2006 priorities include:
Bycatch – The council has to develop an “omnibus” amendment, meaning one that can be applied to multiple fishery management plans (FMPs) at the same time, to lay out a standardized bycatch reporting methodology, as mandated by two recent lawsuit decisions. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is doing much of the work on this.
Herring – The council intends to finish work on Amendment 1 and develop herring specifications for 2007-2009.
Habitat – Also as the result of a court decision, the council will continue work on an omnibus amendment to address habitat issues.
Capacity – The capacity committee will continue to develop capacity reduction alternatives for the scallop and groundfish fisheries for council consideration, though no action is planned for groundfish in 2006.
Magnuson-Stevens – The council will continue to develop recommendations related to the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.
Research steering – The research steering committee will continue its work with cooperative research related issues. And
Trawl survey – The council will continue to play an active role on the joint New England/Mid-Atlantic trawl survey committee to provide input to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center regarding trawl survey cruises and gear design. The Mid-Atlantic council has the lead support responsibilities for this committee.
Whiting
Members of the core whiting fleet have been pleading with the New England council for several years now to develop a limited-access program for the fishery but, according to Montauk, NY fisherman Dan Farnham, whiting seems to “keep getting bumped off the list for more pressing actions in other fisheries.”
At the request of the council, NMFS initially published a Sept. 9, 1996 control date “to promote awareness of potential eligibility criteria for future access to the small-mesh fishery” for whiting (silver hake), offshore hake, and red hake.
In 2003, the council asked NMFS to publish a new control date because of concern that the original date had become “an unreliable indicator of current participation” in the fishery. NMFS concurred and published March 25, 2003 as the new control date.
But the council hasn’t acted on the more recent date either, raising worries among industry.
“We’re on our second control date,” said Farnham. “If we don’t keep whiting (on the priority list), this date will get stale too.”
Farnham said the lack of a limited-access program “is likely to jeopardize the rebuilding schedule” for whiting, especially since the fishery isn’t subject to any overall cap on landings.
Well aware of these issues, the council didn’t hesitate to make whiting a top priority this time around.
Red crab
Ready to make the transition to self-governance, red crab fishermen have been working for over a year to establish what will be called the Atlantic Deep Sea Red Crab Harvesting Cooperative.
But putting the co-op into place will take an amendment to the red crab FMP, so this group of fishermen fought for a spot on the council’s 2006 agenda as well.
“The frustration we have is we can’t compete with scallops or herring or groundfish,” said Jon Williams, head of the New England Red Crab Harvesters Association, which represents the four active boats in the fleet.
Williams worried that if red crab wasn’t added to the priority list, “We’ll be completely off the radar screen for a year.”
Since red crab didn’t make it onto the council’s initial top 10 list in 2005 either, Williams said, “I’m hoping to convince the council to take a little different approach – maybe put red crab on the list contingent upon staff time and resources.”
Fishery consultant Dick Allen of Rhode Island, who has been working with the fleet, emphasized that setting up the cooperative will take “a minimal amount of council staff and resources” since red crab fishermen themselves have contracted other parties to do the legal and development work.
Council Executive Director Paul Howard said the council might have one open slot on its schedule. Finalizing Amendment 1 to the herring FMP and developing three-year specifications won’t take a whole year, he said, which could free up a small block of staff time to work on red crab or another species.
Hagfish, monkfish
While most council members agreed that following through on a red crab amendment wouldn’t take an inordinate amount of time, some expressed concern about putting off hagfish for another year.
Massachusetts council member Tom Hill said, “It is one of the primary components of the ecosystem that keeps the bottom clean. We need to be sensitive to that.”
NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul agreed and said the limited data on hagfish shouldn’t prevent the council from taking action.
“It’ll be very, very difficult but it doesn’t mean we can’t do it,” Kurkul said about the development of a new FMP for hagfish.
The regional administrator expressed further concerns over monkfish, a species she also characterized as “very important.”
Annual adjustments to the monkfish total allowable catch and various trip limits have fluctuated vastly in recent years with alternating highs and lows that have frustrated industry and raised issues about meeting rebuilding targets.
Although Kurkul has urged the council to address these issues, some members suggested the council should wait until 2007 when a new monkfish stock assessment is released.
Rec, safety issues
The other topic vying for council attention was a management program for the Gulf of Maine party/charter boat fleet.
However, that topic fell under groundfish, and Kurkul didn’t support it.
“This council has spent a disproportionate amount of time on multispecies at the expensive of other species,” she argued.
The decision not to deal with groundfish at all came as a bitter blow to Ed Barrett of the Massachusetts Bay Groundfisherman’s Association.
Barrett had pushed hard for the council to modify the seasonal rolling closures in the Gulf of Maine to address safety issues, but that proposal and several other initiatives were knocked out of Framework 42 in an effort to get the document completed and implemented as close to the May 1 start of the new fishing year as possible.
The deleted items were put on a list for renewed consideration in the next available groundfish action, which now may not be considered until 2007, something Barrett called a big mistake.
“Framework 42 will bring us significant safety issues and wreak a lot of havoc,” he said.
After hearing everyone’s concerns, the council voted to stick with the top 10 priorities as defined by the executive committee, and then, time depending, work on red crab, monkfish, and hagfish in that order.
Janice M. Plante
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