COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 5
January 2007
NE council holds off on monkfish DAS leasing
GLOUCESTER, MA – Recognizing the serious economic impact of the measures being proposed under Framework Adjustment 4 to the monkfish plan, industry members asked the New England Fishery Management Council in mid-November to quickly begin work on another framework for the sole purpose of developing a monkfish days-at-sea (DAS) leasing program for implementation in the 2009 fishing year.
The council appeared sympathetic to the request and initially voted 10-6 to move forward, but in the end, the industry didn’t get its wish.
Council Executive Director Paul Howard and Chairman John Pappalardo reminded the council that only the day before, it had decided against developing the framework when it outlined 2007 workload priorities. Howard explained that the council would need to drop one of its other priorities in order to make time and resources available for monkfish if that’s how people wanted to proceed.
Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine, who also chairs the joint New England/Mid-Atlantic monkfish industry advisory panel, said a leasing program should have been included in Framework 4 to begin with.
“This framework includes no mechanism for mitigating economic impacts and I think that is very, very unfortunate,” she said.
Given the monkfish committee’s lack of time to develop a program, Raymond urged the council to initiate Framework 5.
Maine council representative Terry Stockwell was supportive of taking some sort of action as well.
“It’s critically important to those folks who are revenue dependent on monkfish,” he said.
Monkfish plan coordinator Phil Haring told the council that industry understood a leasing program couldn’t go into place until 2009 because the council needed one full year of data – essentially from fishing year 2007 – to develop the specifics of the program during 2008.
“I don’t think there’s any expectation that there’ll be any action on this in 2007,” he said.
Instead, a “yes” vote by the council would serve as a marker, indicating that a leasing program could be developed once monkfish became a council priority again, he said.
Several council members indicated they didn’t want to – and actually couldn’t – bind the council for 2008, and no one was ready to bump one of the 2007 priorities in exchange for monkfish.
The council then voted to reconsider its original 10-6 vote. After a couple of failed attempts to address the situation in various ways, it took another vote on the original motion to initiate Framework 5. That second vote resoundingly failed 1-15, meaning the council will take no action in 2007 regarding monkfish days-at-sea leasing.
Janice M. Plante
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
