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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 5
January 2007
Scallopers likely to regain 300-pound monktail limit
GLOUCESTER, MA – Still somewhat irked that a bureaucratic glitch could have caused them so much grief, limited-access scallopers were nonetheless relieved to know that Framework Adjustment 4 to the monkfish plan will modify their monkfish incidental catch limit on scallop access-area trips in a positive way.
The problem came about on June 15, 2006 when the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) implemented Framework Adjustment 18 to the scallop plan. This framework allocated limited-access scallopers a specific number of trips – not days – to work in selected rotational access areas.
By changing over to a trip system, scallopers were no longer allowed 300 pounds of monktails per day. Instead, they ended up in the same possession limit category used for all vessels “fishing with dredge gear and not under a scallop day-at-sea,” which only allows 50 pounds of monktails per day up to 150 pounds per trip.
NMFS sent out a permit holder letter on Aug. 1 to be sure scallopers were aware of the change. The letter took industry members by surprise, and the change, they said, forced unnecessary discards.
The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) immediately went into action, urging NMFS to rescind the decision. However, NMFS determined that it didn’t have discretion in the matter and suggested that industry present the problem to the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, which were working on monkfish Framework 4.
At the New England council’s Nov. 14-16 meeting in Gloucester, the council voted to include a provision in the framework to allow limited-access vessels working under the Scallop Access-Area Program to once again possess 300 pounds of monktails per day while fishing in one of the access areas. The incidental catch limit will not include or apply to steaming time. The Mid-Atlantic council was expected to approve the measure as well on Dec. 13 as CFN was going to press.
FSF attorney David Frulla thanked the New England council for its work on the matter.
“There was no conscious decision by the council to make the monkfish possession limit in the scallop fishery more restrictive,” he said. “This is just bringing it back toward the middle.”
NMFS is expected to implement Framework 4 by May 1, 2007, the start of the next monkfish and groundfish fishing years.
General category
In another scallop-related matter, the New England council considered a proposal to change the monkfish incidental catch allowance for general category scallopers fishing within authorized groundfish exemption areas.
The current limit is zero. Industry sought to modify the limit to 50 pounds of tails per day up to 150 pounds per trip – the same limit that applies to other dredge vessels not on a scallop day-at-sea.
The council’s scallop committee supported the request, and Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine urged the full council to support it as well.
“When the council undertakes a regulatory action, it has the obligation to mitigate regulatory discards,” she said. “That’s what this action would do. It would allow a vessel that occasionally catches one or two monkfish in this fishery to land them. Right now they’re being discarded.”
No one on the New England council opposed the idea. However, the council couldn’t find a procedural way to make the change happen. The issue was not on the council’s priority list. The proposal wasn’t included in Framework 4. And no other monkfish actions were on the docket for the near future.
The council finally considered a motion to ask the NMFS Northeast regional administrator to make the change independently, but the motion failed by one vote.
As a result, the monkfish possession limit for general category vessels fishing in groundfish exemption areas will remain, at least for now, at zero.
Janice M. Plante
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