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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 5
January 2010
NE council seeks ‘status quo’ for red crabs
NEWPORT, RI – Acknowledging that market complications severely curtailed landings in 2007, the New England Fishery Management Council has recommended to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) that it reject a 2007-based target total allowable catch (TAC) alternative for the Atlantic deep-sea red crab fishery.
Instead, the council wants NMFS to maintain “status quo” 2009 red crab specifications for 2010. Status quo would give red crabbers the same target TAC of 3.56 million pounds currently allowed under a NMFS emergency action.
This recommendation runs contrary to the advice of the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), which recommended a 2010 acceptable biological catch (ABC) of 1,284 metric tons (mt) or 2.83 million pounds. The ABC was equivalent to 2007 landings, which were the lowest level on record during the 2002-2007 time-series.
Fishermen have decried the SSC’s recommendation since it was first put on the table in mid-September, arguing that 2007 was an anomaly beyond their control.
The restaurant chain Red Lobster, which at the time was the sole customer for deep-sea red crabs, stopped purchasing product. With more than 680 locations in the US and Canada, the company had large inventories on hand when consumer demand plummeted in response to the economic downturn. And because there were no other buyers in the pipeline, red crabbers had little choice but to stop landing.
Since then, the market situation has improved, and crabbers are hopeful the year ahead will be a good one now that the fishery has earned Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification (see CFN October 2009 for details).
Drew Minkiewicz of Kelley Drye & Warren in Washington, DC, which represents the five-boat red crab fleet, told the New England council, “Since the fishery is MSC certified, there’s going to be the ability to sell this catch.”
Spec options
During its Nov. 17-19 meeting here, the council was faced with three alternatives for 2010 red crab specifications:
The preferred alternative, which was based on the SSC’s recommended ABC (the target TAC) of 1,284 mt or 2.83 million pounds, resulting in 464 total days-at-sea for the fleet;
Status quo, which was equivalent to the current emergency action’s target TAC of 1,615 mt or 3.56 million pounds, resulting in 582 fleet-wide days-at-sea; and
No action, which produced a target TAC of 2,689 mt or 5.93 million pounds, resulting in 780 fleet-wide days-at-sea. This was the standard specification package prior to the 2009 emergency action but was a seeming nonstarter in light of the SSC recommendation.
Industry’s stand
The council struggled with the alternatives, torn between doing right by red crab fishermen and abiding by new legal requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) to adhere to SSC advice when setting ABCs.
Minkiewicz pointed out that, in cases where overfishing is not occurring, the MSA requirements to establish annual catch limits and accountability measures do not apply until 2011, and the red crab specification package under debate was for 2010 only.
“The facts are, you have a fishery that is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. You can go above the SSC recommendation,” Minkiewicz said.
Jon Williams, head of the New England Red Crab Harvesters’ Association, said, “It would be very unfortunate” to have landings capped at the 2007 level because the industry’s problems that year were “directly a result of market limitation” and not related to biological issues.
Williams further explained that red crabbers had been extremely “proactive” over the past 10 years, conducting extensive collaborative research.
Among numerous other things, he said, “We work with scientists. We’ve been offering up our vessels for free. We’re sponsoring a graduate student. We’re tagging crabs.”
Unfortunately, he said, “If we are going to be held to our lowest year, we’re not going to be able to participate in the science the way we have in the past.”
Last stock assessment
The root of this TAC problem lies in the stock assessment. The deep-sea red crab resource is considered to be a “data poor” stock. Among other issues, stock assessment surveys do not routinely sample at depths where red crabs live, thereby eliminating the primary source of “fishery independent data” used for stock assessments.
The latest stock assessment for red crab was completed in December 2008 by what was called the Northeast Data Poor Stocks Working Group, which specializes in assessments for stocks lacking detailed information.
The working group and the review panel that oversaw its findings both agreed that the red crab fishery management plan’s (FMP) maximum sustainable yield (MSY) estimate of 6.24 million pounds was too high given the “substantial uncertainty” about the resource.
They agreed that an MSY in the range of 1,700 mt to 1,900 mt, equivalent to 3.75 million to 4.19 million pounds, more appropriately reflected the “best available science.”
Following up on the new assessment, NMFS implemented an emergency rule on April 6, 2009.
Under the FMP, the target TAC for the fishery is set at 95% of MSY, allowing a 5% “buffer.” To be “precautionary,” NMFS took the lowest of the working group’s new MSY estimate range. Ninety-five percent of that number turned out to be 3.56 million pounds, and so that became the new target TAC under the emergency action.
On Aug. 24, NMFS extended the emergency action to run through the rest of the 2009 fishing year, which ends Feb. 28.
SSC’s take
When the SSC met on Sept. 16, it reviewed the stock assessment and other available information. In a follow-up memo to the council, the SSC said it would “prefer to base the ABC recommendation” for 2010 on the longer 2002-2007 landings time-series, but added that “this magnitude of catch” would be at the upper end of the working group’s overfishing limit recommendation.
The SSC said there “should be a substantial buffer” of 24% to 32% between the overfishing limit and ABC, which is “consistent with general guidance on buffers for data-moderate to data-poor stocks.”
Therefore, the SSC recommended setting an “interim” ABC for 2010 at 1,284 mt based on the very low 2007 landings.
Council’s response
A week later during its own September meeting, the council voted to send the red crab ABC back to the SSC for further analysis after new peer review information became available and the SSC had a quorum for its deliberations. (See CFN October 2009 for more info.)
In November, Massachusetts council member David Pierce said he had hoped the SSC would have discussed the matter given the council’s September vote.
“It’s unfortunate we don’t have a response from the SSC,” he said. “It is a data poor stock assessment, and the problem was lack of market. Representatives of the red crab industry made that very clear to us.”
Pierce made the motion to recommend 2010 status quo specifications to NMFS instead of the 2007 SSC-based option.
Council Chairman John Pappalardo briefly questioned whether the motion was out of order.
“The SSC gave us a number and this alternative does not line up with that number,” he said.
Maine council member Mary Beth Tooley noted that the SSC had revised its recommendation on herring when the council asked it to reconsider its original ABC position (see CFN December 2009 for herring story).
With herring, she said, several SSC members determined that basing an ABC on a single year’s landings history was “not appropriate.”
“They were very clear on that,” she said.
New Hampshire council member Doug Grout also wondered about the possibility of a different outcome.
“When we went back to the SSC about herring, it turned out there was not a consensus on ‘the most recent years.’ It makes me wonder if we directed a similar question to the SSC about red crab, we’d find out there was not a consensus,” he said.
Votes
Council member Sally McGee of Connecticut opposed status quo and moved to replace that option with the SSC alternative.
“It seems like we’re not coming to grips with the fact that Magnuson changed and we have to follow the advice of the SSC,” she said. “We are moving from a risk-prone to an explicitly risk-averse system, so things are changing.”
The motion to go with the SSC recommendation failed 4-to-12. The motion to go with status quo then passed 11-to-4 with one abstention.
Massachusetts council member Jim Fair was comfortable with the status quo position.
“There are sufficient market-based and biological controls that overfishing could not occur (under the 3.56-million-pound target TAC),” he said.
NMFS must now consider the recommendation and publish a proposed rule in the near future.
The council also voted to “direct the red crab plan development team and the SSC to review the SSC recommended interim ABC for red crab to determine if it should be revised.”
Janice M. Plante
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