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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 5
January 2010
Scallop FW 21 to reduce turtle interactions
NEWPORT, RI – Scallopers working in the Mid-Atlantic next year will have to abide by additional restrictions to further minimize the impact of incidental takes on sea turtles.
During its Nov. 17-19 meeting here, the New England Fishery Management Council agreed to include two turtle-related provisions in Framework Adjustment (FW) 21:
A closure of the Delmarva access area during September and October, considered to be a peak turtle period; and
A limit on the number of trips vessels can take in Mid-Atlantic access-areas from June 15 through Aug. 31.
Full-time limited-access vessels will be allocated a total of three Mid-Atlantic access-area trips in 2010 – two in the Elephant Trunk Area and one in Delmarva.
However, the new turtle protection measures, if approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), will force vessels to take one of those trips outside of the June 15-Aug. 31 window so no more than two trips occur during prime turtle time. Full-time scallopers also will be allocated one trip in the Nantucket Lightship area.
The council took this action to comply with a recent “biological opinion” (BiOp) issued to address sea turtles and the scallop fishery. The BiOp first came out in March of 2008 (see CFN February 2009 for details).
The BiOp’s required “reasonable and prudent measures” (RPMs) were viewed as excessive by both industry and the council, so the council asked NMFS to revise the RPMs, as well as the BiOp’s terms and conditions. NMFS did so and issued a revised document in February 2009 (see CFN March 2009 for more info).
The revised opinion states that, “no later than the 2010 scallop fishing year,” NMFS must limit “the amount of allocated limited-access scallop fishing effort that can be used” in the Mid-Atlantic “during the periods in which turtle takes have occurred.”
The opinion also states that any restrictions cannot “result in more than a minor impact on the fishery.”
Two-month closure
To address these requirements, the council first considered a recommendation from its scallop committee, which was for a September/October Delmarva closure.
The committee said the closure would potentially cover the two primary turtle interaction months and did not cause “more than a minor impact on the fishery.”
Because industry members understood that restrictions were probably inevitable because the BiOp was developed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), they supported the proposal.
Drew Minkiewicz of the Fisheries Survival Fund called the two-month Delmarva closure “significant” given that it was layered on top of an existing year-round closure of Hudson Canyon and a September/October closure of the Elephant Trunk Area.
Plus, he said, the council had just voted to reduce 2010 open-area days-at-sea to 29 and whittled access-area trips down to four.
“Scallop vessels are going to be tied to the dock over 300 days of the year not having any impact on turtles,” Minkiewicz said. “We just give and give and give and they ask for more. How do you come out ahead in this?”
Fisheries Survival Fund representative Ron Smolowitz expressed even more frustration. He highlighted the extensive work industry put into developing, field testing, and using both turtle chains and a new dredge designed explicitly to minimize impacts on turtles.
“What bothers me is that we’ve solved the problem in this fishery and we’re not getting credit for it,” he said.
“The solution has to be gear. The takes are going to increase as fisheries rebuild. It’s the only way out of this as the population of loggerheads expands,” Smolowitz said.
NMFS concerns
NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul expressed reservations about the committee’s two-month closure recommendation, fearing it did not go far enough to meet the requirements of the law.
“The ESA requirement is for us to implement measures that ‘minimize’ interactions with turtles without causing a ‘major’ change to the fishery,” she said.
“Although there’s no quantitative way to define ‘minimize’ and ‘minor,’ we didn’t think the committee’s motion meets that standard,” Kurkul said.
The regional administrator pointed to other alternatives available for consideration by the council that she thought were more effective in minimizing turtle impacts while not resulting in a “major” fishery change.
Quandary
Massachusetts council member Rip Cunningham said he was torn about which option to support.
“I think the industry makes a pretty good point about the reductions they’ve already taken,” he said.
On the other hand, Cunningham worried that if the council didn’t take enough action, then NMFS would reject the council’s position and implement measures that the agency independently determined met the ESA requirements.
The council then considered a rather complicated option that not only imposed a September/October Delmarva closure but also reduced the trip limit on Elephant Trunk trips for vessels that elected to use their allocated trips between June 15 and Aug. 31. The lost poundage could be made up on a subsequent Elephant Trunk trip outside of that window if a vessel had not used both trips during the turtle window.
But there were significant timing issues associated with this alternative because Framework 21 will be implemented late, possibly well after the March 1 start of the fishing year.
So, the council substituted it with the September/October Delmarva closure option that also restricted vessels to only two access-area trips in the Mid-Atlantic during June 15-Aug. 31. This motion passed unanimously.
Scallop committee Chairman Sally McGee of Connecticut said, “This is an improvement in terms of meeting the BiOp, and the impacts on the fishery are not as severe as other alternatives the committee considered.”
Other action
In addition to 2010 fishery specifications and turtle measures, Framework 21 includes measures related to the limited-entry general category individual fishing quota (IFQ) program adopted under Amendment 11.
Framework 21 assumes the IFQ program will be fully implemented by March 1, the start of the 2010 fishing year. However, as a fallback, the framework contains provisions to extend the existing “transition period” IFQ measures until final allocations are issued.
Furthermore, Framework 21 would allow general category vessels to lease a portion of their annual IFQ allocations during the fishing year. Amendment 11 prohibited this action and only allowed the leasing of full allocations.
And, if approved, Framework 21 would limit the amount of compensation that general category vessels could receive from the observer set-aside program on access-area trips. The limit would be equivalent to “the value of one day of compensation” regardless of trip length.
For more information on Framework 21, visit the New England council’s web site at <www.nefmc.org/scallops> or call plan coordinator Deirdre Boelke at (978) 465-0492 ext. 22.
Janice M. Plante
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