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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 5
January 2010
Tough choices: Scarce yellowtail allocated
NEWPORT, RI – The New England Fishery Management Council has decided to allocate enough yellowtail flounder to scallopers in 2010 to cover what they likely will encounter as bycatch during normal fishing activities.
The decision, which the council made during its Nov. 17-19 meeting, was extremely difficult, and council members seemed painfully aware of the significance of their action.
At issue was the fact that the 2010 acceptable biological catch (ABC) for all three yellowtail stocks was fixed. And the available tonnage had to cover all fisheries, including both groundfish and scallops.
The subject was particularly raw for groundfish fishermen. The same day the meeting started, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced that, effective Nov. 20, it was prohibiting the use of all trawl gear – except for haddock separator trawls and Ruhle trawls – south of 41º40'N latitude in the Western US/Canada Management Area in order to prevent a 2009 overharvest of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder.
The new regulatory development pointedly illustrated the importance of yellowtail to the groundfish fleet. Sufficient quota is necessary simply to gain access to fishing grounds.
Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition said, “We’re practically shutting down the fishery south of 41º40' six months into the fishing year because of yellowtail.”
While the gear restriction technically is not a blanket closure of the area, it amounts to that for fishermen who have not purchased – or learned how to fish with – haddock separator trawls or Ruhle trawls. And for those who do continue to fish with one of these net designs, possession limits on many stocks were severely cut back.
The yellowtail situation was equally distressing to scallopers who had just swallowed a big cutback in their own 2010 allocations only an hour beforehand.
Further potential losses in fishing time – for a fleet that already had sacrificed in the name of yellowtail – were simply untenable, said scallopers.
The bottom line was that both groundfish and scallop fishermen needed adequate yellowtail allocations just to fish on other species, never mind target the yellowtail stock.
Scallopers’ view
The council first considered a recommendation from its groundfish committee that scallopers be allocated 90% of the yellowtail they were expected to catch in 2010, 2011, and 2012. The calculations were run by both the groundfish and scallop plan development teams (PDTs) and were for two stocks – Georges Bank yellowtail and Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail.
The committee further recommended that scallopers be required to land “all legal-sized yellowtail” in the future.
Ron Smolowitz of the Fisheries Survival Fund, which represents a majority of the regular limited-access scallop fleet, objected immediately.
“If the goal is to get the fleet to reduce its yellowtail bycatch, this is not the way to do it,” he said. “This is yellowtail the scallop fleet would be taking anyway.”
The PDTs also noted this point in a Nov. 13 memo to the council, which said, “The groundfish fishery has never been the sole user of yellowtail flounder. It does not seem appropriate to characterize the entire amount of yellowtail flounder allocated to the scallop fishery as a loss to the groundfish fishery since some has always been caught by the scallop fishery.”
Smolowitz emphasized the point that low yellowtail quotas are limiting scallopers’ fishing options. He said scallopers had asked the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to analyze whether the fleet could be issued an access-area trip in 2010 into Closed Area II. This would be advantageous because scallops are relatively abundant there and turtles, which the fleet is under extreme pressure to avoid, didn’t frequent the area.
But Smolowitz said the center did not even pursue the analysis because yellowtail bycatch was expected to be higher than desired.
Given the significant reductions in scallop fishing time for 2010, which resulted in only 29 open-area days and four access-area trips for full-time scallopers, and the inability of the fleet to fish in Closed Area II and even Closed Area I, where prime scallop beds are off-limits for habitat reasons, Smolowitz said, “We have already taken major cuts to protect yellowtail.”
“Working on it”
The council debated these arguments and questioned whether it was right to “just give the scallopers what they need” without providing incentive for the fleet to further reduce yellowtail bycatch.
Drew Minkiewicz of the Fisheries Survival Fund argued adamantly that the situation wasn’t “giving scallopers what they need” but, rather, allowing them to harvest their historical share.
Furthermore, he said, scallopers recognize the consequences of exceeding yellowtail caps in this new age of fishery management and have been working hard to minimize yellowtail bycatch through gear and fishery modifications. But the problem is challenging because yellowtail and scallops co-exist on many traditional fishing grounds.
“No one wants to have this bycatch,” Minkiewicz said. “We’re working on it.”
While the council clearly seemed sympathetic to these arguments, many said they were troubled by the fact that any yellowtail overages by scallopers would result in consequences for the groundfish fleet.
Groundfish fishermen will be bound by annual catch limits (ACLs) and accountability measures (AMs) under groundfish Amendment 16. Scallopers will not be subject to AMs for yellowtail in 2010, although that will change in 2011.
Next year, however, yellowtail allocations to scallopers will be considered a “subcomponent” of the groundfish yellowtail ACL. And, if the overall yellowtail ACL is exceeded – even if it’s pushed over the top by scallopers – the overage will trigger accountability measures for the groundfish industry under Amendment 16.
Outcome
After weighing all factors, the council voted for a two-pronged approach. It decided to allocate to the scallop fishery 100% of what scallopers were expected to catch in 2010 for both Georges Bank and Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail, but only 90% of what they were expected to catch in 2011 and 2012.
Council members said the 90% would provide more incentive for scallopers to keep reducing yellowtail bycatch. But they said 100% was justified for 2010, especially since the new scallop fishing year was only a few months away, beginning on March 1.
The council further agreed that bycatch of Cape Cod/Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder by scallopers was small enough to be lumped into the “other subcomponents” category for yellowtail ACLs and not be issued a separate allocation.
Furthermore, regular limited-access scallopers will be required to land all legal-size yellowtail. General category scallopers will not be allowed to land any yellowtail at all.
Overages, rebuilding
The council is still in the process of working on Amendment 15 to the scallop plan, although it already had made its decisions about what to include in the document.
Nonetheless, scallop committee Chairman Sally McGee of Connecticut urged the council to “support” including in Amendment 15 “measures to allow an adjustment in 2011” to the scallop fleet’s yellowtail allocation to account for any ACL overages in 2010.
The council discussed this potential and agreed to see if this was feasible. It also agreed that the adjustment would only occur if the “overall” ACL was exceeded in 2010 – not just the scallop fleet’s portion.
Maine council member Jim Odlin expressed considerable frustration over the yellowtail situation in general and linked the current problems and low ACLs back to the council’s rebuilding schedule.
Odlin moved that the council initiate some type of action to adjust the rebuilding strategy for Georges Bank yellowtail, which would give the council more flexibility and, potentially, higher ACLs to work with. The council supported this move as well.
The current rebuilding program, which was adopted in Framework 42 to the groundfish plan, calls for Georges Bank yellowtail to be fully rebuilt by 2014.
Trading yellowtail
Finally, in a discussion it had the previous day, the council agreed to create a new groundfish/scallop committee to work exclusively on developing a joint amendment that would allow groundfish sectors to somehow transfer yellowtail allocations to scallopers.
Allocations to sectors are known as ACE – annual catch entitlements. This new committee might need to develop provisions to allow scallopers to form sectors. That would make it possible for groundfish sectors to directly transfer yellowtail ACE to scallop sectors. Or, the committee could come up with other mechanisms to reach the same end.
The council voted to make the creation of this new committee a priority for 2010.
The regular scallop committee will continue to work on Framework Adjustment 22, which will include fishery specifications for 2011 and 2012.
In this case – unlike in Framework 21 – the framework will include additional yellowtail bycatch reduction measures, as well as accountability measures if scallopers exceed their yellowtail caps.
Janice M. Plante
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