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 33 Number 6
February 2006
Vessels find new SNE yellowtail year class, but funding cuts jeopardize survey’s future
POINT JUDITH, RI – In what might possibly be the most exciting news to hit Southern New England (SNE) groundfish fishermen in close to two decades, boats involved in this fall’s industry-based survey hauled up an incredible number of 8"-10" juvenile yellowtail flounder.
The strength of this 2004 year class has given fishermen and industry leaders a kind of hope for their future not felt since the late 1980s when the last real boom of yellowtail swept through the area.
“It’s the most positive trend we’ve seen in yellowtail in years,” said Fred Mattera, who owns the 84' Travis and Natalie as well as the safety training company NESTCo. in Narragansett.
Mattera and several other local fishermen were instrumental in helping the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Wildlife (RIDFW) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) design, launch, and maintain the survey, which was responsible for documenting this potential resurgence.
April Valliere, a principal marine biologist for RIDFW who serves as the survey’s project leader, believes the recent findings are extremely significant.
“We typically catch the least amount of fish in the fall, but this fall, the numbers were astounding,” she said.
During both the fall of 2003 and 2004, the survey boats caught roughly 6,000 yellowtails. In the fall of 2005, they caught 28,907.
“We’ve got probably the best recruitment we’ve had since 1987,” said Valliere.
The fall 2005 survey took about 25 survey days between Sept. 19 and Nov. 4 to complete. During that time, the Point Judith-based fishing vessels Mary Elena and Heather Lynn made roughly 300 tows. The two boats have been teamed for the survey since its inception in the spring of 2003.
Coming up in nets
According to Chris Brown, president of the Rhode Island Commercial Fishermen’s Association, the stunning fall survey results were not an anomaly.
“There are so many juvenile fish out there,” he said. “We’re catching them in 6-1/2" square mesh. There are clearly two distinct groups we’re seeing: 8"-10" fish and 4"-6" fish.”
Steve Cadrin of the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center said the 4" fish reported by fishermen are probably less than a year old.
If so, that means they’d be from the 2005 year class, potentially marking another positive development in the status of the beleaguered Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail stock.
The emergence of a good year class is more important than ever.
The New England Fishery Management Council is in the process of finalizing Framework Adjustment 42 to the groundfish plan, and fishermen in the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail stock area fear that new restrictions in the framework could cripple them.
In all likelihood, they’ll have their days-at-sea counted at the rate of 1-1/2 days for each day fished beginning May 1, the start of the 2006 fishing year. That’s even before the framework is implemented, and they know there’s more to come.
Stock status
According to the 2005 Groundfish Assessment Review Meeting (GARM), which updated the status of all groundfish stocks using data through 2004, the Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail stock is in tough shape.
The GARM described the stock as “severely overfished” and said that, at 695 metric tons (mt), the spawning biomass was only at 10 percent of its target, and fishing mortality was more than twice the rebuilding target.
Tom Nies, the New England council’s groundfish coordinator and chairman of the groundfish plan development team, said the Framework 42 measures are being designed to reduce fishing mortality on the stock by 55 percent.
“This won’t be easy,” he said. “Commercial landings declined to less than 200 mt in 2004 and 45 percent of the catch was discarded.”
Since commercial landings are already low, the discard issue, which impacts numerous fisheries, could very well be the harder part for the council to address.
Survey invaluable
Although the GARM’s final status report for the stock was bleak, NMFS’s Steve Cadrin said the assessment benefited enormously from the length/age information collected during the 2003 and 2004 industry-based surveys, which the GARM used in the assessment.
“The biological samples came almost entirely from the industry-based survey,” he said. “In my opinion, that information really carried the Southern New England yellowtail assessment last summer and greatly improved it.”
When asked about the new information from the fall 2005 industry-based survey, Cadrin said, “The emergence of a year class is very good news and hopefully it will help rebuild the stock. We really need some strong recruitment to rebuild this stock. There are no older fish in any of our samples.”
Protect these fish
The poor condition of the yellowtail resource is making Southern New England fishermen more committed than ever to protecting the new 2004 year class to ensure that these fish survive, grow, spawn, and contribute to the stock rebuilding effort.
“We’ve started to see a trend, and now we need to act responsibly,” said Mattera. “It’s imperative that we let this year class grow and create an alternative for us.”
Rhode Island in particular is heavily dependent on squid these days, but in the past, the yellowtail fishery provided ports with more diversity and prosperity.
“In the 1980s, yellowtail was huge here – off Block Island, off Shinnecock. It was a very prolific fishery,” said Mattera.
Mattera hopes a rebuilt yellowtail fishery might bring back some shoreside facilities and provide a safer, closer-to-home fishing alternative for smaller vessels.
According to Chris Brown, local fishermen are already talking among themselves about how to protect the 2004 year class, possibly through a mesh size increase. And the survey has given them the ammunition they need to spread the word and generate industry support for reasonable measures that make sense.
“We’re very proud that a good number of us have come forward and said, ‘We want to be part of the recovery,’” said Brown.
“It’s our future. The greatest defense against knee-jerk regulations is to have an abundance of fish,” he said. “When you have the opportunity to protect a year class that will pave the way for many years to come, you’ve got to take advantage of it.”
Survey funding
However, what these fishermen say they need most – continued monitoring of the yellowtail stock by industry boats they know and trust – may not happen so easily in the future.
The last contract for the Southern New England industry-based yellowtail survey expired on Jan. 6 and, a few weeks prior to that date, RIDFW was notified by NMFS that no further funding was available at this time.
NMFS, through its Cooperative Research Partners Program, provided the necessary hard cash for the survey in 2003, 2004, and 2005.
For its part, the industry contributed vessels and, as Mattera put it, “beat up everyone” for contributions of gear, supplies, and services for the survey at the lowest possible cost.
At press time, NMFS was still trying to resolve many of its budget issues, but word was out that the NMFS budget had taken a big hit in the most recent funding cycle and that many valuable projects were being seriously cut back or eliminated.
As one NMFS insider put it, “I wouldn’t read this (nonrenewal of the yellowtail survey) as any indication that NMFS doesn’t support the survey. A lot of core programs are being cut back and no one’s going to be happy at the end of this.”
The fact that numerous other programs were being cut was of little comfort to Southern New England fishermen who feel they have so much at stake in the survey.
After learning that the contract hadn’t been renewed, Brown said, “We were wild. This survey goes beyond being valuable. It provides a real-time picture of the development of the biomass and an accurate, timely opportunity for us to protect our future. Now it’s been cut off at the knees.”
According to Brown, industry members have far greater faith in the industry-based survey than in NMFS’s surveys, which is why people are so angry about the funding situation.
NMFS vessels use a more generic net that’s designed to sample all groundfish species – not just flatfish – and the government boats make fewer tows per area because they’re surveying a much larger geographic range.
That’s why NMFS initially supported the industry-based survey. The Mary Elena and Heather Lynn tow flatfish nets specifically designed to catch yellowtail and, collectively, they make 300 tows, which generates enough information to give everyone a far better sense of what’s going on with Southern New England yellowtail.
Mattera believes the industry-based surveys are invaluable.
“We need to link arms and work together,” he said. “In the long term, we’ll be better off. They’re the scientists and we’re the fishermen. With collaborative research, with our boats out there, we’ll buy into the data. I believe it really gives us a position at the table. This is what we’re going to lose by not continuing funding for this survey.”
The precariousness of annual funding through cooperative research is exactly why Rhode Island fisherman Phil Ruhle, who’s also a member of the New England council, has been trying to persuade congressional representatives to designate a separate budgetary line item for industry-based surveys rather than lump them in with cooperative research.
“Now we have the signs of a very promising year class and no way to monitor it,” he said. “If you have a line item, then you can’t walk away from these surveys. I’m highly in favor of any industry-based survey that’s designed by industry with the science center to look at a specific problem.”
The funding predicament has put RIDFW in another tough spot. In January, the division had to let go its seasoned data/aging technician, who had been specifically trained for the yellowtail project and had processed previous survey samples.
And chances are that the spring 2006 survey won’t get off the ground unless something changes fast with funding.
“We said, ‘If it’s just a matter of money, how can we help keep it going?’” said Brown. “I’ve volunteered my boat. Let’s do anything we have to, but let’s get real information on the table.”
According to Valliere, everyone was trying to take stock of the situation.
“We’re going to have to sit down with industry to see where we go from here,” she said.
Janice M. Plante
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
