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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 6
February 2007
Area 1A herring TAC may be further slashed
GLOUCESTER, MA – The inshore Gulf of Maine herring fishery is about to undergo profound change on several fronts.
For one, it’s now certain that midwater trawlers will be prohibited from fishing in Area 1A from June through September. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced that decision on Dec. 6 although, at press time, it had yet to release the final rule for this and other Amendment 1 actions, including the controversial limited-entry program for the fishery.
Furthermore, the Area 1A total allowable catch (TAC) for herring will be significantly reduced over the next three fishing years – possibly beyond what industry had expected.
On Jan. 10, NMFS published proposed specifications for the 2007-2009 fishing years that included a reduction in the Area 1A TAC from 60,000 metric tons (mt) to 50,000 mt in 2007 as requested by the New England Fishery Management Council and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).
But while the 50,000 mt TAC was anticipated, NMFS is proposing to go one step further in 2008 and 2009 by reducing the Area 1A TAC an additional 5,000 mt down to 45,000 mt. In exchange, the fisheries service is proposing to increase the Area 3 TAC by a corresponding 5,000 mt.
“This caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Peter Moore of the New Bedford, MA-based American Pelagic Association.
“Overly precautionary”
The council and ASMFC had recommended a 50,000 mt TAC for Area 1A for all three fishing years with an annual review of the specifications.
“That was termed ‘precautionary,’” said Moore. “What I see is that NMFS is being overly precautionary. We really don’t know what this fishery will look like with the purse-seine-only season. There’s been such an upheaval in the herring industry with this amendment. Why wouldn’t NMFS wait a year to see how things settle out?”
Jeff Kaelin, representing Ocean Spray Partnership and the vessels Providian, AJ, and Atlantic Frost, added, “We were really disappointed. We think all the signs show that there is a healthy resource out there.”
Kaelin predicted the quota cut would cause significant economic harm in the industry and drive up the price of herring.
“It’s going to be more expensive to catch herring because we’ll be steaming to Georges – and the fish may not be there,” he said.
The council can still review the specifications annually and submit new spec packages for NMFS’s consideration. However, if the council takes no action, the current specifications – once finalized – will remain in place for three years.
NMFS reasoning
In the Federal Register notice announcing the proposed specifications, NMFS called the council’s rationale for a 50,000 mt Area 1A TAC “sound” but only “marginally” likely to produce a fishing mortality rate consistent with the stock being at maximum sustainable yield. This conclusion was based on last fall’s “risk assessment,” which was conducted by the herring plan development team (PDT).
“NMFS believes the PDT risk assessment demonstrates that an even deeper cut in the Area 1A TAC is warranted,” wrote the agency, adding that it was “especially concerned” about the stock’s “retrospective pattern.” This means the scientific models used to gauge the status of the stock tend to overestimate stock size and underestimate fishing mortality in the most recent years of the assessment.
“As more data are collected and analyzed, the health of the stock today will be found to be not as robust as the current data imply,” the agency said. “Therefore, NMFS proposes to be more precautionary in setting the TAC for Area 1A in 2008 and 2009 to protect the inshore stock component.”
What science says
Herring industry members didn’t see it that way.
Moore said, “In general, I like to believe the science no matter which way it cuts. But I looked at the science that was presented and there were two data points that led people to say the sky is falling.”
Kaelin concurred.
“We don’t think the science supports where the fisheries service is on this. How can you overfish the resource if you’ve had a hard TAC in place for several years? This is very draconian,” he said.
The May 2006 stock assessment for herring conducted by the US/Canada Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee (TRAC) found the resource as a whole to be in good shape. The TRAC determined that the 2005 biomass of age 2+ herring was roughly 1 million mt strong, and the 1994, 1998, and 2002 years classes were “very large.”
However, when NMFS later went back and took a closer look at its own survey data, scientists discovered a declining trend in the inshore survey strata running from Massachusetts to Downeast Maine during the 2004 and 2005 fall bottom trawl surveys and the 2005 and 2006 spring surveys. Those surveys aren’t designed to sample herring but do provide scientists with general trend information.
It was these lower-than-normal survey points that generated particular concern within NMFS and the New England council about Area 1A.
Given the limited data, however, both Kaelin and Moore said they hoped this year’s surveys would produce higher survey points, which would give the New England council justification to revisit the specifications for 2008 and 2009.
Bait supply
What all this means for lobstermen next summer remains to be seen.
According to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA), the MLA board of directors discussed the situation at a Jan. 9 meeting.
“We’re looking at three major changes in the herring fishery, and it’s causing our industry a lot of concern about the bait supply,” she said.
The first change is the summertime ban on midwater trawlers in Area 1A, which the MLA supported.
“We stand by that decision,” said McCarron. “We feel that’s still in the best interest of the resource.”
The second change relates to the TAC reduction in Area 1A, which was a harder call for the board.
“Our directors didn’t believe it was their place to say how the herring resource should be regulated. If the survey is solid and the trend is really going downward, then that’s a tough pill for us to swallow, but our board members felt they didn’t want to beat down that resource for a short-term gain.”
The third change relates to the new “zero tolerance” spawning restrictions. Until last summer, the Maine Department of Marine Resources had allowed vessels to operate under a 20% spawning tolerance. Boats continued to fish during closures as long as less than 20% of the herring onboard were in gonadal stages V and VI. Now, however, vessels cannot possess any stage V and VI herring at all during closures.
Spread out TAC
The three regulatory changes combined will greatly affect the availability of herring this summer and, in all likelihood, make whatever is available much more expensive.
In an effort to minimize the hurt as much as possible, the MLA board agreed to write a letter to ASMFC asking the commission to investigate ways to “smooth-out the removal of herring from Area 1A so there’ll be some TAC available in the fall,” said McCarron.
CHOIR is the acronym used by the Coalition for the Atlantic Herring Fishery’s Orderly, Informed, and Responsible Long-Term Development.
According to CHOIR spokesman Peter Baker, who is also the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association (CCCHFA) campaign director, finding ways to spread out the available TAC is a good idea.
“If the canneries and lobstermen can come up with an appropriate plan, we’d support it,” he said. “We’ve got a really valuable lobster fishery that needs bait. It supports jobs up and down the coast. We want there to be enough herring caught in October to support the lobster industry.”
Baker said CHOIR had supported the 50,000 mt when the New England council reached that compromise, but he wasn’t completely comfortable with the current state of the science.
“At some point the scientists have to stand up and say, ‘This is how much you can take out of this area,’ and then let the council make the rest of the decisions. Right now it’s all political,” he said. “We keep hearing that there’s no inshore survey. Well, let’s just do an inshore survey. Let’s invest in the science.”
Seasonal gear ban
CHOIR’s big push throughout the development of Amendment 1 was to gain support for the June-September midwater trawl ban in the inshore Gulf of Maine.
“We’re really glad to see they approved it,” he said. “I think NMFS saw the will of the public on this one.”
CHOIR, bluefin tuna organizations, and whale watch groups among others argued that midwater trawling activity broke up schools of herring, which prevented tuna from feeding on inshore grounds. They also argued that herring in general were an important forage fish for numerous species.
“I think this will make a significant difference,” Baker said of the midwater trawl ban. “I certainly think it’ll be a real boon to the tuna guys who want to fish up on Jeffreys.”
Enough capacity?
According to NMFS, 143 vessels landed herring during the 2005 fishing year, 33 of which averaged more than 2,000 pounds per trip.
The “active purse seine fleet” caught 27% of the Area 1A TAC in 2005, while single midwater trawlers and pair trawlers caught 18% and 55% respectively.
Whether the existing purse seine fleet can catch significantly more of the Area 1A TAC is an open question, and it’s still unclear how many midwater trawlers will rig over to purse seine gear in order to fish the inshore area this summer.
The loss of significant fishing capacity – coupled with the TAC reduction – might turn out to be a real problem for the bait market, said Peter Moore.
“The fishing is easy in 1A,” he said. “People know how to fish that area to supply the market. It’s not that easy to just switch to Georges. Sometimes it’s good on Georges and sometimes it’s not. It’s more expensive to get there and there are different ocean conditions out there.”
Baker, however, didn’t think the fleet would have any problem catching the full 50,000 mt or 45,000 mt in Area 1A.
“I’m more worried about how they pace it out,” he said. “I think the only way they wouldn’t catch the TAC is if there’s a resource failure.”
Janice M. Plante
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