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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 6
February 2007
Fishermen warn: Track your days-at-sea usage!
SEABROOK, NH – On Jan. 15 and 16, fishermen reported they had received what appeared to be bogus trip-land confirmation e-mails from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northeast Region’s Office of Law Enforcement.
Fishermen told of receiving more than 20 different e-mails that detailed inaccurate trip information from October 2006 and included negative numbers of days-at-sea charged against the vessel’s allowable fishing days. (For NMFS’s explanation of these events, see previous page.)
And this was just one example of numerous problems fishermen have encountered with vessel monitoring system (VMS) days-at-sea tracking in the last few months, according to David Goethel, a Hampton, NH fisherman and member of the New England Fishery Management Council who spoke from personal experience.
“Last October, I was on a plane circling Charlotte, NC when my VMS went off and notified NMFS I had left to go fishing,” he said. “I was told they lost my signal and I was overcharged by about four hours.”
Then in mid-December Goethel began the process of trying to find out how many days-at-sea he had left to fish and was stunned by the response.
“I called the regional office to get an ‘unofficial’ days-at-sea count and was told that days-at-sea would have to be calculated by hand because the system used to calculate days-at-sea was not functioning,” he said.
Transfer, leasing
In the meantime, Goethel had bought another fisherman’s permit and submitted an owner transfer to NMFS on Dec. 19. That transfer was completed on Jan. 8, but not without additional confusion.
“When I received the transferred permit, I contacted NMFS again to find out how many days my new permit had (that I could) lease to my vessel. I was told again that the system was down and asked if I could submit a request in writing,” he said. “They could not give me that information that day. I was also told I could submit an application to lease days but that it could not be acted on until the system was up and running again.”
When Goethel contacted NMFS again four days later, he was told the system still was not operating and that no days-at-sea information was available to fishermen or employees of NMFS.
“On Jan. 12 at 5:36 pm, I received an e-mail from NMFS stating that they would be able to provide ‘courtesy’ days-at-sea balance information to the industry on Jan. 16,” he said.
Track your days
All of this has prompted Goethel to issue an urgent warning to all fishermen – track your days-at-sea usage.
“NMFS has told me they can take up to 30 days to provide this information. They are also telling fishermen that it’s their responsibility to keep track of their own days-at-sea,” he said. “If a fisherman exceeds his days-at-sea allocation because his calculations differ, then the fisherman is held responsible.”
NMFS has said it plans to audit days-at-sea by comparing them to dealer reports, Goethel added.
If fishermen think they have used more or less time than the unofficial tally then they should discuss it with NMFS and make sure no days are inaccurately recorded, he said.
Carl Bouchard, another Hampton-based fisherman who also had some difficulty and uses a different VMS system than Goethel, agreed with Goethel’s advice.
“I am not up against the wall on my days-at-sea like some guys,” Bouchard said. “I had a problem with inaccurate calculations when running the clock, and fishermen who do that should check their days-at-sea calculations.”
Even with all the upset, both Goethel and Bouchard said they wanted NMFS to know that the people who deal with fishermen on the phone in the law enforcement office had been “terrific.”
“They are very helpful and maintain their cool,” said Bouchard.
Rosanne Mizzoni
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