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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 6
February 2008
NMFS sets deadlines for filing groundfish sector information
GLOUCESTER, MA – Seventeen different industry groups have indicated their desire to form brand new groundfish sectors under Amendment 16, which must be implemented by May 1, 2009.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has expressed significant concern about its ability to bring these new sectors on line by that time, and it has asked the New England Fishery Management Council to consider delaying sector implementation until 2010.
However, if the council sticks to its intended 2009 implementation schedule, NMFS said it needs to impose strict deadlines under which sector managers must submit specific information to the fisheries service.
For sectors willing to accept allocations based on “aggregate catch history data,” which would not require confidentiality releases from vessel owners, NMFS said it must receive a final membership roster of participating vessels by May 1, 2008.
For sectors wanting to receive allocations based on “individual catch histories” of each member, NMFS established the following schedule:
March 1, 2008 – Final roster of participating vessels must be submitted;
May 1, 2008 – NMFS sends “moratorium rights tracking sheet” to sector managers in order to obtain authorization to release confidential landings data from all current and past vessel owners;”
June 1, 2008 – Sector manager provides confidentiality releases to NMFS Northeast regional office (see caveat below); and
Aug. 1, 2008 – NMFS provides allocations to sector managers.
Huge caveats
Most important of all, NMFS emphasized that June 1, 2008 would be the “last chance” for a vessel owner to withdraw from a sector roster.
“The only possibility my staff has of calculating sector allocations for May 1, 2009 will be if the membership of all the sectors is frozen as of June 1, 2008,” said NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul in a Dec. 7 letter to New England Fishery Management Council Chairman John Pappalardo.
“This means that there would be no vessels added to a sector after this deadline and, perhaps more importantly, any vessel withdrawals would mean that the sector allocation could not be provided when necessary for the sector’s operations plan,” NMFS said.
For sectors requesting individual member catch histories, these histories would be calculated once all the confidentiality releases were provided under the June 1 deadline.
“Catch histories for vessels lacking releases would be aggregated and included in the sector allocation provided the aggregated total was derived from three or more vessels,” explained NMFS.
One more warning
Despite the deadline schedule and NMFS’s suggestions to the council for streamlining sectors, the fisheries service nonetheless remains concerned about having enough resources to accomplish such a massive administrative feat.
“Regardless of whether the council or industry meet specific deadlines, we cannot ensure that we have adequate resources in our other programs to implement sectors in fishing year 2009,” said Kurkul.
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