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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 6
February 2008
NMFS warns council to stay on groundfish schedule
GLOUCESTER, MA – In the bluntest terms possible, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has told the New England Fishery Management Council that it must stay on track with Amendment 16 to the groundfish plan or face the possibility of secretarial action.
In a Dec. 7 letter to council Chairman John Pappalardo, NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said if NMFS determines – as early as this spring – that the council won’t have a fully developed amendment ready for review and implementation by May 1, 2009, the fisheries service will be forced to pull its own internal resources away from helping the council with Amendment 16 to begin work on a secretarial action with interim measures.
“I encourage the council to consider this possibility and ensure that Amendment 16 is completed such that a secretarial action is not necessary,” said Kurkul. “To facilitate the timely implementation of Amendment 16, I recommend that the council develop simple management measures that are applied across the entire fishery as much as practicable.”
NMFS is particularly concerned that the creation of 17 brand new sectors may seriously bog down the council’s effort to meet its Amendment 16 timeline. The amendment is required to ensure that groundfish stocks reach rebuilding targets mandated by federal law.
Resources tight
The possibility of secretarial action – and the directness of the NMFS letter – stunned many council members and industry people. But for others, the fisheries service’s strong position wasn’t a complete surprise.
During the council’s November meeting in Newport, RI, Kurkul and NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center Director Nancy Thompson protested vigorously when the council voted to reverse a previous decision and once again allow new sectors to be established through Amendment 16 (see CFN December 2007 for details).
Kurkul and Thompson both argued that neither the NMFS regional office nor the Woods Hole, MA-based science center had enough resources to fully analyze and implement so many new sectors, along with modifications to New England’s two existing sectors – the Georges Bank Cod Hook Sector and the Georges Bank Cod Fixed Gear Sector.
In the letter to Pappalardo, Kurkul said that with up to 19 sectors total, NMFS would “essentially be responsible for implementing and administrating a dual-management system for groundfish – one for sectors and one for the common-pool vessels.”
361 TACs?
Furthermore, Kurkul emphasized that NMFS would need to monitor a staggering number of total allowable catch (TAC) limits under the sector system.
If each of the 19 sectors were allocated a TAC for each of the 19 groundfish stocks, NMFS would need to track 361 different TACs for sectors alone.
Ideas for how to accomplish this “difficult task” are “continuing to evolve,” said Kurkul.
“Although sectors are intended to be self-monitoring, in order for them to work successfully it is imperative that the agency can effectively verify catch by stock area, and equally critical that measures are enforceable,” said the regional administrator.
Kurkul asked the council to consider delaying implementation of new sectors until 2010.
In the event the council continues striving for sector implementation in 2009, NMFS established deadlines for when sector managers need to provide specific information to the regional office in Gloucester.
Furthermore, NMFS developed a 23-bullet list of recommendations for simplifying and streamlining sector measures that it hopes the council will consider as it continues to work on sectors.
The list included suggestions such as:
Specify a minimum number of participants for a sector to be approved;
Eliminate the 20% stock allocation cap that currently applies to groundfish sectors;
Establish “universal sector exemptions, where possible, and analyze them in the Amendment 16 environmental impact statement rather than on a sector-by-sector basis;”
Require individual sectors to submit final operations plans to NMFS by Sept. 1 “of the year prior to the start of the fishing year” rather than by Dec. 1 as previously recommended by the groundfish committee;
Delay sector trading until fishing year 2010; and
Consider that sector managers and sector vessels “are equally held accountable for accuracy in reporting and penalized for either malfeasance or misfeasance.”
What next?
The council’s groundfish committee met Dec. 12-13 and began discussing some of the issues in the NMFS letter. It met again on Jan. 17 and delved deeper into specific recommendations.
As Commercial Fisheries News (CFN) was going to press, the full council was meeting in Danvers, MA on Jan. 24 to deliberate and make key decisions about several fundamental sector measures.
Most importantly, the council was expected to approve Amendment 16 alternatives for calculating sector shares by establishing permit history baselines options.
A full report will appear in the next issue of CFN.
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