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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 6
February 2009
ASMFC weighs changes to herring 1A fishery
DANVERS, MA – The Atlantic herring fishery in Area 1A will be closed from Jan. 1 through May 31 as a result of action taken by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Herring Section, which met on Dec. 15.
Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – the three states with direct access to Area 1A, which covers the inshore Gulf of Maine –implemented the closure by requiring that directed herring boats take seven days per week out of the fishery.
The section also voted to send Addendum I to the interstate herring plan out to public hearing.
Affected states were wrapping up their hearings as Commercial Fisheries News was going to press in late January.
Herring section Chairman Terry Stockwell of Maine said, “Part of the reason we’re having these hearings is for the lobster community. We want their help in figuring out how to spread out the quota and distribute it more evenly to be sure we have a steady flow of bait throughout the season.”
The public hearing document contains numerous options to:
l Distribute the Area 1A quota through bimonthly, trimester, or seasonal quotas with payback options for quota overages and carry-over options for underages;
l Change the way “days out” of the fishery are determined plus possibly prohibit fishing on designated “no landing” days; and
l Modify state reporting requirements.
Maine held hearings on Jan. 12, Jan. 13, and Jan. 21 respectively in Rockland, Portland, and Ellsworth, while New Hampshire held one on Jan. 21 in Portsmouth and Massachusetts held one on Jan. 13 in Gloucester. The comment period closed Jan. 23.
The herring section is scheduled to review public comment and vote on final alternatives at its Feb. 3 meeting in Alexandria, VA.
How we got here
The section first voted back in October to initiate the addendum. At that time, it agreed to consider options to restrict the harvest of juvenile fish as part of the addendum package (see CFN November 2008 for details).
However, at the Dec. 15 meeting, the section decided – for the time being, at least – to drop further consideration of juvenile fish restrictions after hearing suggestions from both its technical committee and advisory panel that further analysis was needed.
Stockwell said the section briefly would talk about the issue again at the February meeting.
“There is support from some members of the section for continued discussion about juvenile fish,” he said.
Massachusetts members David Pierce and Vito Calomo have been strong proponents of protecting juvenile fish.
TAC cuts
According to the draft addendum, the problem in Area 1A stems in part from the greatly reduced total allowable catch (TAC). The TAC in 2006 was 60,000 mt and has since been reduced by 25%.
In 2008, the Area 1 TAC was 45,000 metric tons (mt) and further cut back to 43,650 mt by research set-aside (RSA) deductions. The effective quota for the core fleet of directed herring boats was even lower due to a 500 mt reserve for the fixed gear fishery – weirs and stop seines – and other factors.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) closed the 2008 Area 1A directed fishery on Nov. 14 after projecting that 95% of the available TAC had been harvested.
The agency then closed the Area 1B fishery on Dec. 24 after projecting that 95% of that area’s effective 9,700 mt TAC had been harvested.
The reduced Area 1A quota “greatly increased the competition for these fish among existing herring fishermen,” noted the addendum public hearing document.
Quota levels for 2009 will remain the same as 2008. However, NMFS announced back on Dec. 9 that it was “restoring” 900 mt of RSA to the Area 2 TAC and 1,800 mt of RSA to the Area 3 TAC because no one had used the set-asides. The restoration was for both 2008 and 2009, although the 2008 fishing year is now over. The TACs in both Areas 2 and 3 were far from being fully harvested.
With the RSA restoration, the 2009 TAC for Area 2 will be 30,000 mt and the TAC for Area 3 will be 60,000 mt.
The full RSAs for Areas 1A and 1B – 1,350 mt and 300 mt respectively for both 2008 and 2009 – were awarded to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute for a project called “The Effects of Fishing on Herring Aggregations.”
New England council
While ASMFC was focusing on the Area 1A fishery, the New England Fishery Management Council was continuing to work steadily on Amendment 4, its massive catch monitoring amendment for the herring fishery as a whole.
According to Lori Steele, the council’s herring plan coordinator, the New England and Mid-Atlantic councils worked together to set up two consecutive days of late-January meetings at the Sheraton Hotel in Warwick, RI: Jan. 27 for the Mid-Atlantic council’s mackerel committee and Jan. 28 for the New England council’s herring committee.
Also, the New England council was scheduled to receive an extensive progress report on Amendment 4 and related herring activities during its Feb. 9-11 meeting in Portsmouth, NH.
On the TAC-setting front, the council will shift its focus to developing 2010 herring specifications later this summer – after it approves public hearing alternatives for Amendment 4. It will begin work on setting 2011, 2012, and 2013 specifications in 2010, Steele said.
Janice M. Plante
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