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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 6
February 2010
Monkfish Amd. 5 to boost TALs, require VMS
NEWBURYPORT, MA – Monkfish fishermen may see their total allowable landings (TAL) increase significantly in fishing years 2011, 2012, and 2013 if proposed specifications in Amendment 5 to the federal monkfish plan are adopted by the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, which jointly manage the fishery.
The councils will be holding six public hearings on the amendment from Maine to Maryland between Feb. 8 and March 5.
Monkfish committee Chairman Terry Stockwell of Maine said, “We have multiple alternatives for some of the proposed actions, so we really want to hear from the public about all of this.”
Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine (AFM), chair of the monkfish advisory panel, also urged fishermen to attend the hearings – in part to gain a better understanding of what lies ahead.
The primary purpose of the amendment is to bring the monkfish fishery into compliance with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), which requires the councils to establish annual catch limits (ACLs) and accountability measures (AMs) beginning in 2011.
“The amendment contains a whole host of new and confusing terminology, acronyms, and legal requirements that everyone in the industry will have to come to grips with,” said Raymond.
“I’m hoping that the public hearings will provide an opportunity for the industry to learn more about the new Magnuson requirements and how they will affect monkfish catch levels over the next couple of years,” she said.
What’s in it?
In short, Amendment 5 proposes to:
Establish ACLs and AMs for monkfish;
Establish new biological and management reference points to meet revised National Standard 1 guidelines;
Set TALs, trip limits, and days-at-sea allocations for both the Northern Fishery Management Area and the Southern Fishery Management Area for the 2011-2013 fishing years;
Establish automatic days-at-sea adjustments for trip limit overages;
Modify how monkfish Category C and D permit holders use groundfish days both in the groundfish common pool and in sectors;
Allow fishermen who were awarded days-at-sea through the Monkfish Research Set-Aside (RSA) Program to carry over unused days into the next fishing year;
Allow the councils to modify the RSA program in the future through a framework adjustment instead of a full plan amendment;
Make it mandatory for all monkfish vessels to carry a vessel monitoring system (VMS);
Allow fishermen to “power down” VMSs under certain conditions; and
Make it legal to land monkfish heads.
VMS for all?
The mandatory VMS requirement is expected to generate some concern among fishermen in the southern area.
The monkfish plan currently doesn’t require VMS usage, but one option in Amendment 5 would make VMS compulsory fishery-wide.
That shouldn’t pose a problem for fishermen in the northern area, where most monkfish permit holders also possess groundfish and/or scallop permits, which long ago required VMS.
But in the south, many directed monkfish fishermen don’t possess groundfish, scallop, or any other type of permits requiring VMS. So, a new VMS requirement could be costly.
“VMS will be a big deal for some of the people in the Mid-Atlantic,” acknowledged Stockwell.
2010 status quo
For many industry members, another troubling aspect of Amendment 5 is its timing. Proposed higher catch limits won’t be implemented until 2011.
That means for the 2010 fishing year, which begins May 1, fishermen will continue working under the old Framework Adjustment 4 rules and continue to be bound by a 5,000-metric-ton (mt) target total allowable catch (TAC) in the north and a 5,100-mt target TAC in the south.
Maggie Raymond expressed disappointment over the situation, noting that monkfish is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.
“Amendment 5 does provide a long overdue opportunity for the industry to realize an increase in total allowable catch,” she said. “Unfortunately, that’s not until 2011, which is four years after the 2007 stock assessment declared the fishery rebuilt.”
ABCs, ACLs, and ACTs
Once 2011 rolls around, however, fishermen could be working under significantly higher landing caps.
For starters, Amendment 5 proposes to set interim acceptable biological catch (ABC) levels for monkfish at 17,485 mt for the north and 13,326 mt for the south.
The numbers were established by the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC), which deemed them “interim” pending a new monkfish stock assessment, due out this summer.
Amendment 5 also proposes to set ACLs – the annual catch limits – equal to the ABCs since the SSC already accounted for “scientific uncertainty” in its calculations.
The amendment further proposes to establish annual catch targets (ACTs) for monkfish in both the north and the south.
ACTs are not required by law, but they can be used as safety mechanisms to prevent ACLs from being exceeded, which the monkfish committee opted to do.
Nothing “bad” happens if an ACT is exceeded, which is very different from what happens when an ACL is exceeded.
Going over an ACL automatically triggers accountability measures – those AMs in the acronym world. And AMs always have consequences, such as quota reductions the following year, for example. That’s why some managers opt to use lower – and painless – ACTs to signal that ACLs are looming next down the road.
Huge buffers
The monkfish committee also took an interesting approach to satisfy the MSA requirement for AMs.
Amendment 5 proposes to use the ACTs as “proactive AMs.” By setting the ACTs at sharply lower levels than the ACLs, the councils expect to virtually guarantee that the ACLs won’t be exceeded, making the ACT simultaneously function as an AM.
Some fishermen have questioned this approach, arguing that such huge buffers between the ACL and the ACT are unnecessary given the healthy status of the stock.
In the north, for example, the 2011 ACL would be 17,485 mt while the ACT, which will lead to the actual catch limit, would be just 8,063 mt or 10,750 mt depending on the option selected.
Monkfish committee Chairman Terry Stockwell said this was a “deliberate decision” by the committee to give the fishery some stability over the next three years.
He also said many committee members were more comfortable with this approach given how much “uncertainty” there was in the 2007 “data poor” stock assessment.
Northern area
Confusing as it all is, here are the numbers.
For the northern area, Amendment 5, in addition to “no action,” proposes two options for ACTs:
Option 1 – 8,063 mt, a 50% increase over 2010 that would result in a 7,500-mt TAL after 563 mt of discards are subtracted; or
Option 2 – 10,750 mt, a 100% increase over 2010 that would result in a 10,000-mt TAL after 750 mt of discards are subtracted.
Amendment 5 also proposes various combinations of trips limits and days-at-sea allocations intended to keep fishermen below the ACT.
Only one trip limit is proposed for monkfish A and C permit holders in the north, and that’s 1,250 pounds of tails per day, equivalent to what’s currently in effect.
Trip limit alternatives for B and D permit holders vary from 470 pounds to 950 pounds per day, depending on which ACT option is picked, possibly representing a notable increase from the current 470-pound limit. Days-at-sea options range from 31 to 51 days.
Southern area
For the southern management area, Amendment 5 proposes two other ACT options:
Option 1 – 9,211 mt, a 40% increase over 2010 that would result in a 7,140-mt TAL after 2,071 mt of discards are subtracted; or
Option 2 – 13,107 mt, a 75% increase over 2010 that would result in an 8,925-mt TAL after 2,588 mt of discards are subtracted.
Monkfish discards are estimated to be significantly higher in the south than in the north, which is why there’s a bigger differential between the ACT and the TAL.
Next, the amendment proposes A and C permit trip limit options in the south of 550 pounds or 700 pounds and B and D trip limit options of 450 pounds or 600 pounds per day-at-sea in tail weight, with allocated monkfish days ranging from 15 to 28 depending on the option.
Current trip limits in the south are 550 for A and C permits and 450 pounds for B and D permits.
Amendment 5 contains many other proposals that fishermen might want to think about before the public hearings.
One example is “automatic days-at-sea adjustments for trip limit overages.” The amendment proposes three options for vessels that exceed daily possession limits but don’t want to ride out the extra time at sea.
Fishermen would need to report the overage via VMS or cell phone prior to crossing the VMS demarcation line but then could proceed to the dock. A certain amount of time automatically would be deducted from the vessel’s days-at-sea account. The options are: 30 hours, 48 hours, or 24 hours plus one minute.
The amendment also proposes to allow fishermen to land monkfish heads, which are sold as bait, as long as the total weight of the heads doesn’t exceed 2.32 times the total weight of tails on board. Currently, fishermen are allowed to land whole monkfish and/or monkfish tails, but there’s no provision on the books for allowing them to land “unattached heads.”
It’s all utterly mind-boggling, even for industry members who are beginning to pick up the new ACL/AM lingo. So that’s why fishermen are being encouraged to study the public hearing document in advance, ask questions, and contact state fisheries officials and industry leaders for help.
The public hearing document can be downloaded from the New England council web site at <www.nefmc.org/monk/index.html>. Or, call monkfish plan coordinator Phil Haring at (978) 465-0492, ext. 18 to request a copy.
Janice M. Plante
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