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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 7
March 2007
Industry groundfish proposals move forward
PORTSMOUTH, NH – Proponents of area management and the strategy known as the “point system” let out a collective sigh of relief after the New England Fishery Management Council voted on Feb. 8 to forward both industry initiatives to the groundfish plan development team (PDT) and groundfish committee for further analysis.
The council also voted to advance two days-at-sea management proposals – one that would revise the existing program and another containing a differential days-at-sea counting variation called the “performance plan” proposed by New Hampshire fisherman Erik Anderson.
And finally, the council voted to further analyze two items pertaining to the recreational fishery.
Regarding the area management package, New Hampshire council member John Nelson said, “I’m comfortable with moving ahead with the second review of this proposal. I think we ought to give it a fair shake and see if the proponents can address its problems.”
About the point system program, Maine council member Dana Rice said, “At this time it would be a shame for this to not go forward.
This is a real opportunity for looking at things in a different way.”
All together, this means area management, the point system program, and days-at-sea variations remain viable candidatesfor inclusion in Amendment 16 to the groundfish plan – at least for now.
Timing
None of this came easily. The council, which is under extraordinary pressure to meet stock rebuilding deadlines and congressional mandates, kept looking at proposals in terms of whether or not they could be developed, scrutinized, and implemented by May 1, 2009.
To meet this timeframe, the council intends to pick final alternatives this June and have those options fully developed and ready for public hearings in June 2008. The council is schedule to select the final Amendment 16 management program in September 2008.
Council Chairman John Pappalardo of Massachusetts said he was “very concerned about the timeline.” He called many of the new proposals “very forward-thinking” but recognized they would need considerable amounts of time-consuming analysis.
“We signaled that we were interested in moving away from days-at-sea, but we were also very open in saying we have a very limited amount of time,” Pappalardo said. “We need to understand the limitations of making a wholesale shift away from a days-at-sea system.”
Don’t cull too fast
Rice, however, worried about acting too quickly.
“We’re always under time constraints,” he said. “I would hate to have us cull something today that may have some potential to be good for New England. I’m afraid we’re going to make a huge mistake if we try to weed things out too much.”
Massachusetts council member Rodney Avila added that he, too, was “very uncomfortable” with the council’s haste to cull potential alternatives.
“A lot of us told people to think outside the box and now we’re trying to stick them back into the box,” he said.
As the discussion went on and proponents defended each of their proposals, more council members resisted whittling down the list too far.
Massachusetts council member Tom Hill said he wanted to set up clear guidelines for further evaluating each proposal before making too many decisions.
“I happen to endorse the idea that where we are at is not tenable, but we have a number of very complicated proposals,” he said. “We need to know: Where do they have merit? Where do they have fundamental flaws? I don’t want to just dismiss them out of hand because we can’t handle them.”
Area management
Tension filled the room, which was packed with industry members, as the council deliberated the merits of each proposal and determined which ones would make the first cut.
Area management proponents turned out in force and fought fiercely for their proposal.
Glen Libby of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association and the Area Management Coalition said fishermen in his area “got stuck with 1.4 differential counting” during the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) emergency action prior to Framework 42’s implementation.
The differential counting was implemented primarily to protect cod and yellowtail flounder.
“We don’t catch many of those,” he said.
On the other hand, fishermen in some areas have had an extremely hard time finding dabs.
“Well, dabs are not extinct in my area,” said Libby. “This is why we need area management – so we can address the problems in our own areas.”
Libby’s brother Gary, also a member of both the association and the coalition, said, “We’re here to help. We’re willing to work with you people and do whatever it takes to get this done. We’d like to get the fish stocks built.”
Robin Alden, co-chair of the Area Management Coalition and director of the Penobscot East Resource Center, urged the council to view area management as a “tool.”
“Like days-at-sea or ‘points,’ area management is a tool that can help you in the work you’re trying to do,” she said.
Too complex?
Massachusetts council member David Pierce had strong reservations about the proposal.
“Area management is a concept that is too complex,” he said. He referred back to the failed five-year effort behind Amendment 13 when area management was last proposed.
As for the coalition’s proposal, he said, “It’s a long way from being a finished product and we’ll never meet the (Amendment 16) deadline.”
But Area Management Coalition Co-chair Craig Pendleton argued that the coalition had worked to answer all the questions raised by the council’s groundfish committee and PDT and would continue to do so as the proposal advanced.
He then ticked off the plan’s attributes.
“Our plan uses a hard TAC backstop to address mortality,” he said. “Our plan manages fishermen in order to control the pace at which the stocks are caught across the best window of opportunity.
“It inevitably deals with the issue of derby fishing,” he said. “It lays accountability between fishermen, local governance structures, advisory panels, and the council. It uses current VMS but also promotes the use of more sophisticated tools.”
Finally, Pendleton said, “Our plan does not rely on days-at-sea to do the job but it’s open to blending among all the alternatives.”
Following this intense show of support by industry, the council voted 12-to-4 with one abstention to advance the proposal to the next level of scrutiny.
Point system
Then, with little discussion, the council unanimously voted to advance the Northeast Seafood Coalition’s point system for further analysis. For several months, coalition representatives have been actively explaining their proposal to fishermen and council members, so the plan was somewhat familiar to the council.
However, a potential sticking point for the plan has surfaced as a result of the recently reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The revised act now requires that any “limited-access privilege program” (LAPP) such as individual transferable quotas (ITQ) or individual transferable fishing quota (IFQs) first go out to a referendum vote in New England.
Under the new law, LAPPs cannot be implemented unless more than two-thirds of all eligible New England permit holders vote to approve them.
According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) attorney Gene Martin, the NOAA Office of General Counsel hasn’t decided yet whether the point system plan could be “construed as an IFQ system,” especially since it hasn’t been fully developed and analyzed by the council.
“At this point in time, we’re not prepared to say definitely if it’s an IFQ or whether it would be subject to a referendum or not,” he said.
Maine fisherman Curt Rice urged the council to support the coalition’s proposal because it “compliments a system you’ve already agreed to flesh out – and that’s area management,” he said.
Rice further stated that the council likely would end up with a “composite” of ideas as Amendment 16 moved forward.
The council’s vote to advance the point system was 15-0 with one abstention.
Days-at-sea
Essentially everyone on the council agreed to include an alternative in Amendment 16 that refines the existing days-at-sea program in case the council concludes in the end that days-at-sea is still the best way to go – or in case the council runs out of time to fully develop one of the other proposals.
Several council members, however, struggled over whether or not to also forward Erik Anderson’s “performance plan,” which utilizes differential days-at-sea. Under this proposal, the number of days charged to a permit holder would be based on the weight of “species of concern” landed, which Anderson argued was more equitable than the current system.
NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul raised concerns about the performance plan.
“As written, this has major problems, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed,” she said.
The red flag was enough to deter some council members from advancing the alternative, but Anderson countered the resistance.
“The council went out with a scoping process for these new ideas,” he said. “I don’t think anyone had the expectation they were going to write a perfect proposal.”
Anderson said he and others understood that once their ideas were submitted, they would “become the property of the council for further development.”
“There’s been no time to have an exchange with the people who put forward the proposals,” Anderson said. “That’s the issue that concerns me most.”
The council voted 10-to-6 with one abstention to include the performance plan in the list of proposals destined for further review.
Two ideas dropped
In its effort to cull the list of potential Amendment 16 alternatives, the council agreed that hard total allowable catches (TACs) would not be considered as a “stand-alone measure” to meet stock rebuilding goals.
However, the council emphasized that hard TACs could be considered as a component of other management alternatives such as area management or a point system plan.
The council also decided that individual hard TACs, ITQs, and something called “stewardship shares” would not be considered in this amendment.
Many feared ITQ-based proposals simply could not be developed in time given the new Magnuson-Stevens Act referendum requirement.
Connecticut council member Sally McGee expressed disappointment about this decision and urged industry members who formed sectors to continue thinking about similar programs.
“I do think there is an opportunity for people to bring forward these ideas in their own sectors,” she said. “I would hate to cut this off prematurely.”
Janice M. Plante
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