COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 7
March 2007
Scallop fleet challenges paying observer costs
PORTSMOUTH, NH – Scallopers have been doing some belt-tightening lately as biomass in open areas has declined. And, as a result, they’ve become increasingly resentful that they are the only Northeast fishermen who have to pay for 100% of their own observer coverage.
The issue came to a head at the New England Fishery Management Council’s Feb. 6-8 meeting here when the council held a public hearing on Amendment 13 to the federal scallop plan.
By the end of the session, what was expected to be an easy vote on Amendment 13 was anything but that. The amendment, which is focused entirely on extending the industry-funded observer program now operating under emergency action, was approved, but only by a stunningly slim margin in a 9-to-8 vote.
Fisheries Survival Fund attorney David Frulla asked council members to remember the history of the issue. He said scallopers initially volunteered to pay for observers back in the late 1990s in exchange for gaining access to the Georges Bank closed areas.
But then, a few years later, scallopers ended up funding observers in open areas as well.
“You’re shifting all of the costs for funding the observers for all trips onto the industry, and it’s the only industry that has to do this,” Frulla said. “How does this all work on open-area trips when you’re not getting enough to pay for your observer?”
Vessel owner Dan Cohen of Cape May, NJ added, “We haven’t thought about the public policy issues here. You have to ask, ‘Is it appropriate for the fishing industry to bear 100% of the costs?’”
Cohen said he really couldn’t advise the council on what to do in this no-win situation.
“In theory, I’m totally opposed to this amendment and I don’t think it should be approved,” he said. “But we need it for access areas. You feel you need to vote today because if you don’t vote, we can’t fish.”
Why it’s needed
The industry-funded observer program, which began in 1999, lapsed in 2004 for contractual reasons, so NMFS reverted to funding scallop observers on its own.
In early 2006, however, NMFS budget problems prevented the agency from funding the level of coverage it deemed necessary to monitor the scallop fishery for finfish bycatch and turtle interactions. And the lack of coverage put the industry in a bind.
NMFS then implemented an emergency rule on June 16, 2006 followed by a second 180-day period extension. The emergency rule provided a legal mechanism for certifying observer service providers, and it got the industry-funded program back on track. Scallopers once again could cut checks to the service provider and pay for their own observer coverage.
Back in November, the council had supported quick development of Amendment 13, hoping it could be implemented before the NMFS emergency action expired on June 11.
Without the amendment, scallopers wouldn’t have a way to pay for observers during the time they most needed them. On June 15, access to Closed Area I and the Nantucket Lightship area becomes available to the fleet under the access-area program, and the program by NMFS’s standards calls for higher-than-standard observer coverage.
Given the urgency, the council thought industry supported the amendment and was largely caught off guard by the public hearing outburst.
Paying for observers
Scallopers were united in their testimony. During the good years when scallops were extremely plentiful in both the access areas and, for the most part, open areas, paying for observer coverage wasn’t as much of an issue.
This was especially true with set-aside programs in place, which, under the federal scallop plan, set aside 1% of the annual access-area total allowable catch (TAC) and 1% of the open-area days-at-sea to help industry defray the cost of paying for observers.
But lately, with catches down significantly in the open areas, more of the observer costs have been coming directly out of the crew’s pockets. Two scallopers testified that recent trips had cost them 10% of the gross stock to satisfy observer costs. Depending on the service provider, costs run around $770 or so a day.
Vessel owner Kirk Larson of Barnegat Light, NJ questioned whether the council and NMFS were getting an across-the-board picture of the fishery by having scallopers fund their own observers. He said captains changed their behavior when picked to carry an observer.
“When a guy gets an observer, he knows he needs to go where he can get the most (product) he can get to fund that observer,” Larson explained. “When you’re paying $770 a day, you’re not going out there to fool around. You go to areas of concentration.”
Other funding needed
Some industry members spoke about the public resource aspect of the issue and the public’s desire for information.
Vessel owner Harriet Didriksen of the port of New Bedford said, “The cost per day is too much – $770 per day is certainly too much when it’s more than the men are making. If this is for the benefit of the nation, then there should be funds coming in from other sources as well.”
Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting added, “I understand there’s a cost associated with fishing because we work on a public resource, but we have to keep in mind what’s fair, and this isn’t fair. We need to look at new initiatives that are at least going to keep the costs in line with the fishery.”
Ed Blaine of Cape May County urged the council to investigate alternative ways to fund observers such as allowing scallopers to land excess groundfish bycatch and use the proceeds to pay for observers.
“Use the bycatch, sell it, write a check to NMFS,” he said. “I just hate to see the fish go overboard. It’s counted as discards anyway.”
Gib Brogan of Oceana expressed concern that the council hadn’t adequately debated the operational aspect of the program or the set-aside percentages.
“It seems to me this is rubber stamping the emergency action without looking at the real issue,” he said. “There should be some discussion of what’s needed across this entire fishery.”
Brogan said the 1% set aside number was “assumed to be sufficient,” but recent information indicated that a 4% set aside would be more appropriate.
Council reacts
The council clearly took these comments to heart and began questioning the broader policy implications.
New Hampshire council member David Goethel said, “The information that’s gathered here is in the public interest, and what we’re telling these people is, ‘You go gather your own information.’
“This information is not gathered for the benefit of the individual scalloper. It’s gathered for the public interest,” he said.
Rhode Island council member Phil Ruhle agreed.
“This is wrong,” he said. “In my book this is wrong unless we’re going to put 100% observer coverage (payment) across the board in every fishery.”
Maine council member Jim Salisbury questioned why daily observer fees were so high. In the Northwest, observer costs were significantly lower – in some cases half of what Northeast scallopers were paying.
Frank Almeida of NMFS’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center explained that NMFS determined the level of observer coverage but, “We have no input into the daily rate charged by the service provider,” he said.
A nonprofit provider?
Salisbury then asked whether industry members would be allowed to set up an independent service provider that would keep costs at a minimum.
“Is there anything in the regs that would prevent a nonprofit from being the observer provider?” he asked.
According to NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul, Amendment 13 would allow for this type of set-up since it specifically provides a mechanism that allows for more than one service provider. However, she added, a number of constraints would apply to prevent conflict of interest.
Currently, two companies provide scallop observer coverage services – AIS Inc. and East West Technical Services.
Framework 19 options?
As the council weighed how to address the observer coverage dilemma, scallop plan coordinator Deirdre Boelke explained that Amendment 13 contained language that would make “adjustments to the scallop observer program” a frameworkable item for action in future framework adjustments.
Furthermore, drafts of Amendment 13 listed several examples of “potential adjustments to the observer program,” including:
Differential possession limit and days-at-sea accrual rate calculations by scallop permit type;
A fleetwide observer cost sharing program; and
Observer cost sharing sector development.
“We could start thinking of some of these improvements as early as Framework 19,” said Boelke.
The council will be working on Framework 19 in the months ahead to set days-at-sea and TACs for the 2008 and 2009 fishing years.
While changes to the observer program also could be included in the framework, Boelke warned that the above alternatives and any others would need much more work and analysis before they could become viable options.
“A lot of these ideas are quite different from the program we have right now,” she said.
The council didn’t make any commitments during its February meeting to future program modifications.
But in the end, it reluctantly cast its 9-8 vote to forward Amendment 13 to NMFS. If approved as expected, the amendment will put NMFS’s emergency action into place on a long-term basis and make “adjustments to the scallop observer program” frameworkable in the future.
Janice M. Plante
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
