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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 7
March 2008
Council adds fourth formula to sector allocation options
PORTSMOUTH, NH – In a surprising move at the tail end of a long three-day meeting here, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to include a fourth formula into the list of alternatives for determining permit history in groundfish sectors.
The formula would use 50% landings history from fishing years 1996 through 2006 and 50% A-days-at-sea from the original allocation baseline.
“My sense is we need a fourth alternative,” said New Hampshire council member John Nelson, who made the motion during the council’s Feb. 12-14 meeting here.
“The feeling I’ve gotten is that we haven’t given people an alternative that’s really different,” he said. “This provides us with a full range of options to consider for allocation.”
New Hampshire fisherman Erik Anderson strongly supported the move.
“We’re dealing with options here,” he said. “This is one of the most critical sections. It’s the allocation process. It’s what everyone is concerned about.”
Anderson, too, emphasized that days-at-sea were the “currency” that fishermen banked on.
“This might illuminate an easier transition from what people had,” Anderson said about the new permit-history alternative. “I think it should be voted in to see how it compares with the list of alternatives you already have before you. You owe it to the industry to at least include this option.”
Concerns
Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine, speaking on behalf of the Sustainable Harvest Sector, expressed concern on two fronts.
First, sector managers already need to prepare an environmental assessment containing full analysis of the three other alternatives picked by the council on Jan. 24 – plus status quo. A 50% landing/50% A-days formula would mark a fifth option needing analysis.
“I just don’t know how we would accomplish this,” she said.
Second, Raymond said, “Since we first started talking about this, I’ve asked for some rationale as to why you would use anything other than landings performance for determining history. I have yet to receive an answer.”
New Hampshire council member Mike Leary strongly supported the additional alternative specifically because it included A-days instead of vessel characteristics like length and horsepower.
“Everyone was allocated days-at-sea. Whether you had a 100' boat or a 20' boat, you got days,” said Leary.
The motion to include the new alternative passed 9-5 with two abstentions.
Run the numbers
Cape Cod fisherman Eric Hesse urged the council to supply information so fishermen could begin making calculations of their own under the different permit history formulas.
“We need to plug in our boats and see how these formulas affect us,” he said. “Then we’d at least have a ballpark estimate of how these formulas would impact our individual businesses.”
Groundfish plan coordinator Tom Nies said the council had begun posting information on its web site so fishermen could do just that. The information is available at <http://nefmc.org/nemulti/index.html>. Click on “Draft PDT estimated denominators for calculating potential sector contributions.”
Janice M. Plante
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