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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 7
March 2010
General category IFQ program begins operation March 1
PORTSMOUTH, NH – The general category individual fishing quota (IFQ) program implemented through Amendment 11 to the federal scallop plan will get underway beginning March 1, the start of the 2010 scallop fishing year.
During the New England Fishery Management Council’s Jan. 26-28 meeting here, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul announced that NMFS had completed all outstanding appeals for new general category permits and now knew the total pool of participants in the fishery.
Amendment 11, which became effective on July 1, 2008, converted the former open-access general category fishery into a limited-access fishery. Today no one can land any Atlantic sea scallops at all without some sort of limited-access permit.
NMFS ended up delaying implementation of the IFQ portion of Amendment 11 because it couldn’t properly allocate the available quota without knowing how many people actually qualified for IFQ permits.
Roughly 400 applicants lost their appeals and were denied permits. So now, the restructured general category fishery consists of:
329 vessels with IFQ permits, which include permits in the “confirmation of permit history” category;
40 vessels with both an IFQ permit and a regular limited-access permit;
107 vessels with a Northern Gulf of Maine permit; and
288 vessels with an incidental general category permit.
According to the final rule for Amendment 11, which was published in the Federal Register on April 14, 2008, NMFS issued 1,992 open-access general category permits back in 1994 and then 2,959 in 2005.
“In 1994, 181 general category boats landed scallops, while in 2005, more than 600 did,” said NMFS.
The number of permits dropped back down by 2008, but the total was still above 2,000.
5% of TAC
Vessels with IFQ permits will be allocated 5% of the total allowable catch (TAC) for the overall scallop fishery – minus access area research set-asides and observer set-asides.
For the March 1 start date, the available allocation is roughly 2.26 million pounds for IFQ vessels and 225,753 pounds for boats with both IFQ and regular limited-access permits.
Kurkul emphasized, however, that the numbers will change once Framework Adjustment 21 is implemented with new allocations for the 2010 fishing year (see Framework 21 story page 17A).
She also expressed concern that some fishermen who qualified for the new IFQ fishery had not yet renewed their permits – a requirement to be able to participate in the fishery. The deadline for renewing permits is Feb. 28, 2010, and fishermen who miss that deadline will not be able to obtain a NMFS-provided permit in the future.
“We don’t quite understand why someone who qualified for a permit would miss the chance to renew it,” Kurkul said.
NMFS said it intended to send out one last reminder to affected fishermen.
IFQ transfers
In anticipation of the March 1 launch of the new IFQ fishery, NMFS issued a permit holder letter on Jan. 11 outlining how IFQ transfers would work.
The agency stated that:
For the time being, only full IFQ allocations can be transferred to another IFQ vessel, although Framework 21 proposes to allow partial transfers if that provision is approved later this year;
Once an IFQ vessel has fished for scallops in the 2010 fishing year, it cannot transfer IFQ to another vessel in the 2010 fishing year, but it can receive IFQ;
An IFQ vessel that has exceeded its IFQ cannot receive IFQ from another vessel;
Transferred IFQ will be used first in the bookkeeping system – in the order that it was received if more than one allocation is transferred – and the vessel’s originally allocated IFQ will be used last; and
IFQ transfer requests may be made throughout the fishing year prior to Jan. 15, 2011.
NMFS also reminded fishermen that if IFQs are reduced as a result of Framework 21, any IFQs received through a transfer “would be reduced on the IFQ vessel that receives the IFQ.”
For more information on the program, call NMFS at (978) 281-9315.
Janice M. Plante
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