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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 7
March 2010
Tight Area 1A herring quota may impact ASMFC small-mesh bottom trawl decisions
ALEXANDRIA, VA – Concerned that small-mesh bottom trawl (SMBT) vessels have been “disproportionately” disadvantaged by the herring days-out program in Area 1A, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Atlantic Herring Section voted on Feb. 1 to ask for public comments on potential alternatives to address the situation.
Purse seiners and midwater trawlers land the vast majority of Area 1A herring, but a small percentage of the total catch is landed by fishermen who tow small-mesh bottom trawl gear and work on herring seasonally. Most of the five-to-seven dozen boats involved in this fishery fish for whiting, groundfish, and/or other species at various times of the year.
Alternatives for SMBT fishermen will go out to public hearing – most likely in March – under Addendum III to Amendment 2 of the interstate herring plan.
The document contains a long list of options, which include allowing SMBT boats to land herring under specific trip limits on designated “days out” of the fishery and/or authorizing them to land on one, two, or three additional days above those allowed for the rest of the herring fleet. Among other things, Addendum III also contains options to allocate SMBT boats a specific percentage of the Area 1A quota.
Limited opportunity
According to ASMFC herring plan coordinator Chris Vonderweidt, SMBT vessels have very limited options when it comes to herring fishing.
They can harvest herring only within identified whiting exempted fishing areas, which were established by the New England Fishery Management Council, and the key whiting exempted areas within herring Area 1A are only open during specific timeframes in the summer and fall.
Furthermore, the default starting date for the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning closure is Sept. 21 and, during the closure, vessels are limited to 2,000 pounds of herring bycatch per trip.
Draft Addendum III states, “The combined whiting exemptions and spawning closures restrict the SMBT fishery to about 10 weeks between July 15 and Sept. 21. (This) fishery is an important source of fresh bait for the lobster industry during these summer months.”
The addendum has been in the works for months and is being strongly supported by New Hampshire officials (see CFN December 2009 for details). The impacted vessels, which numbered 86 in 2007 and 67 in 2008, harvested 1.6% of the Area 1A herring quota in 2007 and 0.54% in 2008.
Herring section Chairman Rep. Dennis Abbott of New Hampshire said the section inadvertently “created a disadvantage” for this group of fishermen under the days-out program and that Addendum III was a re-examination of the situation.
Fairness questioned
The addendum, however, has become increasingly controversial, especially since the quota in Area 1A for the next three fishing years could be as low as 26,546 metric tons (mt). The low-quota factor in particular has led many herring fishermen to voice strong reservations about making exceptions for one category of boats.
“I am not a person who is opposed to giving opportunities to other fishermen,” said Peter Moore of NORPEL, which operates herring midwater trawlers out of New Bedford. “But you’re setting the tone for the public that these people have been disadvantaged and no one else has.”
Midwater trawlers, for example, are not allowed to fish at all in Area 1A for nine months of the year. There’s no quota available Jan. 1-May 31 and, from June through September, only purse seines and fixed gear can be used in the area.
By the time midwater trawl vessels are allowed to enter Area 1A on Oct. 1, the Massachusetts/New Hampshire spawning closure is in play for part of the area. And the remaining Area 1A quota is often fully harvested well before the end of the fishing year.
“We have two, three, or four weeks of fishing in that area all year,” said Moore.
Mary Beth Tooley of the Small Pelagic Group questioned the analysis behind some of the addendum’s statements and said it was incorrect to say that SMBT boats had higher operating costs than larger herring vessels.
Jeff Kaelin, representing Lund’s Fisheries Inc. in Cape May, NJ, feared that creating a separate reserve or allocation for small-mesh bottom trawl vessels would have implications for the requirement to close the Area 1A fishery when 95% of the quota is projected to be harvested.
He also questioned several aspects of the addendum and said, “We’ve had real concerns with this from the beginning.”
Everyone’s hurting
Herring section members weighed whether they should send the document out for public comment or further modify it.
“It’s really complicated,” said section member Terry Stockwell of Maine. “We’ll have no technical committee review of this before the public hearings, and I have concerns with river herring bycatch and potential increases in effort.”
Those concerns aside, Stockwell also worried about the low TAC in Area 1A.
“I want to make this work, but to me, the show-stopper is the TAC,” he said. “All of the herring fishermen are in a world of hurt right now.”
New Hampshire section member Doug Grout urged the board to retain the full suite of alternatives in the addendum and give the ASMFC staff latitude to provide additional information and analysis in the document prior to public hearings.
“I see this as having a number of options for the public to comment on and the section to consider,” he said.
The section concurred and voted to send the document out for public comment.
Vonderweidt said the commission likely would be ready to announce public hearing dates and release a more fully analyzed Addendum III document in early March. Visit the ASMFC web site at <www.asmfc.org> for updates or call the ASMFC office at (202) 289-6400.
Janice M. Plante
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