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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 8
April 2006
Groundfish emergency action stuns New England fleet
GLOUCESTER, MA – With a sense of tremendous anxiety, fishermen up and down the coast were awaiting word from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) about whether the agency would modify its proposed secretarial emergency action for groundfish.
At the end of February, NMFS announced a list of proposed measures, which would take effect May 1, to further reduce effort on groundfish until Framework Adjustment 42 is implemented (see CFN March 2006 for Framework 42 details).
The cornerstone of the proposed secretarial action is differential counting of days-at-sea for the whole fleet – in all areas – at the rate of 1.4-to-1. That means every A-day fished would be counted as 1.4 days-at-sea. B-days would not be counted this way.
The announcement created immediate havoc, unleashing both bewilderment and panic in almost all of New England’s major fishing ports.
The one notable exception was, perhaps, New Hampshire, where many fishermen viewed the secretarial action as less devastating than Framework 42’s proposed 2-for-1 counting in the Gulf of Maine.
NMFS closed the comment period for the secretarial action on March 9. At CFN press time in late March, the agency was still reviewing comments and had not yet published a final rule.
Although several congressional members requested an extension of the comment period, NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said that wasn’t possible if the agency was going to have final measures in place by May 1.
However, she said NMFS was considering taking public comment on the final rule once it’s published sometime in April.
Many were hoping that NMFS would significantly modify the proposed emergency measures based on the initial round of comments.
“The proposed emergency rule doesn’t need to be that severe,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. “We believe there were other measures that could have been considered besides 1.4-to-1 counting.”
Pressure on all sides
The political pressure and angst over both the proposed secretarial action and, for the inshore fleet, Framework 42, intensified as March drew on.
Maine’s congressional delegation, led by US Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), weighed in almost immediately, urging NMFS to reconsider its approach in the emergency action.
Massachusetts leaders traveled to Washington, DC for a face-to-face meeting with Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of NMFS.
The March 15 meeting, organized by Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, was attended by: Healey; New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang; Massachusetts State Sen. Bruce Tarr; Brian Rothschild of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology, who was recently selected to serve as Lang’s “senior adviser” on ocean-related issues; Paul Diodati of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF); and Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition.
US Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) participated by phone. DMF Deputy Director David Pierce also attended. Congressional and NOAA staffers lined the room.
Message sent
The delegation implored Lautenbacher to explore alternatives to both the emergency action and Framework 42, and several believed the admiral listened seriously to the group’s concerns, particularly those about severe economic impacts.
Giacalone said, “The primary message was one of solidarity in Massachusetts between the ports of Gloucester and New Bedford.
“We wanted to inform the (commerce) secretary (through Lautenbacher) of the scale of the deep and unnecessary short-term impacts to the Massachusetts fishing industry that will result from the emergency rule,” he said. “And we wanted to let him know about the immensely disproportionate, fatal, and arguably unnecessary impacts that will result when Framework 42 is implemented.”
In a letter to Lautenbacher, Lt. Gov. Healey called it “imperative” that any secretarial action “avoid undue economic harm to the fishing industry.”
The emergency rule as proposed “will dramatically increase loss of groundfish revenues to the commonwealth’s ports” and “will result in a 34.3 percent cut” in days-at-sea with the accompanying Amendment 13 default reduction in A-days, Healey wrote.
Bad for offshore fleet
Offshore fishermen, especially in Maine, didn’t view Framework 42 as such a bad thing anymore when compared to the emergency action, and they strongly urged NMFS to replace the proposed emergency provisions with Framework 42.
Many said they feared the 1.4-to-1 counting in offshore areas would prevent the fleet from working on healthier stocks because the loss in days-at-sea compared to Framework 42’s 1-for-1 counting offshore was too great. They warned that the fleet would tie-up and wait for Framework 42’s implementation later this summer, which would create enormous disruption in the marketplace.
Pat Kurkul, sympathetic to this argument, said it just wasn’t legally possible for NMFS to implement the Framework 42 measures at the start of the new fishing year.
“If we could have implemented Framework 42 by May 1, we wouldn’t have needed the emergency action,” she said.
Not enough time
Timing was the problem, Kurkul said.
“The agency began working on this emergency last November, shortly after we learned that the council would not be able to take action to have measures in place by May 1,” she explained. “We tried to anticipate what the council might do and pattern the emergency after Framework 42, but the measures in the emergency were finalized long before the council took final action.”
Jackie Odell still believed the interim emergency proposal was too harsh, particularly for the offshore fleet.
The Northeast Seafood Coalition is opposed to differential days-at-sea counting of any kind, whether it be in the emergency action or Framework 42, but of the secretarial action, she said, “They should have been looking at the stocks that need a mortality reduction and then developing specific measures to address the problem without imposing these huge, across-the-board impacts.
“For the offshore fleet, they could have done trip limits for white hake and Georges Bank winter flounder without doing 1.4-to-1 counting,” Odell said.
Kurkul said it was important to remember that without secretarial action, the Framework 42 measures would have had to be even more restrictive to meet the fishing mortality targets for the year because of late implementation.
Coalition plan
The New England Fishery Management Council finalized Framework 42 on Feb. 2 in Portland, ME and voted to submit the package to NMFS. The council staff expected to complete necessary work on the framework and have it submitted to the NMFS Northeast Regional Office prior to the council’s April 4-5 meeting in Mystic, CT.
During that April meeting, however, the council is scheduled to review an analysis of an alternative proposal developed and refined by the Northeast Seafood Coalition.
This proposal, which hadn’t been analyzed in time for the February meeting, would cap cod landings for all vessels that declare their intent to fish in inshore blocks 124, 125, 132, 133, 139, and 140. The package also contains provisions for other groundfish stocks (see CFN March 2006 guest column by Vito Giacalone for details).
Even though the council agreed to submit Framework 42, it further voted to charge its groundfish plan development team (PDT) with analyzing not only the coalition proposal but a “modified total allowable catch option” that would utilize the current Georges Bank yellowtail management strategy for Gulf of Maine cod instead of the cod cap idea.
The PDT was expected to have the biological impacts of each of these proposals analyzed in time for the April meeting, as well as some of the economic impacts in terms of estimated changes in revenues between these proposals vs. fishing year 2005 regulations.
In her March 15 letter to Lautenbacher, Healey urged the agency to consider the coalition plan, saying, “The practical solutions it offers are in reach.”
The groundfish discussion is scheduled for Wednesday, April 5 at 8:30 am at the Hilton Mystic Hotel.
Janice M. Plante
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