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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 8
April 2007
Herring industry on edge over bait, new regs
Area 1A closes to directed fishing Saturdays, Sundays starting June 1
ROCKPORT, ME – Close to 100 herring, lobster, and tuna fishermen, vessel owners, dealers, scientists, and environmentalists gathered at the Samoset Resort here on March 1 for an all-day herring session hosted by the Maine Fishermen’s Forum.
The event included an overview by Terry Stockwell of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, a predator/prey update by Bill Overholtz of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, regulatory updates by Lori Steele of the New England Fishery Management Council and Chris Vonderweidt of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), and a highly anticipated “stakeholders” afternoon panel discussion.
Kristan Porter, a fisherman and forum board member who moderated the session, first welcomed the crowd, and then Stockwell offered up background on the herring resource, fishery, and management to set the stage for the day’s discussions.
“The herring fishery has changed significantly over the years,” he said. “In 1976, there were 27 weirs, 65 stop seines, 15 purse seine vessels, and 33 midwater trawlers targeting herring.
“In 2005,” he said, “four purse seine vessels and 23 midwater trawlers accounted for 98% of all landings in the fishery.”
According to Stockwell, the Bumble Bee/Stinson Seafood plant in Prospect Harbor continues to produce canned sardines with an annual value of $25-$30 million. Stinson purchases roughly 16,000 metric tons (mt) of fresh herring annually from US vessels and employs between 150 and 200 people, he said.
Furthermore, six shoreside processors from New Jersey to Massachusetts are freezing whole herring and mackerel for foreign and domestic markets.
“These companies and the vessels that supply them have invested over $100 million in plant and vessel upgrades and employ approximately 500 people,” Stockwell said.
Amendment 1
Following the predator/prey presentation, Steele gave audience members an overview of federal regulations and recapped proposed 2007-2009 herring specifications for all herring management areas.
At the time of the forum, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had not yet published Amendment 1 to the federal herring plan.
However, the final rule did come out on March 12, and NMFS has sponsored the four-page pullout section inside this issue of CFN detailing the final rule’s limited-entry program, the Area 1A seasonal ban on midwater trawling, and other new herring measures.
Days out
On the ASMFC end, Vonderweidt explained that ASMFC herring section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts met on Feb. 27 to again discuss days out of the fishery as a strategy for stretching out the available total allowable catch (TAC) this summer.
The TAC for Area 1A is expected to be 50,000 mt this year, a 10,000 mt drop from previous years.
According to Vonderweidt, the section agreed that beginning June 1, the directed commercial herring fishery in Area 1A will be closed Saturdays and Sundays.
The section also agreed that if 50% – equivalent to 25,000 mt – of the TAC is harvested before Oct. 1, the fleet will go to three days out – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
If the 50% trigger is met before Oct. 1, the section will hold another meeting to look at catch rates and re-evaluate its strategy, Vonderweidt said.
Days-out supporters say they hope the restriction will prevent the TAC from being caught too quickly so that Area 1A fish will be available for bait in the fall during the peak of Maine’s lobster fishery.
Stakeholders speak
Dozens of audience members turned out for the Maine forum session specifically to hear a panel of industry stakeholders talk about impacts of recent management actions on their operations.
Panel members included: Al West of Bumble Bee/Stinson Seafood; Dave Ellenton of Cape Seafoods Inc. and Western Sea Fishing Co.; Lexi Krause, a Maine tuna fisherman; Jeff Kaelin of Ocean Spray Partnership and the vessels Providian, AJ, and Atlantic Frost; Mary Beth Tooley of O’Hara Corporation and the Small Pelagics Group; Sally McGee of Environmental Defense; Bob Baines of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association; and Jennie Bichrest of Purse Line Bait.
Bait worries
Essentially all of the panel members expressed grave concern about the upcoming summer’s lobster bait supply.
“My bait bill has more than doubled in the last five years even though my effort has stayed the same,” said Baines. “The price of bait and the price of lobsters has no correlation, so this increased cost of bait has come right out of my back pocket.”
Baines said he and most other lobstermen were worried about how things would go this year.
“Because of the reduced quota, zero tolerance in the spawning closures, and the ban on midwater trawling in Area 1A this summer, I believe that bait will most likely be scarce at times and will probably be more expensive,” he said.
While Baines admitted he didn’t have any great insight to what would happen given the number of new “unknowns,” he said, “I do know that the lobster industry’s success depends on a steady supply of reasonably priced bait.”
Suppliers
Jennie Bichrest said her company was working hard to meet the upcoming challenges.
“We’re putting a lot of money into freezers,” she said.
But Bichrest admitted that freezing was less than ideal. The profit margin on bait is low, and she said, “When we have to sell frozen bait, we don’t make that margin.”
Al West suggested that lobstermen might want to use alternative bait such as menhaden or redfish during certain parts of the season if at all possible and “leave herring for the shedders and fall fishery.”
Dave Ellenton, whose company is based in Gloucester, said, “The bait market is the most important for us and we will continue to support that market as best as we can.”
However, he, too, expected the industry would experience shortages of fresh bait given the triple regulatory factors of reduced quota, zero spawning tolerance, and the Area 1A summertime ban on midwater trawlers.
“We will do our very best to make sure bait is available, but the regulations will make availability of bait difficult,” he said.
Midwater trawl ban
Many panelists agreed that a major unknown was how the June-September midwater trawling ban in Area 1A would impact catches.
Several midwater trawl vessels have rigged over – or are intending to rig over – to purse seine.
Mary Beth Tooley said of her group’s boats, “We spent a lot of money to go purse seining this summer.”
And many were rather bitter about it.
“Both kinds of fishing kill fish,” she said.
According to Tooley, the only thing that’s different is the new regulations are forcing people to choose whether they want to fish inshore with purse seine gear or offshore in Areas 2 and 3 with midwater trawl gear. They can no longer “follow the fish,” as midwater trawlers used to do.
“We are losing the flexibility to fish in and out, so we’ll stay inside,” she said.
Jeff Kaelin said the Raber family, which owns the Providian, also felt like it had no choice and will invest half a million dollars to convert the Providian to a purse seiner.
“We can’t afford not to do that,” he said. “We cannot afford to get shut out of Maine waters.”
Several panel members expressed numerous concerns about the learning curve involved with midwater trawl fishermen having to pursue seine.
They also worried about additional conflicts with fixed gear and whether Area 1A simply would become too crowded. Converted midwater trawlers now will have to stay inside Area 1A, they said, because they won’t be able to purse seine on Georges Bank even if the fish are there.
Limited entry
Another thing that became painfully clear was that several New England and Mid-Atlantic midwater trawlers were locked out of the fishery in Areas 2 and 3 under Amendment 1 to the federal herring plan.
According to Ellenton, Western Sea Fishing Co. has three midwater trawlers, and one of them will be eliminated from the fishery under the new regulations.
“We will have to take steps to ensure that that vessel can take part in the fishery,” he said. “We were encouraged to fish in Areas 2 and 3 and we made a substantial investment. We think this is a pretty unjust regulation.”
Kaelin said the AJ didn’t qualify to fish in Areas 2 and 3 either under Amendment 1.
“That’s absolutely not acceptable to us,” he said.
Kaelin indicated that a coalition of locked-out vessel owners from Maine to Cape May, NJ would take legal action to collectively challenge the new regulation, and some might fight the Area 1A seasonal ban on midwater trawlers as well.
Given the size of the herring resource offshore, Kaelin found the idea of excluding any existing vessel from the Area 2 and 3 fishery to be particularly ironic.
“Fish will be dying of old age,” he said. “That’s why we have fisheries. The management of this stock is extremely conservative, and I think there’s a certain amount of fish that can be caught.”
Ecosystem, observers
Other panelists brought up different issues. Sally McGee said she wanted to focus on “the bigger picture” and view herring in a more “ecosystem-based” manner.
She emphasized the need to secure increased observer coverage in the herring fishery and investigate the possibility of industry-funded observer coverage. She also advocated for a better way to account for bycatch in the fishery.
Tuna fisherman Lexi Krause expressed grave concern for what he viewed as a major shift in what was happening in the Gulf of Maine overall.
“What I see today is a very different picture from what I saw five to 10 to 15 years ago,” he said.
Reflecting the views of many tuna fishermen, Krause said, “The herring used to stay in an area with bait. If we can find the herring, we can usually find the tunafish.”
But, he continued, “What I see is herring not schooling the way they used to. There are smaller bunches of fish, and it’s harder for predators to get a mouthful.”
Ocean changes
Krause noted other changes that troubled him.
He referred to codfish with “yellow bellies” instead of white ones – sickly looking fish with “big heads, small bodies, and more worms.” He said he saw far fewer blue sharks and white sided dolphins this past summer.
“Whether this correlates with the herring mess, I don’t know,” he said.
Jennie Bichrest said she, too, worried about factors that significantly influenced fish stocks.
“We’ve had changes in our fishery,” she said. “Look at the build-up of our coastlines. In the ‘80s, we saw huge development booms, and the developers get off scott free. Look at the waste water and runoff from these million dollar lawns.”
Janice M. Plante
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