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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 8
April 2007
MA acts on turbulent gillnet, squid issues
GLOUCESTER, MA – The Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Commission took two major actions at its March 15 meeting here. It voted down a public petition to ban gillnetting in state waters with the understanding that other gillnet restrictions are in the works, and it voted to extend mobile gear access to Colliers Ledge in Nantucket Sound into May for the squid fishery.
In making his recommendation on the gillnet ban petition, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) Director Paul Diodati said he recommended against approving the ban because of DMF’s policy “to perpetuate the state’s small-boat, nearshore fisheries” and because the petition was not well-supported at public hearings.
Instead, Diodati said he would bring a suite of proposals to regulate the state-waters gillnet fishery to the commission’s April 5 meeting. The proposals, which likely will include limits on the number of nets fished, surface markings requirements, and “realigned” catch limits, will have to go back to public hearing once developed.
A number of fishermen attended the Gloucester meeting and were allowed by commission Chairman Vito Calomo to speak at various times.
Lou Williams, a gillnetter who lives in Swampscott and typically fishes out of Gloucester, told the commission it made more sense for the people involved in gear conflicts to work things out than to ban one group to benefit another.
“Too often, the solution to a problem seems to be cutting someone else’s throat,” he said. “These problems can be solved if you get the user groups together.”
Ron Borjeson of the Massachusetts Commercial Fishermen’s Association reminded the commission that when gear conflict problems reached a critical point a number of years back, DMF hosted eight or nine meetings between fixed and mobile gear representatives.
“Some of those gentlemen’s agreements are still in place today,” he said.
A motion to deny the petition to ban gillnetting in state waters passed unanimously.
Outer Cape conflict
Diodati then informed the commission that he planned to take emergency action to ban gillnetting in the state waters of the Outer Cape Cod Lobster Conservation Management Area.
In the last few years, gillnetters had been targeting lobsters in the area, with some of them going so far as to “bait their nets.” The activity has “raised tensions and increased conflict” with lobstermen there, he said.
Diodati added that the increased gillnet effort was unfair to Outer Cape lobstermen who work under a strict effort-control plan only to see the lobster catch in the area by gillnetters skyrocket. The reported gillnet catch from the area went from around 20,000 pounds in the 1990s to more than 60,000 pounds in 2003. From 2004 to 2006, it increased to 95,000 pounds and then to 110,000 pounds.
Specifically, Diodati recommended closing the waters east of Cape Cod from Chatham to Truro out to the three-mile limit to gillnetting during the months of April-May and October-November, two periods that coincide with migrations that make the lobsters “particularly vulnerable to this fixed gear.”
Push back
Several members of the commission were uncomfortable with the proposal for emergency action. Patsy Frontierro protested DMF’s targeting of gillnetters.
“That’s what I don’t like,” he said. “If you close it, close it for everyone, not just one user group.”
Williams pointed out that gillnetters are already subjected to extensive closures of state waters throughout the year and that his permit restrictions prevent him from keeping lobsters anyway.
“This is only going to hurt me and state-water boats,” he said. “It’s the only place in 100 miles where we can go.”
Emergency?
Ed Barrett, president of the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and the Massachusetts Bay Groundfish Association, said it wasn’t right that DMF was gearing up to shut the area down right before the season started.
“Addressing problems with emergency action 15 days before opening is a bad precedent,” he said. “We would welcome the opportunity to participate in drawing up rules for the area for next year.”
Added Gloucester gillnetter Don King, “Emergency action as a way of doing business is one of my pet peeves. Outer Cape lobstermen have brought this problem on themselves. There’s an easy solution and it’s the 5" maximum gauge. (The gillnetters) could still bring in their 100 count (of lobsters) but they’d have to be under 5".”
Commission member Bill Adler suggested that Diodati do more work on the proposal.
“I don’t want to stop gillnetters fishing for fish,” he said. “But there is a problem. Let’s work on this for another month.”
After hearing all the comments, commission member Mark Weissman remarked, “This is so complicated that it begins to sound like rocket science.”
Diodati withdrew the proposal.
Colliers Ledge
After a similarly complex discussion, the commission agreed on a compromise in response to a public petition to allow squid trawling after May 1 within three miles of shore from Succonesset Point in Mashpee to Point Gammon in Yarmouth on Colliers Ledge.
The petitioners had requested an extension of mobile gear access to the area from May 1 through May 14, which is two weeks longer than the current access time of April 23-30. Current regs push the mobile gear vessels out to the state waters three-mile limit as of May 1.
The petition was originally filed in February 2006 and went to public hearing the following month. At its April 2006 meeting, the commission agreed with a recommendation from Diodati not to act on the petition but instead to take more time to study the request.
Fish pot fishermen attended both last year’s hearing and commission meeting to speak against the petition. They explained that they wait every spring until the draggers are out of the area to set their gear and depend financially on access to the area come May 1. They also said they were concerned about the prospect of dozens of larger boats fishing so close to shore at that time of year. For-hire boat operators also spoke against the petition, saying the presence of the trawlers would interfere with their squid charters.
DMF recommendation
This time around, Diodati recommended against allowing the extended access inshore but did recommend granting additional mobile gear access by opening the small-mesh (squid) season a week earlier – on April 15 rather than April 23.
DMF Deputy Director Dan McKiernan pointed out that recent changes to federal Loligo squid regulations would likely improve conditions for mobile gear fishermen this season.
Last year, DMF asked the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to adopt a trimester rather than a quarterly quota system. The timing of quarterly quotas had restricted the inshore trawler fleet to 2,500-pound trip limits during the time of year that squid were in Nantucket Sound.
Under the newly adopted trimester system, the restrictive trip limit likely will be in place in April but will be lifted as of May 1, when the second trimester starts, so the mobile gear boats will be able to land unlimited amounts of squid.
Industry people in the audience had little interest in the earlier April 15 opening date and Diodati admitted that squid at that time of year tend to be scarce in the Sound. Instead, Borjeson and Barrett stuck by their request for inshore access through May 15.
The commission then took a vote on Diodati’s April 15-April 30 recommendation. The motion failed 2-3 with one abstention.
Compromise
Commission members Rodney Avila and Fronteirro suggested extending inshore access until May 7 as a one-year trial compromise.
Diodati strongly objected to that idea.
“I see potential disaster,” he said. “You’ll be looking at a 2,500-pound trip limit going to no trip limit on May 1 and right around May 1 is when fish pots and for-hire vessels enter the area.”
Under DMF/commission rules, the commission has the authority to vote on a DMF recommendation but, without a recommendation, the existing rule stands. In this case, the discussion continued and the pressure remained high to revisit the issue.
Later in the meeting, Diodati presented the petition as originally written to the commission for a vote without comment, and Avila offered a motion to adopt the petition as submitted.
This, too, presented commission members – even those sympathetic to the mobile gear fishermen’s request – with a dilemma.
“I’m not eager to fly in the face of (Diodati’s) warning of disaster,” said Weissman. “One week is about as far as I wanted to go.”
Avila supported extending the season for a week on an experimental basis.
“I’ve fished for 40 years and listened to all the predictions,” he said. “There is no way we’re going to find out what will happen with this fishery unless we try.”
Weissman offered a friendly amendment to the motion that would allow mobile gear access to inshore areas April 23 to May 8, which Avila accepted.
The vote on the amended motion ended in a 3-3 tie. As chairman, Calomo had the right to break the tie, and he voted for the motion, so it passed 4-3.
Weissman and Calomo urged the mobile gear fishermen to communicate clearly with fixed gear fishermen to avoid gear conflicts.
“If it doesn’t work,” Calomo said, “then we go back to the way things were.”
Tautog, dogfish
The commission also took action on the following species.
• Tautog – Following a presentation by DMF’s Paul Caruso explaining the troublesome decline in local tautog populations, the commission voted to adopt DMF recommendations for the 2007 fishery.
These included establishing a 96,000-pound commercial quota, down from 2006 landings of 140,000 pounds, shared out over a spring and summer-fall season.
DMF also backed away from a previous recommendation to restore an 80% recreational to 20% commercial landings split, though it recommended no additional recreational fishery restrictions this year.
For the longer term, the agency recommended developing a limited-access strategy for the commercial fishery for 2008 and beyond since “hard quotas” will likely become an integral part of the state’s management strategy.
• Dogfish – The commission approved a DMF recommendation to set the 2007-2008 commercial spiny dogfish trip limit for state-only permitted boats at 2,000 pounds beginning May 1. Once 58% of the interstate quota of 6 million pounds is taken, the state fishery – for state-only and federal permit holders – will close.
Vessels with federal dogfish permits are required to abide by the 600-pound federal trip limit from May 1 until the closure date.
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