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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 9
May 2007
Limited entry on the way for GC scallopers
MYSTIC, CT – The New England Fishery Management Council will be going out to public hearing in May with a comprehensive package of alternatives to establish a sweeping limited-entry program for the general category (GC) scallop fishery.
Once in place, no one will be able to obtain a new federal permit to harvest 400 pounds of scallops unless he had an established history in the fishery that meets the selected qualification criteria.
The hearings are expected to draw crowds of fishermen from both the general category fleet and the existing full-time, part-time, and occasional limited-access scallop fleet, as well as groundfish fishermen and others who incidentally catch scallops while targeting other resources.
On several counts, full-time limited-access scallopers and general category scallopers have greatly different viewpoints about how the general category fishery should be treated. And even among general category fishermen themselves, opinions differ depending on how long people have been in the fishery and how much they have financially depended on it in recent years.
At its April 10-12 meeting here, the council struggled with all of these complicated factors as it worked to finalize a public hearing document for what will become Amendment 11 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan.
For many of the proposals, the council selected preferred alternatives to give fishermen a general sense of which direction it was leaning.
But that wasn’t easy, and many of the votes were split, indicating that nothing yet is set in stone and the council will be relying heavily on public comment before making final decisions in June.
For a list of public hearing times and locations, see page 12A.
Qualification criteria
The council easily agreed that it wanted to go forward with a limited-entry program for the general category fishery, so that wasn’t even a discussion topic.
But then the council had to pick limited-entry permit qualification criteria, which proved to be much harder.
The council voted to select 1994-2004 as its “preferred alternative” for the qualifying timeframe, and then it picked 1,000 pounds as the preferred landing criteria. This means vessels would have to have landed at least 1,000 pounds of scallop meats in any one year between 1994 and 2004 to be eligible for a new general category limited-entry permit.
Additionally, the council agreed that each vessel would get an allocation, possibly of a certain number of 400-pound trips, which would be calculated based on its “best year” between 1994 and 2004 – or whatever timeframe is ultimately selected – and that the best year would be multiplied by an indexing factor based on the number of years the vessel had been “active” in the fishery.
The public hearing document will contain other qualification alternatives, including one to establish 2000-2004 as the qualifying years and another using 5,000 pounds as the landing criteria.
Under all of the alternatives, vessels would have to have held a general category permit prior to the control date – Nov. 1, 2004 – in order to qualify for a new general category limited-access permit.
The qualification criteria are sure to dominate the public hearings, but even before the council got to that point, it first had to decide what percentage of the overall scallop resource should be allocated to the general category fishery each year.
This proved to be one of the most controversial topics of the day.
The council voted to pick 5% as its preferred alternative, but some full-time scallopers considered 3% to be closer to the historical average and some active general category fishermen didn’t think 5% was based in current reality and wanted to see a higher percentage.
General category fisherman Bob Keese of Cape Cod, who has been heavily dependent on the fishery in recent years, argued that the council was wrong in thinking that the general category fishery was “intended to be nothing more than a supplemental income bycatch fishery and therefore we should keep it that way.”
He said that when the council developed Amendment 4, which created the original general category fishery and established a limited-entry program for the full-time fleet, it intended for the general category to cover both a directed 400-pound fishery as well as bycatch.
“This is not a biological question,” Keese said. “This is an allocation question that’s being based on a false interpretation of Amendment 4.”
At one point, the council considered a 7% allocation, which drew full-time scallopers to their feet.
“We understand the need to secure access for historical participants here,” said attorney David Frulla, representing the Fisheries Survival Fund. “But there’s been a profusion of general category effort, and there’s nothing in the council’s vision statement that talks about a fundamental reallocation of the resource to a new fleet.”
Gear specialist Ron Smolowitz, also representing the Fisheries Survival Fund, added, “The long-term norm is 3%. This will provide for the historical fishery. I really think that 7% is going to send the wrong signal to the public and it has no basis in scientific fact. The limited-access fleet is going to take a big hit if you allocate anything more than 3% to the general category.”
The council turned down the 7% as a preferred alternative in an 8-9 vote and then voted up 5%. However, the public hearing document will contain a range of 2.5% to 11% for the public to comment on.
Different views
The 5% decision blew the steam out of the council’s subsequent qualification criteria decisions from Keese’s perspective.
“I was in favor of including this 11-year (1994-2004) time period, but in order for this to work, we need a bigger allocation,” he said.
“If you let people qualify for 11 years with 5%, people like myself who depend on this fishery will be short-changed, while people from 11 years ago will get a permit – a small permit – to fish in an area where there are no scallops. They’ll sell their permit,” he said.
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul also questioned the 1994-2004 qualification period.
“I don’t support the 11-year timeframe,” she said. “I think it’s far too long. It hurts current participants in the fishery.”
However, since the council chose to go down that path for a preferred alternative, Kurkul then advocated for a 5,000-pound landing criteria.
“The pool is too large if it’s 1,000 pounds,” she said.
Massachusetts council member Tom Hill looked at it from a different viewpoint. He fought for a 2000-2004 qualification period but with a 1,000-pound landing criteria, which he thought would better account for current participants in the fishery. That effort failed.
A different effort to pick 1994-2004 with 5,000 pounds also failed.
Number of qualifiers
Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine asked the council to consider not selecting a preferred alternative at all.
“This is a very, very contentious issue which has huge implications,” she said. “It might be one of those cases where it would be better to not choose a preferred alternative at this point.”
The council, however, voted 10-6 with one abstention to identify 1994-2004 with 1,000 pounds as preferred alternatives in the public hearing document.
Between 1994 and 2004, NMFS issued 4,777 “unique” general category permits. Of those, 924 were on “active” boats.
Under the 1994-2004 period with the 1,000-pound landing criteria, 459 vessels would be expected to qualify for limited-access general category permits.
For comparison, only 188 boats would qualify for new permits under the 2000-2004 timeframe with a 5,000-pound landing requirement.
Trips, GOM
Scallopers who qualify for a new general category limited-access permit would be annually allocated a certain number of 400-pound trips based on their level of history in the open-access general category fishery. The trips might be allocated through a multilayered tier system so that vessels falling within a certain tier would be issued equal numbers of trips.
Although the council voted to make annual general category allocations in the form of trips vs. pounds as the preferred alternative, it was divided on this approach. A poundage allocation alternative also will be included in the public hearing document but not identified as “preferred.”
The council supported establishing a separate limited-entry program above 42°20' for what would be called the Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop Management Area.
It also supported the creation of an “incidental catch” limited-access permit for vessels to be able to retain and sell up to 40 pounds of scallop meats per trip, though anyone interested in incidental catch permits should read the language in the public hearing document closely. The ability for people to retain and sell or not sell 40 pounds of scallops may change considerably in Amendment 11 from current practices.
The council further agreed to support allowing limited-access scallopers to work under general category rules, but the existing fleet of full-time, part-time, and occasional scallopers would have to qualify for trips just like the general category boats.
Hard TAC transition?
Among many other decisions, the council identified a couple of alternatives to deal with the general category fishery during the transition period.
Before the full-scale Amendment 11 program can be implemented, NMFS must identify the “universe” of qualifying general category vessels in order to properly allocate available scallop resources to qualifiers. Given the appeals process that accompanies all new limited-access programs, the transition period could take up to two years.
The council first considered an alternative that would institute a two-year hard total allowable catch (TAC) for the general category scallop fishery until the full program went into affect.
The idea rocked the audience, which hadn’t heard about transition period delays until that point.
Maggie Raymond said, “I can’t believe we’ve sitting here talking about putting this fishery under a derby TAC for two years. This is a terrible option.”
Attorney Stephen Ouellette, representing general category scallopers from Barnegat Light, NJ, agreed.
“Going to a hard TAC for two years would be disastrous. It has to be avoided at all costs,” he said.
David Frulla, on the other hand, was taken aback by the idea of a two-year delay under any situation. He noted that the council had already put off sending Amendment 11 to public hearing a year ago due to various concerns about the Gulf of Maine and an inadequate range of alternatives. Since then, the council has spent another year further refining the document.
“If you wait another two years, that’s irresponsible,” he said. “You have to put some mortality controls on this fishery.”
Two alternatives
The forceful backlash led the council to propose two alternatives, which are to:
Establish a temporary hard TAC for the general category of 10% of the overall projected scallop catch for two years during the transition period – or until Amendment 11 is implemented – and to establish a similar temporary hard TAC to cover general category catches by full-time, part-time, and occasional scallopers not fishing on a day-at-sea; or
Allow current general category permit holders during the transition period to fish under existing regulations if they had a permit during the qualification period prior to the control date or had appealed their eligibility under measures outlined in Amendment 11.
Ron Smolowitz immediately protested the first 10% option because it would have a significant impact on the existing limited-access fleet, which would have to absorb the consequences of the general category’s excessive fishing activity.
“What it does is maintain overfishing for two years,” he said. “Do you expect to cut back the limited-access fleet by 10%?”
Bob Keese supported the second alternative of the two.
“It takes the derby aspect out of it,” he said.
Amendment 11 contains many, many more provisions and alternatives than described here. To obtain a copy of the public hearing document or the proposed amendment itself, call the council office at (978) 465-0492 or visit the council’s web site at <www.nefmc.org>.
Janice M. Plante
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