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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 9
May 2010
A new day: Groundfish sectors, common pool get underway May 1
GLOUCESTER, MA – Amid heightened anxiety over the May 1 start of the 2010 groundfish fishing year, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) went on the road this spring to address industry questions about the day-to-day logistics of working under a whole new groundfish program made up of 17 different, self-contained sectors and one big common pool.
In addition to a series of sector-member meetings and “interested party/sector manager workshops,” which were attended in total by a couple of hundred people, the agency hosted an additional series of informational meetings that kicked off in early March at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum.
Other meetings were held in New Bedford, Gloucester, Portland, ME, Narragansett, RI, and Portsmouth, NH between March 23 and April 8. The agency wrapped up with an open-to-all “town hall” telephone conference call on April 14. Several hundred more people took part in these events, too.
During the sessions, fishermen expressed deep concerns about the new rules and the inevitable grim consequences of working under extremely small annual catch limits (ACLs) for multiple stocks. Many had detailed questions about new reporting and dockside monitoring requirements, which are extremely complex and involve new electronic communications technology to provide NMFS with more “real time” data to accurately track landings and discards and allow sector managers to submit landings reports more easily.
Some who attended the informational meetings had gear questions. Others asked about stock status. Many wanted to know how to use monkfish and scallop days-at-sea under the new groundfish programs.
Dan Morris, who moderated NMFS’s town hall call, said upfront, “Amendment 16 represents big changes for the industry.”
At the end of the call, he said, “The lines of communication remain open. We welcome further questions.”
Mid-April stats
According to sector policy analyst Mark Grant, vessels already enrolled in sectors for 2010 have until April 30 to withdraw and fish in the common pool. As a result, final sector numbers won’t be available until May.
However, as of mid-April, Grant said:
• 17 sectors had submitted operations plans for 2010;
• 812 of the 1,477 eligible Northeast multispecies permit holders had enrolled in sectors; and
• Those 812 permits represented more than 98% of all historical commercial groundfish catches.
Common pool
If the numbers don’t change significantly, that means only 2% of the available ACLs for groundfish will be allocated to common pool fishermen – a fact that has many people in this category profoundly worried.
For Gulf of Maine haddock, for example, the preliminary common pool sub-ACL is 28,660 pounds, while the preliminary sector sub-ACL is roughly 1.79 million pounds. For redfish, the common pool sub-ACL is 136,687 pounds, while the sector sub-ACL is 14.96 million pounds.
Furthermore, common pool measures are extremely strict. Permit holders will be shouldering a 32% reduction in days-at-sea compared to 2009 levels, which represents a 50% reduction from 2006. Plus, those days will have to be used under a 24-hour counting system, which means that someone fishing for five hours will have 24 hours deducted from his allocation. Trip limits and restricted gear areas apply, too.
During the town hall call, one Gloucester fisherman questioned how long it would take before NMFS “shut down” the common pool given the extremely small quotas.
“My thing is surviving this year,” he said.
NMFS groundfish policy analyst Tom Warren explained that the NMFS regional administrator has the authority to modify some of the common pool measures to slow down catch rates. But he also was honest about the practical reality of the situation, saying that days-at-sea usage could become severely, severely restricted “because there’s very little fish for certain stocks.”
“Choke” species
The fact that “there’s very little fish for certain stocks” will be a big problem for sector fishermen as well. Sector fishermen are exempt from trip limits and groundfish days-at-sea, but they cannot as a group exceed the sector’s allocation for any given stock.
This will be challenging at best for several species. For example, the total combined Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail flounder ACL for all sector fishermen is only 544,542 pounds, so this stock in particular has the potential to significantly limit fishing activity on healthier stocks.
Referring to yellowtail, pollock, and winter flounder as “choke species” that could “terminate fishermen’s ability to harvest target species” with higher allocations, New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang wrote to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Chief Jane Lubchenco on March 22 and asked her to “temporarily delay the implementation of the catch share/sector program” until stock status and allocations issues had been further reviewed.
“Let us ensure that the appropriate species allocations are in place based on relevant scientific data prior to beginning the catch share/sector management system,” said Lang.
NMFS made it clear that it was moving forward with the May 1 implementation date for sectors and the rest of Amendment 16, but the agency has scheduled a new pollock stock assessment for June and said it would work in concert with the New England Fishery Management Council, which developed Amendment 16, to “adjust management measures” as quickly as possible “to reflect any new information about pollock stock condition that comes out of this assessment.”
In addition to pollock, US Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and six House members made additional concerns known to Lubchenco in a separate April 1 letter.
Among other things, the congressional members recommended that NMFS review the Cape Cod yellowtail assessment, along with the stock’s biomass targets and mortality goals, “and consider any possible unutilized flexibility within the Magnuson-Stevens Act to increase but stay under the overfishing level for this stock.”
Startup funds
And so, that was how the groundfish situation had unfolded as of mid-April. NMFS continued to move forward to implement the new sector/common pool fishery system, and a growing number of industry members began better understanding the complicated and difficult reality of the year ahead.
Between fiscal years 2009 and 2010, NMFS has funneled $47.1 million to support the new sectors in a variety of ways. The biggest chunks of money over those two years combined have gone to support:
• At-sea monitors and observers – $8.8 million;
• Dockside monitoring – $2.16 million;
• Sector startup costs – $1.5 million;
• Permit banking – $6 million, which comes on top of separate funding in 2009 for a “State of Maine industry permit bank pilot program” and other sector mini-grants;
• Cooperative research – $13 million; and
• Data management and application development – $4.5 million.
The $47.1 million also supported a host of other activities, including: the collection of better socio-economic data on the impact of catch share programs (see CFN April 2010 for details); discard analysis work; assistance to industry in developing required National Environmental Policy Act – or NEPA – documents to accompany sector operations plans; sector manager training; outreach workshops; and more.
Despite the extensive preparations that NMFS and many sector managers and fishermen have made to get ready for May 1, nearly everyone was approaching opening day of the 2010 fishery with trepidation.
“Fishermen are understandably apprehensive about the changes, not only because they mean significant catch cuts, but also because for many it means doing business in a completely new way,” said Pat Kurkul, NMFS’s Northeast regional administrator.
However, she added, “We have seen some hard-won and positive improvements in stocks in recent years, and we believe these measures help ensure the future health of the fish and the fishery.”
Janice M. Plante
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