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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 32 Number 10
June 2005
Groundfish Amendment 13: A new fishing year
GLOUCESTER, MA – With a considerable sense of relief, the groundfish fleet bid farewell to the 2004 fishing year on April 30, closing a chapter that fishermen from Portland to Gloucester to New Bedford said needed to end.
Sentiment about the year ahead was mixed, but many seemed convinced that 2005 couldn’t get any worse.
“Hopefully, last year was an experiment and everyone learned from it,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition.
“There was so much going on and it was really confusing. We were still trying to figure out Amendment 13 when Framework 40A came on. We had new reporting requirements, VMS, all these blocks, the US/Canada area, a B-regular day program. People didn’t know what gear they were required to use in what area. At least this year, there won’t be significant regulatory changes except for Framework 41 (for hook fishermen),” she said.
Maggie Raymond of Associated Fisheries of Maine was also more hopeful about the year ahead and thought everyone had been pushed to their limits.
“When you have really smart and really experienced fishermen who are totally dumbfounded by this, that’s not good,” she said. “The rules are more complicated than ever. It’s tough to figure it all out. I’m hearing more anger in people’s voices.”
Harvesting haddock
Nonetheless, May 1 marked the start of a new fishing year, and many offshore fishermen headed into it with renewed confidence and a determination to catch more haddock in the Eastern US/Canada Management Area.
The 2005 US quota share is 7,590 metric tons (mt) or 16.7 million pounds. In 2004, the US share was 5,100 mt, equivalent to about 11.2 million pounds.
Preliminary statistics from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) show that fishermen harvested only 1.7 million pounds of the 2004 quota, including discards, meaning that a mere 15 percent of the Georges Bank haddock total allowable catch (TAC) was taken from the Eastern US/Canada Area during the last fishing year.
“We left 10 million pounds of haddock in the water just from the eastern area,” said Raymond.
Tom Valleau, president of the Portland Fish Exchange board of directors, said, “In my mind, that translated into a $10 million economic loss for the boats.”
Hank Soule, the exchange’s general manager, said the situation seriously hurt the Portland auction.
“Amendment 13 had projected biomass and harvest estimates. We were looking very closely at those biomass levels and calculating our market share. And then we didn’t have access to haddock,” he said.
Access problems
Fishermen were shut out of this extremely abundant resource primarily by two factors.
One was two premature shutdowns of the eastern area, the first of which occurred Oct. 1, only five months into the fishing year. The area was reopened
Jan. 14, but then shut down again on April 1. Both closures were triggered when NMFS projected yellowtail landings from the overall US/Canada area were approaching the TAC.
The other access problem, which still exists, is that anyone entering the eastern area can’t fish anywhere else, making it hard for fishermen to make strategic at-sea fishing decisions.
Further complicating matters, anyone working in the Eastern US/Canada Haddock Special Access Program (SAP) Pilot Program is required to use a haddock separator trawl. Flounder nets aren’t allowed in this particular SAP.
“If you can’t find the haddock and that’s the only gear you’re allowed to have, you’re stuck,” said Raymond.
Soule put it this way: “Our fleet cannot take the risk of going out there for a broker.”
The situation has generated intense frustration, and many fishermen have called on NMFS to implement some sort of regulatory change to allow boats to fish both inside and outside of the eastern area on the same trip.
“The guys have waited so long for this stock to rebuild and now they’re being prevented from catching it,” said Odell. “It’s pretty sad. Haddock could push the groundfish industry right out of this rut.”
Fix needed
According to Gloucester fisherman Vito Giacalone, many vessels planned their businesses around Georges Bank haddock, especially in the eastern area.
“There’s a fleet of boats that have been hanging in there with this industry for that reason,” he said.
Valleau is convinced that in this high-tech age of computers and vessel monitoring systems, the predicament is unnecessary.
“We have an access problem and it’s a stupid problem,” he said. “I think it’s a terrible, terrible mistake, all for administrative convenience.”
The New England Fishery Management Council is proposing to allow access both inside and outside the eastern area through Framework 42, though the framework measures won’t become effective until the start of the 2006 fishing year. Meanwhile, fishermen are pushing NMFS to find some way to make the change on its own.
Despite this current situation, many fishermen think they’ll have better access to haddock this year.
For one, the Eastern US/Canada Haddock SAP Pilot Program didn’t come on line last year until November, and then shut down on schedule at the end of December. This year, the haddock SAP opened on May 1.
Yellowtail SAP
Furthermore, it’s almost a given that the Closed Area II Yellowtail Flounder SAP won’t be a factor this year. Last year, the SAP opened on June 1. Fishermen made 316 trips into the area and caught 8.3 million pounds of yellowtail, which included 700,000 pounds of discards, before NMFS shut it down on Sept. 3.
The pulse of landings contributed significantly to the early closures of the Eastern US/Canada Area. And much of the fish was lousy – soft and in spawn condition.
Prices hit rock bottom at times and averaged only 43 cents per pound over the course of the three-month fishery.
On the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford, which handled much of the product, prices on large yellowtail went as low as one cent per pound and averaged 39 cents for large yellowtail.
“That SAP was done absolutely backwards,” said the auction’s Richie Canastra. “What it comes down to is they let people go into that area right when the fish were letting their babies out.”
Canastra said fishermen don’t want to see a repeat of the same, disastrous situation.
“We’d rather see the fish spread out over the year,” he said.
As it turns out, there’s a good likelihood that will happen.
Zero trips?
Framework 40B, which was in the process of being finalized at press time, would delay the opening of the SAP from June 1 to July 1. The framework also gives the NMFS regional administrator the authority to adjust the number of trips in the area as well as the trip limit. NMFS has already indicated that it might very well specify zero trips for the yellowtail SAP for 2005, which is fine in Jackie Odell’s opinion.
“The guys are pretty confident that if that yellowtail SAP stays closed, we’ll have more access to the eastern area to target haddock,” she said. “So there is a little optimism here.”
Canastra is a bit wary of a total non-opening of the SAP because, he said, “Once something gets closed you can’t get it back open again.”
He’d rather see a very low trip limit on yellowtail and then a strategy that might allow fishermen to make a few SAP trips in, say, November, December, or January when the fish look good and prices are strong.
The trouble spot for the Eastern US/Canada Area this year will be the cod quota, which is only 260 mt. It raises the stakes for strong performance by the separator trawl.
“The cod quota is very low,” said Tom Nies, the New England council’s groundfish plan coordinator. “I think the key to getting a lot of that haddock in the eastern area is for people to become very effective at using the separator trawl.”
Maggie Raymond agreed, and felt confident that fishermen could make the gear function extremely efficiently.
The Canadians report that their fishermen have achieved a 40:1 ratio with the separator trawl, catching only one cod per 40 haddock.
Janice M. Plante
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