COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Editorial
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 32 Number 10
June 2005
Lobster Area 2 continues effort control struggle
Lobster co-management is never easy but lobstermen’s charge to create a new effort control plan acceptable both to Area 2 stakeholders and managers has got to rank among the most difficult tasks ever undertaken by industry.
Here are just a few of the factors the people involved with this process have had to contend with.
The severe Area 2 stock decline has pushed a lot of lobstermen out of business. Those who remain are hanging on by a thread. With people feeling like everything they have is on the line, effort control plan meetings held first by industry and later by the Area 2 Lobster Conservation Management Team (LCMT) have been emotionally charged, sometimes to the point where fights have broken out.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) lobster board has insisted that Area 2 lobstermen come up with an effort control plan that caps traps “at or near current levels.”
From the beginning, there was confusion about what this meant as different acceptable target levels ranging from 128,000 to 165,000 traps were cited.
The vagueness of the target made it difficult for the lobstermen working on the plan to say no to persuasive appeals from fellow lobstermen desperate to get an initial allocation.
When the process started late last year, the number of traps being fished in Area 2 had plummeted to around 140,000. As of late May, the industry was proposing an initial allocation of about 222,000 traps, not including a small number of participants from Connecticut and New York.
To some fishery managers, this looks like a plan to increase – not cap – effort. To the lobstermen involved, it’s a number significantly below the estimated 260,000 traps that were fished in Massachusetts and Rhode Island waters in 1999 and a reasonable starting point for further reductions through a conservation tax on trap transfers.
Then there is the data. Industry members trying to develop the plan have had to deal with incomplete and constantly changing trap and landing data.
Rhode Island, home to the majority of Area 2 lobstermen, has had catch reporting requirements only since the late 1990s and has exempted federal lobster permit holders from having to file state reports. The lobstermen working on the plan tried to fill the gap with federal vessel trip reports, which, it turned out, significantly undercounted the total amount of gear fishermen actually fished.
The Rhode Island Lobstermen’s Association and Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association knew this process was going to be hard. Together, they sought help and eventually secured funding to run facilitated meetings to sort things out among the lobstermen who would be impacted by the plan. The outcome of those meetings formed the basis of the draft effort control plan that is now in the hands of the LCMT.
A number of lobstermen have invested countless hours in this process and have done everything they can to make it work. The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Wildlife have expended staff time to send representatives to meetings to provide feedback and analysis.
There’s still difficult work to be done before the plan is due in August. The LCMT is trying to work out transferability issues and, at a meeting in May, the ASMFC lobster board advised the LCMT to shave another 20,000-30,000 pots off the 222,000 level.
Lobster co-management is hard. Doing it from a starting point of severe resource decline, a shifting target trap cap, and inadequate data is asking a lot of the people who have stepped up to the plate. We hope they can pull it off and that lobster board members will be able to support the end result. /cfn/
Back to editorial archive
|
|
Tell us what you think.
