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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 32 Number 10
June 2005
Herring plan could include groundfish limits
PEABODY, MA – Directed to “reconsider” the use of groundfish bycatch caps in draft Amendment 1 to the herring plan, the New England Fishery Management Council’s herring committee spent hours debating the subject during its May 17-18 meeting here.
The committee was unanimous in voting on an approach for haddock, but members were divided about how to address groundfish “stocks of concern.”
In the end, the committee developed two options to present to the full council at its June 21-23 meeting in Portland.
Option 1 would:
• Allow limited-access herring vessels to land and/or possess up to 1,000 pounds of haddock a trip;
• Eliminate the haddock minimum size restriction;
• Prohibit the sale of haddock for human consumption; and
• Restrict the bycatch of all other regulated multispecies to 100 pounds
Option 2 would:
• Impose a 1 percent haddock “catch cap” on limited-access herring vessels for each of the two haddock stocks, meaning that 1 percent of the total allowable catch (TAC) for Gulf of Maine haddock and Georges Bank haddock would be reserved for the herring fishery;
• Require that 90 percent of the stock area be closed to herring vessels when 90 percent of the catch cap for a particular stock was reached;
• Apply the catch cap and closure provisions to midwater trawlers, pair trawlers, and purse seiners;
• Eliminate the haddock minimum size restriction and prohibit the sale of haddock for human consumption as in Option 1;
• Prohibit the discarding of haddock at sea; and
• Restrict the bycatch of all other regulated multispecies to 100 pounds.
“We’re obviously trying to find ways to allow the herring fishery to fish but not have adverse impacts on groundfish,” said committee Chairman Lew Flagg of Maine.
Without regulatory action, herring vessels would continue to be prohibited from possessing a single pound of groundfish.
TAC cap vs. trip limit
In March, the New England council asked the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to take emergency action to address the emerging haddock bycatch situation in the herring fishery that’s resulting from the extremely large 2003 year class. The council requested that NMFS implement the same measures outlined in Option 1 above, minus the 100-pound regulated species limit.
NMFS hadn’t acted on the request at press time in late May, but an announcement was expected imminently.
The herring committee developed Option 1 to carry over the emergency action measures into the herring plan. It developed Option 2 to further air the 1 percent TAC cap initially recommended by the council’s bycatch committee. This approach was rejected by the full council in March after NMFS said it would be difficult to monitor.
Push by Oceana
The herring committee rejected the concept of groundfish bycatch caps back in March of 2004 after the herring plan development team (PDT) recommended “focusing the amendment” on data collection “as a first step towards identifying any bycatch problems that may exist.” The full council concurred.
However, four months later, Oceana, which had submitted a bycatch cap proposal earlier in the year, returned to the table with a more detailed proposal for groundfish stocks of concern.
At that point, the council charged the herring committee with reconsidering the approach.
The herring and groundfish PDTs went back to the drawing board to crank out numbers and develop possible alternatives for committee consideration.
According to herring PDT Chairman Lori Steele, the PDTs fulfilled their charge but were “uncomfortable establishing catch caps based on limited data.”
“The PDTs do not believe that the available data are adequate to conclude that there is a significant groundfish bycatch problem in the herring fishery,” she said.
Bycatch numbers
The committee reviewed a series of tables showing that between 1994 and 2004, a total of 156 trips observed on herring midwater and pair trawl vessels resulted in the following bycatch amounts: 234.5 pounds of cod; 5 pounds of yellowtail; 27 pounds of American plaice; 164.4 pounds of white hake; 10 pounds of winter flounder; 4.5 pounds of witch flounder; and 464.5 pounds of pollock.
The two groundfish stocks that registered more noticeable bycatch amounts were redfish, which came in at 3,088.5 pounds in 156 observed trips, and haddock, which totaled 9,813.5 pounds.
Is it a problem?
After reviewing the information, committee member David Pierce of Massachusetts said that, haddock and redfish aside, the bycatch numbers were extremely low.
“I still say that these are very small, very insignificant catches of groundfish. I’m more inclined to just advise the council that we’ve reconsidered bycatch caps and don’t want to go in that direction.”
The committee reviewed two PDT-generated bycatch cap alternatives that would impose a tonnage cap on primary stocks of concern, including cod, haddock, pollock, and redfish. Caps and tonnage amounts would be calculated for each fishing year.
Pierce said, “This creates a structure that’s too complicated. There are compelling reasons to not move forward with bycatch TACs in this amendment.”
Committee member John Nelson of New Hampshire wasn’t convinced.
“I think we would be really negligent to not have options in there for how to deal with this issue,” he said. “The gear catches groundfish. It’s a problem, so you can’t throw your hands up and say, ‘Let’s monitor it some more.’ I don’t think we should duck the issue.”
Pierce said he wasn’t ducking the issue at all because he didn’t think the industry was experiencing a significant bycatch problem. The 1,000-pound haddock trip limit and 100-pound regulated species limit were intended to enable the fleet to operate legally even if vessels ran into a few pounds of groundfish.
Jimmy Ruhle of North Carolina, one of the Mid-Atlantic council’s representatives on the committee, agreed.
“Everything that’s documented so far says that the herring fishery is a clean fishery for the tonnage that it takes,” he said.
Steele noted that Amendment 1 is set up so that the council can implement species-by-species bycatch caps later on through a framework adjustment or the annual specification process if necessary.
Monitoring
Responding to NMFS’s previous concerns about monitoring a 1 percent haddock cap, the committee developed two monitoring options, which will also be presented to the full council for consideration in June.
One would require observer coverage that was “adequate to estimate bycatch across the range of the fishery,” with the percentage being determined by NMFS in time for public hearings on the amendment, possibly this fall. This option would be paired with mandatory Interactive Voice Response (IVR) reporting of all bycatch. Presently, the herring fleet reports herring catches through the IVR system.
The second option, which could be coupled with the first, involved the initiation of a shoreside monitoring program.
“I think there’s a lot of fish that comes ashore that we could get a better handle on,” said committee member Dana Rice of Maine.
Jeff Kaelin, representing Stinson Seafood, expressed reservations about moving toward any type of full-scale weigh master system.
“As I understand a weigh master, there’s a scale at the dock that everything gets pumped through.
“I don’t want to see Stinson going to a totally different weighing system,” he said. “Please don’t box us in to one approach for how we give you information.”
Janice M. Plante
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