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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 10
June 2007
NMFS implements hagfish data collection program
GLOUCESTER, MA – Beginning May 23, seafood dealers who buy or intend to buy hagfish caught in federal waters will have to submit weekly electronic reports to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and owner/operators of hagfish vessels may be asked to carry an observer on occasion.
The new requirements are part of a hagfish data collection program that NMFS is implementing at the request of the New England Fishery Management Council.
In an April 23 Federal Register notice announcing the new program, NMFS explained the value of obtaining observer coverage.
“Observers are particularly important because of the high discard rates that have been reported to occur in the hagfish fishery and because the proportion of the catch that is rejected by the dealer and later discarded at sea is not currently measured,” the agency said.
Fishermen asked to carry observers won’t have to cover the cost. The observers will collect information such as: distribution of fishing effort; number of hauls per trip; area/depth fished; trip length; soak time; discard rates of hagfish or other species; gear type/configuration; and gear deployment methodology.
Observers also will track interactions with marine mammals and sea turtles.
NMFS said, “The configuration of hagfish gear is similar enough to lobster gear that it is believed to pose the same or similar entanglement threats to large whales.”
According to the agency, two large whale entanglements have been documented in the hagfish fishery: one in 1997 involving a finback whale; and another in 2002 involving a humpback whale.
Dealers
On the dealer end, the new data collection program requires that hagfish buyers obtain a permit, renew the permit annually, and submit weekly electronic dealer reports containing “trip-level information for each purchase of hagfish.”
NMFS said the dealer reports not only will help the agency get a handle on discards, but the information will “help to verify landings reported in vessel trip reports (VTRs).”
For vessels that don’t have VTR requirements, dealers will have to report “vessel identifiers.”
The purpose of the new data collection program is to gather better information about the resource and the fishery itself so the New England council can determine whether future management measures for hagfish are necessary.
At the moment, the fishery is unregulated, though a control date of Aug. 28, 2002 does exist. The council at some point may use this control date to decide who is eligible to participate in the fishery if it adopts a limited-access program.
The hagfish fishery in New England began growing in the early 1990s. The first reported landings of around 1 million pounds were in 1993, and landings quadrupled over the next four years.
While hagfish skins were initially sent into the Korean market and made into leather, NMFS said, “Today, the hagfish fishery relies on revenues from the export of whole frozen hagfish product overseas, primarily to South Korea, for meat consumption.”
According to NMFS, the hagfish resource off Gloucester has experienced “localized depletion,” forcing vessels to fish further offshore.
However, NMFS also said it didn’t expect additional dealers to get into the business because “the fishery is driven by a narrowly focused export market that is currently in equilibrium with supply.”
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