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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 10
June 2008
Councils adopt monkfish FW 6 to end backstop
PROVIDENCE, RI – Acknowledging the rebuilt status of the monkfish resource in both the north and the south, the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils each voted at recent meetings to eliminate an existing “backstop” provision that would have shut down the directed monkfish fishery in the Southern Fishery Management Area in 2009.
The course-correction will occur under Framework Adjustment 6 to the federal Monkfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP), which was adopted by the Mid-Atlantic council on April 9 and by the New England council on April 16. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) still must approve the framework.
“Eliminating the backstop would have a positive social and economic affect,” said Phil Haring, monkfish plan coordinator and staffer for the New England council.
The backstop originally was implemented under Framework 4, which stipulated that zero monkfish days-at-sea would be allocated for fishing year 2009 if landings in fishing year 2007 exceeded the target total allowable catch (TTAC) by more than 30% in a particular area.
The 2007 fishing year just ended April 30 and, according to NMFS’s preliminary landings report, the TTAC in the south was exceeded by 39%, making final implementation of the framework even more critical.
Preliminary figures, which reflected coastwide dealer-reported landings through May 3 and were subject to change due to dealer report updates and adjustments to north/south landing patterns, were as follows:
Northern Fishery Management Area – Landings totaled 5,381 metric tons (mt), equivalent to 108% of the 5,000-mt TTAC; and
Southern Fishery Management Area – Landings totaled 7,072 mt, equivalent to 139% of the 5,100-mt TTAC.
More needed
Industry members strongly supported doing away with the backstop and expressed appreciation to both councils for taking action through Framework 6.
However, many fishermen, especially members of the Monkfish Defense Fund and Associated Fisheries of Maine (AFM), were deeply disappointed that the councils, which jointly manage monkfish, didn’t go further and simultaneously pursue a days-at-sea and/or trip limit increase.
“Industry has made significant sacrifices to rebuild this fishery,” said AFM’s Maggie Raymond during the New England council meeting in Providence.
“Every time there’s been a groundfish closure, the industry has lost access to monkfish. Every time there has been a cut in groundfish or scallop days-at-sea, the industry has lost access to monkfish. There’s an additional cut in scallop days-at-sea for 2008 and additional groundfish reductions on the horizon for 2009,” she said.
Referring to last July’s extremely positive stock assessment for monkfish, Raymond added, “We have a resource that is healthy yet the industry remains shackled to restrictions that were put in place to rebuild. Given the sacrifices we’ve made to rebuild this resource, we should have more access to it. If there’s any one thing the councils could do to help the industry, it’s this.”
Gary Libby of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association in Port Clyde, ME added, “The guys down our way do want to see a little bit of relief on a rebuilt stock. If we could get something in (this framework) to give a little back to the fishermen, we’d be greatly appreciative.”
No action until 2011
Neither council, however, followed up on industry’s request and, at the moment, it doesn’t appear that additional regulatory relief will happen before 2011.
The New England council, which has the administrative lead on the joint monkfish plan, developed its 2008 workload priorities list last November.
During that meeting, the council voted to restrict monkfish Framework 6 to solely eliminating the backstop. The council said it intended to begin work on a new monkfish amendment in 2009, which is expected to contain annual catch limits, accountability measures, and monkfish specifications for 2011, 2012, and 2013.
The specifications will provide a vehicle for potentially increasing days-at-sea allocations and trip limits, but the amendment isn’t expected to be implemented until 2011.
Council concerns
The New England council motion to adopt Framework 6 and eliminate the backstop passed easily in a 14-to-1 vote with one abstention, but a few council members expressed reservations prior to the vote because of issues related to the July 2007 stock assessment, which was conducted by the Northeast Data Poor Stocks Working Group (see CFN December 2007 for extensive details).
The assessment, which yielded new biological reference points and updated biomass estimates for monkfish, concluded that both the northern and southern stocks were fully rebuilt.
But the assessment was carried out with a new analytical model and contained a high degree of uncertainty due to “dependence on assumptions about natural mortality, growth rates, and other model inputs,” said scientists.
This uncertainty is what troubled some council members.
Connecticut council member Sally McGee said, “We’re taking a significant amount of risk given the data poor situation.”
Rhode Island council member Mark Gibson said he would support Framework 6, but he continued to have concerns, especially since only a year ago the council thought monkfish still needed significant rebuilding.
“Monkfish productivity could be much higher and we could sacrifice some productivity in the future,” Gibson said. “There is some risk (in eliminating the backstop), but I don’t see any other choice at this point.”
Meanwhile, NMFS implemented Framework Adjustment 5 to the monkfish FMP to coincide with the start of the 2008 fishing year.
The framework, which became effective May 1:
Revised biological reference points for monkfish to reflect recommendations from the last assessment (see box previous page for numbers);
Reduced the number of monkfish carryover days from 10 to four;
Altered the “monkfish gillnet three-hour rule” so that all monkfish gillnet trips less than 15 hours would be counted as 15 hours;
Set the monkfish “incidental catch limit” at 5% tail weight of the total weight of fish on board, not to exceed 50 pounds tail weight per day, up to 150 pounds tail weight per trip for large-mesh vessels fishing in the Southern New England Regulated Mesh Area east of 72º30'W longitude that are not on a monkfish, groundfish, or scallop day-at-sea and for vessels fishing under a Skate Bait Letter of Authorization in the Southern New England Regulated Mesh Area east of 74º00'W longitude; and
Eliminated the letter of authorization requirement for vessels fishing with vessel monitoring systems (VMSs) in the Northern Fishery Management Area but maintained the requirement for non-VMS vessels.
See CFN April 2008 for more background on individual provisions.
Janice M. Plante
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