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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 10
June 2010
Skate possession limit expected to increase
MYSTIC, CT – It wasn’t a done deal at press time, but almost everyone involved expected the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) would soon significantly increase the skate wing possession limit for the 2010 and 2011 fishing years.
The procedure was taking a bit of bureaucratic finagling because NMFS already approved Amendment 3 to the federal skate plan back on March 23. The amendment, developed by the New England Fishery Management Council, established a 1,900-pound skate wing possession limit, which many fishermen and processors said was unrealistically low and would lead to further discards and crippling market implications.
However, in a welcomed turn of events, the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) looked at updated survey data and issued new advice, and the council voted during its April 27-29 meeting to ask NMFS to incorporate the SSC’s revised figure for acceptable biological catch (ABC) into Amendment 3 and “adjust” the skate wing possession limit to 5,000 pounds.
While still considered low compared to some past wing landings, a 5,000-pound limit was widely viewed as a vast improvement over 1,900 pounds.
The council briefly discussed an increase to 4,100 pounds based on projections from its skate plan development team (PDT), but Maine council member Jim Odlin pushed for a higher limit.
Given that “half the fleet will be tying up” under the new groundfish sector program, Odlin said the risk of exceeding the skate plan’s 80% trigger was minimal, and it was highly unlikely anyone would target skates by themselves under current conditions.
“No one will steam to Georges for 5,000 pounds of skates,” he said. “You can’t make it pay.”
The council concurred, noting that, as a safeguard, the possession limit would drop to 500 pounds under Amendment 3 once 80% of the annual skate wing total allowable landing (TAL) limit is reached.
Numbers
Here’s how this complicated turn of events took place.
First, the New England council approved Amendment 3 with an ABC of 30,643 metric tons (mt) based on original advice from the SSC. In the skate fishery, the ABC is equal to the annual catch limit (ACL).
The original ABC figure led the council to adopt a TAL of 9,427 mt. The reason that total allowable landings are so much lower than the ABC and ACL is because skate discards are high, and federal law now requires the ACL to account for both landings and discards.
The council then divided the TAL into two parts – 66.5% for the wing fishery and 33.5% for the skate bait fishery. This, in turn, led the council to adopt a 1,900-pound skate wing possession limit to stretch out the available wing fishery TAL and avoid reaching the 80% trigger.
NMFS received Amendment 3 from the council and published a proposed rule in the Federal Register on Jan. 21. After reviewing comments, the agency informed the council on March 23 that it had approved Amendment 3, but NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said in a letter to council Chairman John Pappalardo that NMFS was aware of the SSC’s ongoing work to revise the interim ABC “based upon new scientific information.”
NMFS held off on officially publishing the final rule.
The SSC, which met in March, took a fresh look at skates after receiving updated data from the fall 2008 bottom trawl survey. This information was not available to the SSC when it initially developed an ABC for the skate complex.
According to SSC Chairman Steve Cadrin, the fall 2008 survey showed a “substantial increase” in the catch of winter skates that occurred “in all strata.” The wing fishery largely consists of winter skates.
In response, the SSC recommended that the ABC be revised to 41,080 mt – a figure more than 10,000 mt higher than the original advice.
Cadrin said the SSC further recommended that the council reconsider its strategy for managing skates. The seven skate species in the complex – thorny, smooth, rosette, clearnose, winter, little, and barndoor – largely have very different life histories, making it hard to treat them all alike in one management complex.
The skate PDT, armed with the SSC’s new advice, met in mid-April and recalculated the remaining figures. Under the higher ABC, the PDT said the new TAL would be 12,638 mt, which would result in a skate wing TAL of 8,404 mt and a skate bait TAL of 4,234 mt. The possession limit in the bait fishery, which is predominately made up of little skates, is 20,000 pounds whole weight for vessels possessing a Skate Bait Letter of Authorization.
The council listened to this new information and unanimously voted to ask NMFS to increase the skate wing possession limit to 5,000 pounds.
NMFS’s decision and a final rule were expected imminently when CFN went to press in late May.
Janice M. Plante
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