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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 11
July 2006
’06 bluefin fishery: Plenty of quota to go around
GLOUCESTER, MA - This year, there is more quota available for the commercial bluefin tuna fishery than in the last two decades, but whether fishermen will have the opportunity to catch all those fish is another question altogether.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced its final initial specifications and effort control measures for the 2006 bluefin fishery late in May just prior to the June 1 start of the fishing year.
The general category quota, which includes 473.5 metric tons (mt) of underharvest from 2005, is a staggering 1,163.3 mt, nearly twice the category’s baseline allocation of 689.8 mt.
The quota is divided up among three subperiods:
June-August – 692 mt;
September – 346 mt; and
October-January – 115.3 mt.
The remaining 10 mt is reserved for the New York Bight fishery.
In addition to the subperiod splits, NMFS once again has designated the following restricted fishing days: all Saturdays and Sundays from Nov. 18, 2006 through Jan. 1, 2007 and Nov. 23 and Dec. 25.
NMFS set the general category bag limit at three fish for June 1-Aug. 31. It will drop to one fish Sept. 1-Jan. 31.
Harpoon, seine quotas
The quota for the harpoon category is 124 mt, which represents a 66.9 mt underharvest plus the category’s 2006 baseline allocation of 57.1 mt.
The purse seine quota is 624.1 mt, which represents a 351.7 mt underharvest plus the category’s 2006 baseline allocation of 272.4 mt.
The longline quota is 268.2 mt, which represents a 128.4 mt underharvest plus the category’s 2006 baseline allocation of 143.6 mt, less a 3.8 mt deduction for 2005 adjustments, including dead discards and reserve transfers.
Days-off needed?
In its announcement, NMFS said the general category days-off were intended to extend the southern Atlantic region’s general category fishery into the late season.
To New England industry people beaten down by two years of disappointing landings with no real relief in sight, that notion seemed ridiculous and, in the context of international fishery management, even dangerous.
“We have an unprecedented amount of quota this year. The general category is nearly double its base quota. The harpoon category is more than double. The purse seine quota is very large,” said Rich Ruais, executive director of the East Coast Tuna Association (ECTA).
Outdated restrictions
NMFS has the authority to make inseason adjustments to its days-off and bag-limit rules and its fishing category and subperiod quota allocations.
In years past, NMFS sometimes has been willing to make adjustments quickly in response to industry requests. But at other times, that has not been the case.
Last winter, industry people pleaded with NMFS to roll over uncaught summer and fall quota into the winter fishery subperiod and lift days-off restrictions to encourage experienced commercial tuna fishermen and dealers to go down to North Carolina – where the fish were biting – and catch at least some of the quota.
While NMFS lifted the days-off in a piecemeal fashion during the October-January winter subperiod, it declined to provide the assurances most industry people needed to take the financial risk to make the trip south.
“We’ll have to start working on NMFS in July to ensure there’s an opportunity to fish this year,” Ruais predicted. “NMFS really should look at every single restriction on this fishery. Any restriction on this fishery is outdated.”
Ruais, who has served for many years as a member of the US delegation to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), said ICCAT is under intense pressure to take uncaught quota away from the US and distribute it to other countries that want it and can catch it.
“There will be calls for a major western quota reduction this fall,” Ruais said.
School fish
After a sweeping campaign targeting members of Congress by recreational and charter boat fishermen and the organizations that represent them, NMFS backed off of its initial 2006 bluefin season proposal allocating no quota at all for the angling category school fish fishery.
Instead, the agency allocated the angling category 380.1 mt, which represents a 91.5 mt underage plus the category’s 2006 baseline allocation of 288.6 mt.
Of that 380.1-mt quota, 49.2 mt is allocated as school fish 27" up to 47".
The school fish quota is further split geographically – north and south of 39°18’N latitude around Great Egg Inlet, NJ – with 26 mt reserved for the south during July 1-21 and 23.2 mt for the north during Aug. 25-Sept. 14.
Errors revealed
NMFS said it changed its mind about allowing a school fish fishery because of the results of an investigation into practices used to estimate the amount of fish caught by anglers through the Large Pelagic Survey (LPS).
Back in 2004, industry people, including ECTA members, pointed out inconsistencies in how fish were being measured by the contractors hired to carry out the survey.
Chatham, MA bluefin dealer Robert Fitzpatrick of Maguro America also raised serious questions about the accuracy of a table used by NMFS to convert lengths into weights.
NMFS’s recently completed study of those questions revealed a problem that may have resulted in overcounting of angling category landings.
While not going into great detail, the agency said that it was appropriate to adjust angling category landings for 2002-2004 downward by 4.88%. This adjustment allowed for an allocation of 40.9 mt more in the final rule than in the proposed rule, NMFS said.
The agency tries to keep a lid on the school fish fishery because ICCAT limits school fish mortality to 8% of the overall quota allocation averaged over four years. This year is the last of the current four-year period.
Lots of little fish
Tom DePersia is a commercial giant bluefin tuna fisherman out of Green Harbor, MA, who also owns three charter boats and is president of the Stellwagen Bank Charterboat Association.
“This is a big victory for the charter boats,” he said of the school fish allocation, “because a great majority of the fish around here are in that size category.”
The schoolies started showing up in New England waters in massive numbers about four or five years ago, he estimated.
“I fished for giants for 30 years and I remember once when I caught a 550-pound giant thinking that I’d never seen a bluefin that small,” he said. “Now we see schools of thousands and thousands, maybe millions of school fish. A great number of commercial fishermen have gone over to chartering. It’s a fantastic fishery that’s really boosted the economy around here.”
He added that his group has joined with other charterboat associations and the Recreational Fishing Alliance to hire private bluefin scientist Frank Hester to take a closer look at the LPS.
“We think the error is way bigger than NMFS said it is,” DePersia said. “If they made a mistake and overcharged us, we’re hoping we’ll have the data to help us have a fishery in the future.”
Lorelei Stevens
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