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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 11
July 2006
New England council rejects general category scallop draft
NEWPORT, RI – In a completely unexpected move, the New England Fishery Management Council resoundingly rejected a draft package of limited-access general category scallop measures developed by its scallop committee.
Instead, the council, which is extremely divided over how to treat this traditional, small-boat, 400-pound-per-day fishery, agreed to send the document back to the committee – possibly one made up of new members – to develop a broader range of alternatives.
Council members walked into a meeting room here in Newport on June 15 ready to review qualification criteria and permit restrictions for the fishery. That list of measures would be given to technical experts for analysis and development into a public hearing document for Amendment 11 to the federal scallop plan.
But by early evening, too many council members had reached the conclusion that the general category fishery was being transformed into something they didn’t recognize and never intended it to be.
They either found the qualification criteria too limiting or the management options too narrow or feared that Gulf of Maine fishermen wouldn’t be fairly included in the mix.
The vote to move the document forward was defeated 5-to-8.
“I don’t think any of us are happy with the way things are going,” said New Hampshire council member Dave Goethel. “We tried four or five times to come up with something that would work in the Gulf of Maine. We were trying to send the only message we could send through this vote – that we need to do something that will work.”
Rhode Island council member Phil Ruhle said he voted negatively because the only options in the draft document for controlling the general category fishery involved individual fishing quotas (IFQs) or hard, fleet-wide total allowable catches (TACs), which many worried would lead to a derby fishery.
Scallop committee Chairman Tom Hill of Massachusetts was astounded by the council’s reaction. He said the committee had tried to stand by the advice of its industry advisers, who largely said individual quota allocations were the only way to treat fairly the enormous array of diverse participants in the fishery. Hill also said the advisers wanted to gain economic flexibility in the fishery.
“We didn’t get to where we got to with this document by accident. We spent weeks talking about this and the fact is there are no other alternatives,” he said.
Recognizing the growing division among council members as the day progressed, Hill at one point said, “It’s always difficult when we talk about qualifying people for a limited-entry program, but the reality of the matter is we’re trying to divide up a very limited pie. The farther you go back in time to qualify people, the more you take away from the participants in the fishery today. This is the challenge that we face.”
Qualifying years
The first major factor that appeared to influence the council’s ultimate decision to send the draft amendment back to the scallop committee was the qualification period. The draft document only contained two general category limited-access permit qualification periods:
Option 1 – March 1, 2003 through Nov. 1, 2004, which is the control date; or
Option 2 – March 1, 2000 through
Nov. 1, 2004.
Under both timeframes, participants also would need to show proof of having landed either:
100 pounds or more on any one trip; or
1,000 pounds in one or more years of scallops.
The council’s scallop industry advisers had supported a third alternative running from March 1, 1994 through Nov. 1, 2004. This qualifying option would have spanned the complete period between implementation of Amendment 4, which ushered in limited entry for the existing full-time, part-time, and occasional fleet, and publication of the general category control date.
The council’s scallop committee, however, decided against this, fearing too many participants would be qualified into the fishery.
“My concern is the number of vessels,” said Pat Kurkul, Northeast regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service. “We’ve made this mistake over and over again. We’ve been too lenient in the initial qualification period.”
Massachusetts council member John Pappalardo had the same concern.
“It’s troubling to me that someone who fished 13 years ago and hasn’t fished since would qualify when we have people now who have invested in the fishery recently and they’d be out,” he said.
Push for 1994
The Maine delegation on the council fought hard for inclusion of a 1994-2004 option, arguing that many fishermen hadn’t been able to scallop in more recent times because the resource geographically available to them had been depleted.
“Unless we extend the date, one-third of the coastline in New England will be locked out when the scallops come back in the area,” said Dana Rice.
Terry Stockwell, also representing Maine on the council, added, “It would allow the people who fish in areas that recently had very poor recruitment to go forward.”
While the longer timeframe would allow more people to qualify for limited-access permits, it also would carve up available fishing opportunities among more people, which in years of low scallop abundance would make it more difficult for those remaining in the fishery.
Many said the difference between the two was a policy call.
Maine council member Jim Salisbury, who led the move to include the 1994-2004 dates, said, “I submit that we haven’t decided as a council that we do not want to have this fishery be part-time and seasonal as it was originally constructed.”
Goethel urged the council to at least include the longer timeframe in Amendment 11 as an alternative for public hearings.
“This would provide some balance in the document,” he said. “We can have a small number of full-time boats or a large number of part-time boats. The way we have it structured right now is for a small number of full-time boats, and I’m not sure that’s where the public really wants to go.”
The vote to include 1994-2004 failed 7-to-7.
GOM area
Next, Maine and New Hampshire council members tried to win support for a Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop Management Area whereby vessels that had landed at least 1,000 pounds of scallops between 1994-2004 could fish in the area north of 42°20' for up to 200 pounds per day with a 10.5' or smaller dredge under a hard TAC “backstop.”
This move, too, failed.
And then two other votes seemed to have a considerable impact on council members. One, which passed, added a third, 5,000-pound threshold to the qualification options, and the second, which also passed, added a 2,000-pound-per-trip possession limit alternative.
Those who supported the higher possession limit argued that under an IFQ program, where each vessel had its own allocation, the trip limit wouldn’t matter anymore.
But Rice looked out over the council and said, “Are we still talking about a general category fishery with a 2,000-pound trip limit?”
And Connecticut council member Dave Simpson added, “You’re going to end up with two big-boat fisheries if you go down this road.”
All together, it proved to be too much, and when it came to the final vote, the package went down.
The council then voted to ask its chairman, Frank Blount of Rhode Island, to “reconstitute” the scallop committee with new members since some existing members were of the position that all other general category options had been exhausted.
No vision
At various times prior to the final vote, numerous people told the council they were troubled by the lack of vision for the general category fishery.
“The council will have to consider what it wants this limited-access fishery to be,” said Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) attorney David Frulla. “What you have to be careful about here is creating a junior version of the offshore fleet.”
New Bedford vessel owner Harriet Didriksen said, “You’re not going to help the 400-pound fisherman. You’re going to turn this over to big business. Two thousand pounds is big fishing. Those small boats aren’t going to do it – not the boats you’re talking about that have sustained themselves (in the general category fishery). I don’t know what your vision is. You’re not helping small people here.”
FSF biologist Trevor Kenchington said the council needed to ask itself the “big” questions – “What is the general category for? Why do we need a day-boat fishery? Do you have a range of alternatives here that lets us go forward into the future in the way you envision?”
Kenchington said he worried the council didn’t have enough alternatives in the document.
Except for hard quotas, “All of these alternatives are calling for IFQ management in one way or another,” he said. “IFQ management for a lot of small boats is (difficult). I think we need more alternatives.”
Tom Hill vehemently disagreed that the committee hadn’t considered the bigger picture.
“We do have a vision,” he said. “We wanted to control fishing mortality in the general category section, create a limited-access fishery in a way that the participants had a reasonable chance of being successful, and we wanted to be fair.”
Many views
Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, who has strongly supported the original intent behind Amendment 4’s general category fishery, expressed grave concern about the direction the fishery was going in.
“People coming in are trying to gain a bigger portion of the resource and guarantee it for themselves,” he said. “They want to be small-boat, big-time fishermen and exclude the people who for years have been part of this niche fishery.
“I think the council in its zeal to protect this fishery is going to go too damn far,” Kendall said. “You’ll take down the small guy. You’re going to find few of the people you recognize.”
David Wallace, representing general category fishermen in the Mid-Atlantic, viewed things differently.
“The world has changed,” he said. “The fishermen today are businessmen. If you don’t have a business plan, you don’t have a path to success.”
Although Wallace acknowledged that some sort of special consideration might be needed for the Gulf of Maine, he said, “I think we should find a way to let people who are in the business decide who should stay and who should go.”
And one way to do that, he said, would be to let them rent or buy that privilege.
Fishery consultant Dick Allen of Rhode Island also thought the fishery and people’s thinking had evolved considerably in recent times.
“I went to most of the advisory panel meetings,” he said. “I was impressed by the thoughtful deliberation that went into what you have before you now. People are realizing that competing for the catch on the grounds doesn’t work any more. You should consider carefully whether maintaining the historical approach to this fishery is a realistic thing to do.”
Industry advisers
Attorney Stephen Ouellette, representing general category scallopers from Barnegat Light, NJ, expressed his concern about the number of items that were either deleted from or never included in the document that had been developed by industry advisers.
“An awful lot of well-thought-out concepts from the advisers have been lost,” he said. “I think the advisers are going to be surprised and somewhat disappointed by the way this management program is now being developed.”
Ouellette said many advisers had wanted the 1994-2004 timeframe to be an option in the document. They had come to terms with the fact that they might “lose a few friends and neighbors to the control date,” but they still “kind of assumed this would remain a 400-pound fishery.”
Maine fisherman Gary Hatch, a scallop adviser himself, said, “We’re just trying to interject some common sense here, at least keep a foothold on the traditional fishery.
“The majority of what’s been brought back today I find to be severely flawed,” he said. “Send this back to committee to get real effort controls. The criteria we’re trying to qualify these guys with are false.”
Janice M. Plante
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