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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 11
July 2006
RI lobster trap cap plan under DEM review
WAKEFIELD, RI – At its June 5 meeting, the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council endorsed a plan to cap effort in the state’s lobster fishery. Now it’s up to Michael Sullivan, the director of the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), to decide whether to go forward with the plan.
“Given the importance of the issue, the director will be taking time to review the full public record,” said Bob Ballou, Sullivan’s chief of staff, in early June. “He’s very committed to making a timely decision in a careful way.”
The trap cap plan was the result of a lengthy and difficult process that included open mediated meetings among lobstermen and consultation with state managers.
Addendum VII compliance
The goal of the plan is to meet the requirements of Addendum VII to Amendment 3 of the interstate lobster plan approved last November by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) American Lobster Management Board.
Addendum VII mandates the establishment of a multistate effort control program for Lobster Conservation Management Area 2 to cap effort – meaning the number of traps fished – at “recent levels.”
That wound up being translated by managers to mean about 180,000 pots between Rhode Island and Massachusetts, with Rhode Island lobstermen accounting for about two-thirds of the total.
The 180,000-pot figure is down from 300,000-plus pots that were fished in the late 1990s but up from around 150,000 pots in 2003, when catches declined, according to Mark Gibson, deputy chief for marine fisheries with DEM’s Division of Fish and Wildlife.
Massachusetts adopted a similar trap cap plan earlier this year and the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries mailed qualifying lobster permit holders their initial allocation letters this spring.
Addendum VII also: limits participation in the fishery to permit holders who have been active in the fishery in recent years; creates trap limits for individual permit holders based on the number of traps they reported fishing and their reported landings; and establishes a program that allows the transfers of traps from one lobsterman to another with the “payment” of a conservation tax assessed as a percentage of the number of traps transferred.
For the Rhode Island lobster fishery, these ASMFC-imposed requirements made it inevitable that some permit holders would remain viable in the fishery while others would be shut out.
“This was not a pretty thing, but it was something we had to deal with,” said Lanny Dellinger, vice president of the Rhode Island Lobstermen’s Association (RILA).
Allocation authority
The plan would give DEM’s Division of Fish and Wildlife authority to allocate traps to state and federally licensed Rhode Island residents.
When dealing with lobstermen who have both state and federal permits, DEM would forward all proposed Area 2 federal waters allocations to the National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure that no one received “duplicate allocations from different jurisdictions for the same catch history.”
Only lobstermen who received an Area 2 trap allocation would be able to commercially land lobsters taken by traps from Area 2.
Eligibility
The plan would require anyone with a valid license who wanted an Area 2 trap allocation to apply to DEM by Sept. 30, 2006 for each allocation being sought.
A commercial lobsterman would have to present convincing documentation to DEM that he had a valid license and legally used traps to harvest lobsters in Area 2 during the years 2001-2003.
Anyone who held a license endorsed for Area 2 during 2001-2003 but did not renew their license or reported no landings or reduced landings during 2001-2003 wouldn’t be eligible for an Area 2 trap allocation.
Exceptions would be given only to those people with documented medical impairments or proof of military service. They would be able to request initial allocations based on 1999-2000 fishing performance in Area 2.
Criteria questioned
This limited qualification and exception language troubled marine fisheries council members, according to Gibson.
“There was discussion about the qualifying years and hardship criteria,” he said. The council “felt the plan was too restrictive” and “recommended that the director find more latitude to include other people.”
That may be difficult, Gibson added.
“He’ll have trouble doing that and complying with the ASMFC plan,” he said. “The more people you put into a fixed pie, the fewer traps you’ll be able to allocate per person. Those traps will come from the full-time lobstermen.”
Gibson wouldn’t venture a guess as to how many people would qualify and how many wouldn’t until the application and appeals processes are complete.
As inclusive as possible
RILA fully endorsed this plan, much to the anger of the fishermen who lobster occasionally or part-time. But according to Dellinger, association members felt they had no choice.
“We did the best we could under the circumstances,” he said. “We were stuck. We didn’t have much wiggle room. If we didn’t do it this way, we wouldn’t have any full-time fleet left.”
Added RILA President Mike Marchetti, “It was our intention to be as inclusive as possible. Our first plan was to give everyone a minimum of 100 traps. ASMFC wouldn’t let us do that. Everybody has a friend being hurt by this. But there was no fair way to do this.”
“Effective traps fished”
Under the plan, a qualifying lobsterman’s initial Area 2 trap allocation would be based on his lobster landings and traps fished as reported in the DEM’s lobster catch/effort logbooks and/or the federal vessel trip reports for the qualifying years 2001-2003.
Specifically, the allocation “shall be the highest value of ‘effective traps fished’ during any year of the 2001-2003 qualifying period.”
The plan defines “effective traps fished” as the lower value of (1) the maximum number of traps a lobsterman reported that he fished in a year (reported traps fished) or (2) the predicted number of traps required to catch the poundage of lobsters the lobsterman reported landing in a year.
“In no case would an applicant’s initial trap allocation exceed their maximum number of traps fished during the qualifying period 2001-2003,” the plan said.
The maximum initial Area 2 lobster trap allocation will be 800 traps “for each qualifying Area 2 lobster trap fishing history,” the plan said.
The plan would allow for an appeals process but basically limit appeals to the correction of data entry or mathematical errors in logbooks or landings reports.
Overall trap cap
The plan further states that an overall trap allocation cap shall be established and, subject to ASMFC lobster board approval, will become “the maximum number of traps allocated among all permit holders fishing in Area 2 from the states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.”
This cap would include any trap allocations granted through the appeal process.
Dellinger emphasized that people would have the opportunity to get into the fishery and build their trap numbers, but it would have to be done through trap transfers.
“This is not a closed thing,” he said. “People will have to purchase their way in. If transferability works as it’s supposed to, you’ll be able to get in the fishery at a small level.”
Only the beginning?
If DEM finally adopts and implements this plan, it will be complying with the requirements of Addendum VII. However, since last year’s approval of that addendum, ASMFC has approved another one – Addendum VIII, which contains a new set of biological reference points for fishing mortality and abundance. According to these new reference points, the Southern New England lobster stock is depleted and overfishing is occurring.
So, even after all the pain and conflict involved in getting to this point, the plan only caps traps. ASMFC is likely to require additional conservation measures for Southern New England stock area in the future, possibly through Addendum IX. The lobster board is expected to discuss its next move at a meeting in August.
The idea of additional cuts is unacceptable, according to Marchetti.
“I refuse to have anyone else take a hit on this. Rhode Island has done enough,” he said. “This plan is made to be aggressive over time” at reducing traps.
Rhode Island is already preparing to demonstrate that it is taking steps to achieve adequate fishing mortality reductions and stock rebuilding even under the new reference points.
Gibson said the state and industry have “an ace up our sleeve” and that’s the fact that the industry has been v-notching since 2002 under a program set up as part of the North Cape oil spill remediation efforts.
“We now have 1.2 million females in the water producing eggs,” he said.
DEM, with solid support from industry, is also pursuing the adoption of a zero-tolerance v-notch definition, Gibson added.
“That will extend the life span of these v-notched females,” he said.
RILA members, too, have jumped on board to keep the v-notching effort alive even after the North Cape program is over.
“We bought v-notch tools for the whole association earlier this year, and the fishermen are actively notching,” Dellinger said. “Hopefully things are going to get better, not worse from now on.”
Lorelei Stevens
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