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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 11
July 2007
Scallopers prepare for 2008-2009 actions
GLOUCESTER, MA – With a brand new scallop stock assessment almost ready to guide the decision-making, the New England Fishery Management Council’s scallop committee and industry advisers were preparing to begin work in earnest this summer on Framework Adjustment 19 to the federal scallop plan.
The framework is the biennial adjustment that will determine days-at-sea allocations, the area-rotation schedule, and general category rules for the 2008 and 2009 fishing years.
Meanwhile, two other scallop actions recently went forward to continue the reduction in fishing activity in the Elephant Trunk Area and prevent overfishing for the rest of the 2007 fishing year.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) extended a previous “interim” action for an additional 180 days. This was the action requested by industry and the council that significantly cut back fishing effort in the Elephant Trunk Area.
The interim rules first went into place Dec. 22, 2006 and were scheduled to expire June 20, 2007. NMFS extended the measures through Dec. 23, 2007, the maximum extension allowed under its authority.
However, the 2007 fishing year doesn’t end until Feb. 29, 2008. Without additional action, the regulations will revert back to their original status and fishing pressure during January and February could increase.
“If the Elephant Trunk Area opens back up under status quo measures, that pulse of activity in January and February could cause the overfishing threshold to be reached,” said Deirdre Boelke, the council’s scallop plan coordinator.
Framework 20
To prevent this from happening, the council initiated Framework 20 during its April meeting and signed off on the action at its June 19-21 meeting in Portland.
The framework, which was being submitted to NMFS, extends the same measures implemented under the NMFS interim action. It:
Delays the opening of the Elephant Trunk Area from Jan. 1 to March 1;
Reduces the number of trips by full-time scallopers into the area from five to three with an 18,000-pound trip limit;
Reduces the number of trips by part-time scallopers among all access areas from three to two with an 18,000-pound trip limit;
Continues to allow occasional vessels to make one trip into one of the scallop access areas but reduces the trip limit to 7,500 pounds;
Reduces the number of general category trips allowed in the Elephant Trunk Area from 1,360 to 865; and
Prohibits deckloading of more than 50 bushels of in-shell scallops outside the boundaries of the Elephant Trunk Area for vessels on access-area trips.
When the area did open on March 1, the general category fleet was quick to capitalize on the opportunity. On March 15, NMFS closed the Elephant Trunk Area to general category effort after projecting that the fleet had taken its full compliment of 865 trips in roughly two weeks.
Elephant Trunk
With the Elephant Trunk Area being vital to the fishery for the next four years, industry members have recognized the need to husband the resource and strongly supported the development of Framework 20 as a follow-up to the NMFS emergency action.
The resource in the Elephant Trunk Area is extremely large, although three different at-sea surveys in 2006 indicated that the biomass was lower than originally projected three years ago.
Nonetheless, scientists calculate that over half of the Mid-Atlantic scallop biomass is located inside the Elephant Trunk, and scallops within the boundaries represent roughly one-quarter of the entire Northeast region’s scallop biomass.
Well aware of this fact, the Fisheries Survival Fund, which represents most of the full-time limited-access permit holders in the fishery, prepared a “Best Management Practices” handout for the fleet.
The handout urged all scallopers to help maximize yields from the Elephant Trunk Area by, among other things: spacing out trips; making short tows; shucking “what you catch;” and not anchoring and shucking over the best tow.
“The industry will depend heavily on the Elephant Trunk Area from 2007 to 2010,” said the FSF. “(We are) encouraging the whole scallop industry to help preserve a strong Elephant Trunk access-area fishery.”
Furthermore, the FSF urged fishermen to take advantage of stock abundance information provided through the 2006 scallop video survey conducted by industry with the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST).
According to Kevin Stokesbury, chair of SMAST’s Department of Fisheries Oceanography, the biggest concentration of small scallops with shell heights of less than 3-3/4" was found in the northeastern portion of the Elephant Trunk Area.
“Most of the larger scallops are in the western portion,” Stokesbury wrote in a memo to the FSF.
“If the fleet is able to focus on the larger scallops in 2007, the smaller scallops may provide a better harvest in 2008,” he said.
Framework 19
At press time in late June, the New England council was expecting the release of a brand new stock assessment for scallops sometime this summer.
Up to now, the council’s scallop committee, scallop plan development team, and industry advisers had been holding off on detailed work on Framework 19 pending the assessment’s results, but all three groups were expected to hold several meetings through July and August to develop Framework 19 alternatives as soon as the assessment results became available.
The council is scheduled to take final action on Framework 19 at its September meeting. Missing that deadline could result in a delay in NMFS’s approving the package for implementation by March 1, the start of the 2008 fishing year.
As in previous years, the biennial framework will establish the new rotational management area schedule and contain the appropriate numbers of access-area trips for limited-access scallopers, as well as open-area days-at-sea allocations for these vessels.
This time, however, the framework also will include measures for general category fishermen that may build upon regulations enacted under Amendment 11.
The council took final action on Amendment 11 at its June meeting, which was taking place as CFN went to press. See next month’s issue for details.
Nantucket, CA I
In other scallop news, the Nantucket Lightship area and Closed Area I (CAI) opened to scalloping activity on June 15. Both areas are part of the 2007 rotational area management schedule.
Full-time scallopers have been allocated one trip into each of the areas, while part-time and occasional scallopers have been allocated one trip between the two areas, which they can take only if they haven’t already used their full allocation of access-area trips in the Elephant Trunk Area.
General category fishermen are being allowed to make a total of 394 trips into the Nantucket Lightship area and 216 trips into Closed Area I. Once those trips are taken, the affected area will be closed to general category effort for the rest of the 2007 fishing year.
Both areas are under a yellowtail flounder bycatch limit – 46,018 pounds for the Nantucket Lightship area and 194,442 pounds for Closed Area I. If the yellowtail total allowable catch (TAC) is reached, then the affected area will be closed to scalloping.
In this event, limited-access scallopers who haven’t utilized their trips into the areas will be allocated additional open-area days as compensation – 4.9 days for Nantucket and 5.5 days for Closed Area I.
The scallop fleet is allocated 9.8% of the annual TAC for yellowtail in the US/Canada Management Area. If the groundfish fleet ends up harvesting 100% of the TAC, scallopers still will be able to fish up to their 9.8% but won’t be able to retain any yellowtail.
Limited-access scallopers can keep up to 300 pounds of monktails per day on an access-area trip. In addition, they can keep up to 1,000 pounds of cod, haddock, and yellowtail combined if they posses valid groundfish permits.
Scallopers are subject to groundfish trip limits and minimum sizes and cannot, under any circumstance, keep more than 100 pounds of cod as part of that 1,000-pound total. Furthermore, scallopers can only keep cod for personal use and are prohibited from selling, trading, or bartering this species.
If by chance the groundfish TACs are harvested, then scallop vessels will not be allowed to possess any groundfish species.
Scallop observers
Finally, effective June 12, NMFS implemented Amendment 13 to the scallop plan to permanently re-activate the industry-funded observer program in the scallop fishery.
NMFS took emergency action in 2006 to get the program back on track after having put it on hold for two years due to contractual issues with the service provider. The New England council developed Amendment 13 to put the NMFS emergency action in place for good.
The scallop plan contains provisions to set aside a percentage of the scallop total allowable catch (TAC) and available days-at-sea to help vessel owners defray the cost of carrying observers.
Amendment 13, on the other hand, contains certification requirements for service providers and procedures to allow vessel owners to pay providers for observer services, among other things. See CFN January 2007 for details.
Janice M. Plante
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