COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 11
July 2010
NMFS reduces common pool trip limits on five species; adjusts 2010 groundfish ACLs
GLOUCESTER, MA – The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) took a couple of actions in May and June to adjust and/or clarify groundfish regulations and allocations related to Amendment 16.
The actions included reductions in landing limits for common pool fishermen, adjustments to annual catch limits (ACLs) for everyone, adjustments to annual catch entitlements (ACE) for sector fishermen, and the scheduling of outreach meetings to gather feedback on the new sector/common pool management system.
NMFS published preliminary ACLs and sub-ACLs for the sector and common pool components of the fishery back on April 9. However, as a way to provide increased flexibility to the industry, NMFS also gave vessel owners who initially enrolled in a groundfish sector until April 30 to change their minds.
As it turned out, 50 vessels took advantage of the opportunity and did, in fact, drop out, leaving a grand total of 762 vessels in sectors.
NMFS then recalculated ACLs, sub-ACLs, and, for sectors, ACE allocations based on final 2010 sector rosters. The agency published final allocations for all stocks for all sectors and the common pool in the May 26 Federal Register.
Common pool
In a different action, NMFS announced on May 24 that, effective May 27, it was adjusting the trip limit on five different stocks for common pool fishermen.
The agency imposed trip limits on three stocks that previously had no possession limit at all – Gulf of Maine haddock, Georges Bank haddock, and Gulf of Maine winter flounder. These stocks now have trip limits of 1,000 pounds, 10,000 pounds, and 250 pounds respectively for common pool fishermen.
Furthermore, the trip limit for Georges Bank winter flounder was reduced from 5,000 pounds to 1,000 pounds, and the limit for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder dropped from 2,500 pounds to 1,000 pounds.
The new trip limits apply to all vessels fishing in the common pool under a groundfish day-at-sea or under a Small-Vessel or Handgear A or B category permit.
NMFS said it was taking this action “in order to slow the catch of some Northeast multispecies stocks to maximize the availability of fish throughout the course of the fishing year.”
Small ACLs
The drop in trip limits had been feared but expected by many common pool fishermen who knew from the start that overall allocations of most groundfish stocks to the common pool were extremely low.
Due to recent changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the groundfish fishery, like all others, is now subject to catch limits, which, essentially, are quotas that are called ACLs.
The common pool fishery has been allocated a portion – or a sub-ACL – of the overall ACL for each groundfish stock. The sub-ACL is equivalent to the portion of the overall groundfish ACL that is not allocated to the 17 approved groundfish sectors.
Here are the final 2010 sub-ACLs for the five impacted common pool stocks, followed by the percentage harvested 20 days into the new fishing year, which caused NMFS to adjust trip limits. That’s followed by the percentage harvested as of June 16, which indicates that much more fish was caught in the common pool fishery in the subsequent 3-1/2 weeks:
Georges Bank haddock – 559,974 pounds available to the common pool fishery, 13.7% harvested as of May 20 and 30.4% harvested as of June 16;
Gulf of Maine winter flounder – 55,116 pounds available, 33.4% harvested as of May 20 and 61% harvested as of June 16;
Georges Bank winter flounder – 63,934 pounds available, 11.2% harvested as of May 20 and 23.7% as of June 16;
Georges Bank yellowtail flounder – 50,706 pounds available, 34.4% harvested as of May 20 and 45.5% harvested as of June 16; and
Gulf of Maine haddock – 57,320 pounds available, very little harvested as of May 20 and 3.1% harvested as of June 16.
Even though landings to date of Gulf of Maine haddock were low in the common pool, NMFS said, “The sub-ACL for this stock is small enough that it could be harvested by a few large trips” without a trip limit.
Consequences
Under Amendment 16, NMFS has the authority to make changes to the common pool fishery to prevent over- or under-harvests of the sub-ACLs.
Although the sub-ACLs technically are not “hard” quotas, exceeding a sub-ACL has significant consequences, which is why NMFS said it adjusted the trip limit for several stocks.
In a May 27 Federal Register notice, NMFS said that exceeding a common pool sub-ACL prior to the end of the fishing year, which runs through April 30, 2011, “would require drastic trip limit reductions and/or imposition of differential days-at-sea counting for the remainder of fishing year 2010 to minimize the overage, and would trigger accountability measures in fishing year 2011, including differential days-at-sea counting, to prevent future overages.”
At press time, it was unclear whether or not NMFS would take additional action later in the year to further adjust common pool measures in order to avoid 2011 consequences. /cfn/
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
