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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 12
August 2005
NE council ‘prefers’ strictest herring alternative
PORTLAND, ME – Concerned about localized depletion and overcapacity in Area 1A, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to send its strictest proposal out to public hearing as a “preferred alternative” for Amendment 1 to the federal herring plan.
Known as Alternative 7, the option proposes to institute a complete ban on midwater trawling activity in Area 1A from June 1 through Sept. 30, thereby creating a seasonal “purse seine/fixed gear only” zone at a time of year when lobster and bluefin tuna fishing hit their peaks.
It also contains the most restrictive limited-access criteria for Area 1 because it uses the 1999 control date. If Alternative 7 receives final approval, the only herring vessels that will be allowed to fish in Area 1 will be those with documented landings of at least 500 metric tons (mt) of herring during one calendar year between Jan. 1, 1988 and Sept. 16, 1999.
The qualification criteria for Areas 2 and 3 are less restrictive. Qualifying vessels would have to have documented landings of at least 250 mt of herring in any one calendar year between Jan. 1, 1988 and Dec. 31, 2003.
Boilerplate language regarding permit splitting, permit history transfers, permit renewals, appeals, vessel upgrades, vessel replacements, and related issues will be part of herring Amendment 1 as well.
In the transfer department, this language specifies that “vessel permit and fishing histories remain with the vessel hull whenever a vessel is bought, sold, or transferred unless a written document demonstrates that all histories were retained by a transferor/seller.”
Under Alternative 7, an estimated 23 vessels would qualify for the directed fishery in Area 1 and an additional 22 boats would qualify for Areas 2 and 3. All Area 1 qualifiers would qualify for Areas 2 and 3 under the Alternative 7 criteria.
Public hearings on the herring plan amendment are expected to take place in October. The council will vote on the amendment in November. It will then be submitted to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for final approval.
Alternative 8
The council took this action at its June 21-23 meeting in Portland, but first spent considerable time deciding whether to include an additional alternative in the public hearing document.
A new proposal, known as Alternative 8, was developed by representatives of the bluefin tuna industry, Oceana, CHOIR, and the American Pelagic Association (APA) with support from the New Bedford-based processing company NORPEL. The groups were attempting to reach a compromise among stakeholders with vastly different interests.
Alternative 8 proposed that midwater trawl boats each be allowed to make two trips per month into Area 1A between June 1 and Aug. 30. It also contained more liberal qualification criteria for Area 1 and Areas 2 and 3, which would have allowed an additional two-to-four vessels into the fishery that wouldn’t qualify under other amendment alternatives.
After a long and passionate debate that included numerous comments from industry on both sides of the issue, the council voted against including Alternative 8 in the document.
And then, to the surprise of many, the council picked Alternative 7 – the strictest of the seven alternatives in draft Amendment 1 – as the preferred alternative for October’s public hearings.
How it happened
Work on Amendment 1 began over two years ago specifically to develop a limited-access program for the Atlantic herring fishery. The council solicited industry proposals until August 2004 and then focused on analyzing and culling the options it had in hand.
The proposal for Alternative 8 was first presented to the herring committee in May 2005, which generated concern in and of itself. Many committee members feared that consideration of a new alternative at “the eleventh hour” would further delay implementation of Amendment 1 and be unfair to others who were under the impression that no new proposals were being accepted.
At the June meeting, council member David Pierce of Massachusetts said he was “extremely sensitive” to those concerns but then argued, “Much has happened in the sea herring fishery. I feel it’s necessary to include this alternative in the amendment so we can get additional public comment.”
Pierce added, “I’ve done a lot of soul searching regarding this particular alternative and I feel it has a great deal of merit.”
According to Pierce, Alternative 8 was a valid attempt to address the localized herring depletion issue in Area 1A.
“I have been approached by many user groups and I have been made more sensitive about the issue of local depletion. I’ve heard enough. I’m convinced these are real and serious issues that should not be ignored,” he said.
Massachusetts council member John Pappalardo also expressed support.
“We have a broad range of stakeholders who have come together with an alternative. A lot of the issues this alternative is trying to address may or may not be quantifiable,” he said. “From my perspective, I believe it’s appropriate to allow inclusion of this alternative.”
Industry supporters
Rich Ruais, executive director of the East Coast Tuna Association, said his group was willing to at least see the analysis for a very limited midwater trawl fishery in Area 1A, especially since Alternative 8 still preserved the stricter buffer zone option contained in Alternative 7 as a fall back.
“With only two trips per month there, those vessels will now have a major incentive to move into the offshore fishery,” said Ruais.
Peter Moore of the APA said the tuna industry’s desire for a compromise had been apparent for a long time.
“Rich approached the herring industry three years ago looking for some concession for some exclusivity in Area 1A,” said Moore. “This is where we ended up.”
Moore said the two-trips-per-month proposal would result in a reduction of midwater trawl effort in Area 1A by 80%, even “as much as 90%,” which would be a major concession.
Opposition
Council member Dana Rice of Maine wasn’t convinced.
“This is a critical resource issue. I can’t support this with two trips per month per boat,” he said. “This alternative does nothing to address the main issue, which to me is localized depletion and the resource.”
Herring committee Chairman Lew Flagg of Maine expressed opposition to the timing.
“We closed the door last August to new alternatives,” he said. “To now allow an additional proposal without allowing others is patently unfair and inappropriate.”
Mary Beth Tooley, executive director of the East Coast Pelagic Association, which represents 17 vessels that fish for herring and mackerel from Rockland, ME to Cape May, NJ, also opposed consideration of Alternative 8.
“The majority of the herring industry was not involved in putting this proposal together,” she said. “It does not address localized depletion, and it actually allows for an increase in effort.”
Underutilized resource
Vito Calomo, executive director of the Massachusetts Fisheries Recovery Commission, pointed out that the New England council had strongly supported the development of shoreside processing capability for the herring fishery.
“The council should be very considerate of this. These people gambled millions of dollars to bring this fishery shoreside. We have brand new plants, brand new boats, and a reborn fishery,” he said.
“I think you need to allow those in the fishery today to stay in it,” Calomo said in support of the looser qualification criteria in Alternative 8. “Overfishing is not occurring and the stock is not overfished.”
Jim Kendall, representing NORPEL, echoed that sentiment.
“You can’t carry both messages forward – encourage people to come in and develop the fishery and then lock them out. I don’t see how this stands up to consideration of fair play. We’re talking about vessels that made serious inroads and investments in plants,” he said.
Concerns over allowing extra effort into the fishery was exactly why Jeff Kaelin opposed Alternative 8.
Representing the vessel Providian, Kaelin said, “We could be adding up to four large vessels into the fishery. To open this up in this manner today we think is inappropriate. When is this going to end? We’re really anxious to get this plan behind us.”
Some in, some out
After listening to discussion on both sides, New Hampshire council member David Goethel said he thought two different issues were being raised.
The first involved “who’s in and who’s out” of Area 1, and the second centered on the number of trips that midwater trawlers could make in Area 1A during the summer. Goethel said the council needed to be well aware that limiting smaller herring boats to two trips per month in Area 1A would be economically devastating.
“That’s basically putting them out of business,” he said, “so the winners and losers are very different” depending on which alternative is picked.
For that reason, council member John Nelson of New Hampshire said he supported sending Alternative 8 out to public hearing.
“Looking at who’s in and who’s out is going to be important for a number of these alternatives. I would like to be sure the public has an opportunity to provide us with that input,” Nelson said.
NMFS Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul opposed the move primarily because Alternative 8 had the potential to increase effort in the fishery.
“The issue is: ‘Does the capacity exist to harvest the resource at the level it can support?’” she said. “My position is: It does. We need to apply effort only to a point. I don’t share other people’s comfort level with the status of this resource and people’s ability to develop it.”
Send effort offshore
Flagg urged the council to vote against including Alternative 8 not only because of the timing problem but because he believed any additional effort in the fishery needed to be directed to Areas 2 and 3, not Area 1.
“Alternative 8 does nothing but add additional capacity to Area 1 and that’s what we were trying to address,” he said. “We have a very good range of alternatives right now with the existing seven. I think it’s imperative that we move on and identify the participants in this fishery, and then we can fine tune the measures.”
The motion to include Alternative 8 in the public hearing document failed by a vote of 5-to-10 with one abstention.
Alternative 7
With Alternative 8 off the table, the council then turned toward picking a preferred alternative from the original seven in the document.
The council’s herring committee recommended selecting Alternative 7, which Flagg, as committee chairman, put up for consideration by the full council.
David Pierce immediately protested.
“It’s the most restrictive alternative in the document,” he said. “It uses the 1999 control date for Area 1. I cannot consider it as a preferred alternative.”
David Goethel saw it differently.
“I’ve thought about this a lot and I think this most restrictive alternative is the only one we can take to not institute overcapacity in Area 1A,” he said.
Several industry members expressed vehement opposition.
Mary Beth Tooley said, “This displaces 70 percent to 80 percent of the fishery at a time when the lobster industry needs product the most. If you’re a midwater trawler of a certain size working in the Gulf of Maine, there’s nowhere else for you to go. Alternative 7 has significant economic consequences that are not addressed in this document.”
As of late June, the draft environmental impact statement for Amendment 1 contained roughly 300 pages describing herring-related businesses and communities, but Tooley expressed concern that less than 30 pages were devoted to the economic impacts of the various management alternatives. The impacts of Alternative 7 were described in less than one page, she pointed out.
On a final note, Tooley said of Alternative 7, “It does nothing to address localized depletion or forage issues.”
A new “villain”
Jeff Kaelin, who has a long history in the fishery and at one point was executive director of the Maine Sardine Council, also expressed opposition to Alternative 7.
“In the old days, the purse seiners were the villains. People said the fish didn’t come to the beach anymore. Now it’s the midwater trawlers that supposedly ruin everything,” he said. “I don’t understand how that’s going to happen with a fishery that has a hard TAC on it.”
Kaelin, who also has a lobster license and occasionally fishes a few traps, made one more point by referring to a whale watch expedition operator who told the council that whales weren’t feeding in the Gulf of Maine anymore because of the lack of herring.
“If we don’t have any whales in the Gulf of Maine, then why are we being asked to spend millions and millions of dollars on sinking rope?” he asked.
Dana Rice supported selecting Alternative 7 as a preferred alternative.
“I don’t know of anything that says we can’t put the most restrictive option out there. It will bring out a lot of very good comments from the public,” he said.
The council voted 10-to-5 in support of identifying Alternative 7 as preferred.
Massachusetts council member Tom Hill, who voted yes, said, “My view is the council is leaning toward Alternative 7 because it’s concerned about localized depletion and matching capacity, but the public may have a different idea that Alternative 7 might not be the appropriate one.”
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