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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 12
August 2005
Hudson Canyon scallop decline cause for action
PORTLAND, ME – The enormous biomass of scallops that for years fueled an extremely productive fishery in the Hudson Canyon area has been fished down. Scallopers no longer catch their 18,000-pound limit in record time or even at the rate of 1,500 pounds per day over 12 days.
In fact, many scallopers say that catch per unit effort (CPUE) has dropped so dramatically that many trips are barely profitable, if at all.
During the June 21-23 meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council here, several industry members called for emergency action to close Hudson Canyon and redirect any remaining trips to the Nantucket Lightship area.
“They’re not asking for any more poundage,” said Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting. “They’re just asking to harvest it elsewhere.”
Kendall presented the council with faxes and letters from captains who were currently at sea working in Hudson Canyon, saying they were fishing longer hours to catch fewer and smaller scallops.
“We’re requesting some innovative or adaptive strategy to address this,” said Kendall.
Ross Paasche, a division manager for Seatrade International, said, “Part of the solution we seek will not only benefit Hudson Canyon but other areas as well.”
Paasche explained that the quality of some of the older scallops, especially those in dense, unfished beds in closed areas, was declining, with meats looking “gray” and “numb.”
“These scallops are not an easy sell,” he said. “The value of that product is diminished because of the condition it’s in.”
Allowing scallopers to fish down some of these crowded beds would enhance habitat for the remaining biomass, Paasche and others indicated.
Is it an emergency?
According to scallop committee chairman Tom Hill, the committee had discussed the situation at its meeting earlier in the month.
“I agree that what is happening is less than desirable and I see this as a legitimate management issue, but the committee did not view this as an emergency,” he said.
Whether the situation met the definition of an emergency under the law wasn’t clear either, and some feared that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) might be able to close Hudson Canyon by emergency action but not reallocate the remaining trips to another area as part of the same rule-making.
Still a success story
Cape May, NJ vessel owner Dan Cohen encouraged the council to find a solution to the situation, but he also wanted to be sure everyone understood that what was happening wasn’t abnormal. With the fleet working under a new rotational management program, growing pains were inevitable, he said.
Under rotational management, areas with high concentrations of small scallops are closed until the scallops reach marketable and reproductive size. Then the fleet fishes harder than normal on the abundance – until the stock drops to a level where the area turns back into a general “open” scallop area. Hudson Canyon, in fact, is scheduled to revert to an open area in 2006, so some say a drop in CPUE was to be expected.
“Before we talk about what’s going wrong, we ought to acknowledge what’s going right. There’s a lot of success here,” said Cohen. “The fact that there’s a problem doesn’t mean there’s anything horribly wrong. We’re just learning how to do this rotational management.”
That said, however, Cohen urged the council to investigate all avenues for taking action.
“Don’t think we can’t do anything. Our job is to maximize benefits and minimize costs,” he said.
If scallopers could redirect their remaining Hudson Canyon trips to Nantucket, they’d be reducing dredge bottom time and conserving fuel, he said.
Seeking solutions
While it didn’t make any recommendations for emergency action, the council did charge its scallop committee with developing alternatives and procedures to allow vessels with unused Hudson Canyon Area trips to fish them elsewhere in 2006.
“If we give a signal early on, I think people would save their trips,” said council Chairman Frank Blount of Rhode Island. “I think the industry would rather gamble and say we might get a trip next year than fish and lose money.”
NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul indicated the idea had merit.
“I appreciate the positive suggestions from the industry. I don’t see where it wouldn’t be viable to move some of the trips from this year to next year,” she said.
Janice M. Plante
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