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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 12
August 2007
General category scallopers headed for IFQs
PORTLAND, ME – The general category scallop fishery is on the cusp of profound change. Assuming all goes according to plan, the fishery will be converted from open access to limited access, and qualifying scallopers will be allocated individual fishing quotas (IFQs) based on their personal fishing histories during a defined qualification period.
The total amount of general category IFQs in any given year will be limited to 5% of the annual overall projected scallop catch. Although permit holders will have their own personal quotas, they’ll continue to be capped at 400 pounds per trip.
However, the IFQs will allow qualifying fishermen to harvest scallops in smaller amounts if they want to spread out their individual quota or respond to market conditions, weather, or other circumstances – as long as they don’t exceed their allocated IFQ.
This IFQ program will not be subject to an industry-wide referendum in which two-thirds of the eligible voting permit holders would have to approve the program.
That requirement will apply to all future IFQ programs in New England under the recently reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). The New England Fishery Management Council was able to skirt this requirement because it approved the general category IFQ program during its June 19-21 meeting, which was before the end of the six-month MSA grace period allowed for the referendum vote requirement.
Qualified scallopers will be subject to a “cost recovery” program as required under the new MSA. The government is authorized to collect a small fee from general category scallopers to “recover the actual costs directly related to the management and enforcement” of the IFQ program (see more below).
Amendment 11
After finalizing the details of this revolutionary new direction for the general category fishery, the council voted to submit the entire IFQ package to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for approval as Amendment 11 to the federal scallop plan.
Parts of the amendment are expected to be implemented by March 1, 2008, the start of the next scallop fishing year.
The IFQ program, however, will take longer, likely at least 18 months. NMFS said it will need to give fishermen enough time to apply for new limited-access general category permits, issue permits to qualifiers, and then hear appeals from those who are denied permits and challenge the decision.
The agency said it couldn’t determine how many pounds of scallops each qualifier would receive until it knew the final pool of participants.
In order to speed up the process, the council asked NMFS to restrict the application period to 90 days. NMFS said it would consider the request but would need to weigh fairness issues.
Interim 10% TAC
In the interim, the council voted that NMFS should establish a hard total allowable catch (TAC) for the general category fishery equal to 10% of the overall projected annual scallop catch.
The council further requested that NMFS administer that 10% TAC in quarterly allocations to reduce the potential for derby fishing, and that each quarter’s allocation be in line with quarterly landings between 2000 and 2004.
Fisheries Survival Fund attorney David Frulla, who represents the full-time limited-access fleet, expressed reservations about the 10%.
“The 10% is too high,” he said. “We do have a significant concern at continuing to direct that much effort at the inshore scallop beds.”
How to qualify
Under the council’s program, in order to qualify for the future general category IFQ fishery, a fisherman will have to have held an open-access general category permit as of the Nov. 1, 2004 control date. He also will have to have landed at least 1,000 pounds of scallops in any one year between the qualifying years of March 1, 2000 through Nov. 1, 2004.
A vessel’s best year during that roughly five-year qualifying period will be used as its “contribution amount,” and it will be “indexed” somewhere between 0.75 and 1.25 based on the number of years the vessel was active in the scallop fishery. This indexing factor was specifically designed to benefit vessels with longer fishing histories.
The council voted to allocate 5% of the annual projected scallop catch to the new general category IFQ fishery. That 5% will be divvied up as IFQs among the final pool of qualifying vessels.
Since the TAC will change from year to year due to fluctuations in resource abundance, fishermen’s IFQs will go up and down as the stock goes through inevitable peaks and valleys. However, each qualifying permit holder’s percentage of the 5% TAC will remain fixed according to the “best year/indexing” calculation.
GOM, LA fleet
The council further voted to establish a separate management system for waters in the Gulf of Maine Exemption Area north of 42°20'N that will allow general category scallopers who had a permit as of the control date to fish there under a 200-pound trip limit without having to meet any qualifying poundage criteria (see related story page 11A for Gulf of Maine details).
And the council agreed that existing full-time, part-time, and occasional limited-access scallopers would be eligible to receive general category IFQs if they met the same 1,000-pound fishing year 2000-2004 qualification criteria as general category vessels.
General category landings for these existing limited-access vessels will be capped at 0.5% of the overall projected scallop catch, and this amount will not be deducted from the 5% allocated to the new general category IFQ fleet.
Existing limited-access vessels that do not qualify for IFQs will not be able to fish under general category rules in the future.
Incidental catch
The council also voted to establish a brand new incidental catch permit.
Any vessel that had a permit as of the control date and met the 2000-2004 qualification period criteria but did not have 1,000 pounds of landings will be able to apply for an incidental catch permit to possess and sell up to 40 pounds of scallop meats per trip.
Furthermore, a permit holder who meets the 1,000-pound criteria and would rather receive an incidental catch permit instead of an IFQ can choose to do so. Some groundfish fishermen, for example, may choose this alternative so they can land 40 pounds of scallop bycatch on an unlimited number of trips instead of being barred from landing scallops after they catch their full IFQ.
Important to note is the fact that once the new incidental permit is implemented, no one will be allowed to possess 40 pounds of scallops for personal use anymore without it. Only vessels with an incidental catch permit, a new Northern Gulf of Maine permit, a general category IFQ, or a regular limited-access permit will be allowed to have any scallops at all.
Under Amendment 11, all general category permits will be issued on March 1 instead of May 1 to coincide with the start of the scallop fishing year.
Qualifying years
Amendment 11 went though numerous changes over the course of its development, but two in particular fundamentally impacted the shape of the final program. The first related to the qualification period. The second was the shift in allocation method from trips to IFQs.
The council initially went out to public hearing with a qualifying period of 1994-2004 as its preferred alternative. The scallop committee supported this 11-year period right to the end, and the move to 2000-2004 only happened at the final council meeting when Amendment 11 was adopted.
The council had long been divided about the timeframe, and NMFS never supported the 11-year period.
The tide changed for good when April Valliere, representing Rhode Island on the council, made a motion to go to five years.
“With the 11 years, you are qualifying way too many vessels that are not active in the fleet,” she said. “I believe this captures a more representative number of the active participants and it resolves the issue of activating latent permits.”
NMFS support
NMFS Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul supported the shift, saying the agency considered the council’s initial qualifying criteria to be “far too liberal.”
“All you’re really doing is hurting the more recent participants in the fishery and those who are most dependent on it,” she said of the longer timeframe.
Under the 2000-2004 period with the 1,000-pound landing criteria, the council estimated that 369 vessels would qualify for the new limited-access general category IFQ permits.
Under 1994-2004 and 1,000 pounds, 459 vessels would have qualified.
From 1994 through 2004, the council determined that 4,777 “unique general category permits” had been issued, and 924 of those permit holders landed at least one pound of scallops during that time period.
The council’s scallop committee initially had supported allocating general category qualifiers a certain number of 400-pound trips per year, but at its final meeting prior to the full council meeting, it shifted course to individual poundage allocations.
Many general category fishermen had advocated for IFQs vs. trip allocations for several reasons, but namely safety. Many feared that if they only had a certain number of trips to work with, they’d feel compelled to stay on the water, even in poor weather conditions, to catch their full 400-pound allotment each time they went out.
These fishermen said they’d rather receive an individual quota so they could fish for whatever poundage they wanted.
The committee seriously debated this approach but was deterred because of the new MSA “cost recovery” requirement that now must accompany IFQ programs.
The MSA requires that the secretary of commerce, through NMFS, collect a fee from industry to cover the administrative costs of IFQ programs and community development quota programs that allocate a percentage of the TAC of a fishery to an IFQ program.
The MSA further states that the fee “shall not exceed 3% of the ex-vessel value of fish harvested” under an IFQ program and that it “shall be collected at either the time of the landing, filing of a landing report, or sale of such fish during a fishing season or in the last quarter of the calendar year in which the fish is harvested.”
Cost not bad
What swayed the scallop committee was a report from NMFS that the cost recovery program for the Atlantic surf clam/ocean quahog fishery, which is the only other IFQ program in the region, totaled only $50,000.
Given this development, the committee determined that administrative costs would not put an undue burden on fishermen, and it voted to recommend to the full council that it adopt an IFQ program instead of trip allocations.
The full council concurred and then voted to add language into Amendment 11 that a cost recovery program would accompany the IFQ program.
How the cost recovery program will work will be figured out in the near future and submitted to NMFS in a separate framework adjustment to the scallop plan.
Stacking
In another extremely significant decision, the council voted to allow limited-access general category scallopers to transfer and/or accumulate IFQ allocations on an annual or permanent basis. The accumulation of quota is being called “stacking.”
However, the council determined that no more than 2% of the total general category allocation could be applied to any single vessel and that no individual could have ownership interest in more than 5% of the total general category allocation.
New Hampshire council member David Goethel had serious reservations about allowing this practice on an annual basis.
Under the council’s proposal, any vessel that permanently transfers its IFQ allocation also must transfer or cancel its other fishing permits. But that’s not required of permit holders who transfer scallop IFQs annually. They can then go fish for other species under other permits.
“What I’m trying to do is stop what’s happening in groundfish, which is that effort in other fisheries increases after days are leased,” said Goethel.
“We’re allowing mortality to increase in a whole host of fisheries,” he said. “The time that this person would have been scalloping, he’s free to go fish other fisheries. It all goes away if you don’t allow stacking on an annual basis.”
Goethel moved to require that anyone transferring scallop IFQs for only one year be required to relinquish “all other limited-access permits” for that year, but the motion failed by a vote of 7-to-10.
“A sad day”
Many active general category fishermen with established histories in the fishery strongly supported converting the fishery from open to limited access, and the existing full-time, part-time, and occasional limited-access fleet essentially demanded that the general category fishery be further restricted.
With escalating general category landings, particularly from new vessels fishing in the Mid-Atlantic, full-time scallopers argued that the general category fishery was losing its traditional, small-boat nature and starting to have a greater impact on the overall resource.
But the whole upheaval of the general category proved to be too much for some fishermen, and it clearly troubled Cape Cod fisherman Bruce Gibbs.
“I think this is a very sad day,” he said. “Because of a problem we’ve had in the south, we’re imposing a lot of rules and regulations on a lot of people who don’t deserve it. I really feel we’re creating another monster.”
Gibbs added, “I think it should be open access for everyone. I think you should be able to go fishing. You’re essentially creating a corporate industry.”
Fisherman Richard Callow of Peaks Island, ME said, “You’re going to be cutting a lot of people’s heads off by not leaving it open access. You’re leaving no avenue for small boats up here.”
Janice M. Plante
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