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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 12
August 2007
NE council creates Gulf of Maine scallop area
PORTLAND, ME – Hoping to preserve some vestige of the traditional, small-boat scallop fishery in the Northern Gulf of Maine, the New England Fishery Management Council has established a separate management program for the area under Amendment 11 to the federal scallop plan.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) still must approve the amendment, which was finalized by the council during its June 19-21 meeting.
Maine representatives fought hard for this unique provision.
“The Northern Gulf of Maine area is important to us,” said Maine council representative Terry Stockwell. “This is a placeholder for the future. It’s not perfect but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Maine council member Dana Rice added, “I think fundamentally almost everyone agrees with the philosophy of what we’re trying to do here.”
The program has taken a number of complicated twists since it was first proposed almost two years ago.
As approved by the council, it would apply only to the part of the Gulf of Maine Exemption Area north of 42°20'N (see chart at right).
Fishermen who elect to fish in this area would have to have held an open-access general category permit as of Nov. 1, 2004, which is the control date. As a result, the fishery in the area will become limited access.
However, those who meet the control date requirement will not be subject to any landing history criteria. This is significantly different from what is required of fishermen who will be applying for a general category individual fishing quota (IFQ) permit. They will be subject to a 1,000-pound landing criterion during one year between March 1, 2000 and Nov. 1, 2004 (see story page 8A for details).
200-pound limit
In exchange for this more lenient qualification criteria, Northern Gulf of Maine permit holders would be limited to landing no more than 200 pounds of scallop meats per trip and would be restricted to fishing with a 10.5' dredge. Vessels working under a groundfish or monkfish permit would be exempt from the dredge restriction.
Northern Gulf of Maine permit holders would be exempt from vessel upgrading restrictions and would be required to report landings through vessel monitoring systems. The area would be regulated under its own hard total allowable catch (TAC).
Fishermen with full-scale general category IFQ permits would be allowed to fish in the Northern Gulf of Maine area, but their catches would count against both their IFQ and the Northern Gulf of Maine TAC, and they would be restricted to 200 pounds per trip.
When the TAC is reached, all vessels would be prohibited from fishing for scallops in the area.
Hard TAC
In a late-stage twist to the program, the council agreed to base the Northern Gulf of Maine TAC only on the federal waters portion of the resource.
Many considered this to be the death-knell of the program because the vast majority of scallops in the area lie in state waters except during occasional years of big scallop sets outside.
However, NMFS had voiced numerous concerns about its ability to monitor and enforce a TAC that included state waters, especially since the area doesn’t fall within NMFS’s scallop stock assessment survey track.
Furthermore, NMFS expressed additional concerns that the mounting burdens of administering and monitoring this special program were beginning to outweigh its potential benefits.
Worried that NMFS might disapprove the program outright, the council attempted to address the TAC issue by agreeing to base the hard quota solely on the federal waters resource.
But that generated a whole new set of issues, and proponents then expressed grave reservations about the TAC being so small that the program would become meaningless. Several asked, “Why would anyone want to participate?”
The Northern Gulf of Maine permit will be a limited-access permit that will be available to those who qualify only during a defined application period. Once in hand, anyone who drops their permit – say to fish in state waters under state rules after the federal TAC is reached – won’t be able to get the federal Northern Gulf of Maine permit back.
Still worth it?
This and other dilemmas led Massachusetts council member Tom Hill to wonder whether the program remained worth doing.
“The preponderance of the scallops that show up in that area are in state waters,” he said. “This is unnecessary to accomplish what has historically happened in the state fishery.”
But Terry Stockwell continued urging the council to support some form of the program.
He acknowledged that many traditional inshore general category scallopers work primarily in state waters, but when a bloom of scallops does occur in federal waters, they have historically fished those waters as well.
The problem is that many of them would not qualify for a full-scale general category permit under the fishing year 2000-2004 and 1,000-pound landing criteria because that was a period of low resource abundance in the area.
“What I’m looking for is to preserve fishing opportunities for individuals and communities that have had historical landings in the area,” said Stockwell.
The Maine/New Hampshire inshore survey is beginning to develop a database that will help stock assessment scientists get a better handle on the Northern Gulf of Maine resource.
Comment period
Later this year, NMFS will publish a proposed rule for Amendment 11, which will include specifics about the Northern Gulf of Maine Management Area.
Anyone with an interest in this area may want to pay close attention to the proposed rule’s details and provide comments to NMFS during the comment period.
CFN will announce the proposed rule once it’s published in the Federal Register.
Janice M. Plante
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