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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 12
August 2010
Dogfish officially rebuilt; NMFS ups 2010 quota
PORTLAND, ME – Paul Rago of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center sat before the New England Fishery Management Council on June 23, ready to give a detailed report on the updated status of the spiny dogfish resource.
But the council was running seriously behind schedule, so Chairman John Pappalardo asked Rago for the “20 words or less” version of his talk.
“OK,” said Rago.
Looking up from his notes, he said, “The reference points have been revised. Dogfish are rebuilt. And landings are going to be 15 million pounds. That concludes my presentation.”
With that, the council broke out in applause, not just because of the brevity of the report, but also because people had waited years to hear those words. At long last, the seemingly ubiquitous spiny dogfish stock had been officially declared rebuilt.
Also on June 23, and reflecting this positive boost in status, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced that the federal 2010 commercial quota for spiny dogfish would go up from last year’s 12 million pounds to 15 million pounds with a 3,000-pound trip limit for the entire fishing season.
The federal quota will be on par with the state-waters fishery, too. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) adopted a 15-million-pound 2010 total allowable catch level for dogfish with a 3,000-pound trip limit back in April, although ASMFC-member states can set lower trips limits if they choose.
Under federal NMFS rules, 57.9% of the quota – now 8,685,000 pounds – is allocated to the Period 1 fishery, which runs May 1-Oct. 31. The remaining 42.1% – or 6,315,000 pounds – is allocated to Period 2, which runs Nov. 1-April 30.
The ASMFC split is different. States from Maine through Connecticut are allocated 58% of the quota, while states from New York through Virginia receive 26%. The remaining 16% is allocated to North Carolina.
A hard road
Getting to this long-awaited rebuilt stock status determination wasn’t easy.
The latest chapter started back in January when the US/Canada Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee (TRAC) conducted a benchmark stock assessment for dogfish.
As part of the work, the TRAC intended to review biological reference points for the stock, a critical factor for US management. Current stock biomass needs to be measured against a defined target, but the target originally proposed by the Mid-Atlantic and New England councils was rejected by NMFS back in 2000. While the fishery has been allowed to continue in federal waters, this lack of a “goalpost” has created management problems over the years.
The situation became more complicated when US and Canadian scientists couldn’t agree on an assessment model during this winter’s TRAC and, consequently, didn’t come up with new – and seriously needed – reference points.
A few days after the TRAC meeting, Rago said US scientists were extremely disappointed with this outcome and intended to seek creative solutions. And they did, through discussions with their Canadian counterparts.
Ultimately, the TRAC agreed in early February to select a subgroup of peer reviewers specifically “to define biological reference points for the purposes of US management.”
New biomass target
After conducting additional analyses, the peer review group defined the biomass target for spiny dogfish, in terms of female spawning stock biomass, as 159,288 metric tons (mt).
The reviewers further estimated that spawning stock biomass during 2008 was 194,616 mt and, for 2009, it was 163,256 mt.
That’s just what NMFS needed to move forward – some hard numbers. NMFS then was able to announce that, because the 2008 and 2009 estimates “exceeded the biomass reference point,” this was “consistent with a rebuilt stock.”
In a June 22 letter to Mid-Atlantic council Chairman Rick Robins, NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said, “The determination that the stock has rebuilt will be utilized to set the fishing year 2010 specifications for the spiny dogfish fishery.”
And that’s how the higher 15-million-pound 2010 commercial quota came into play.
On a related note, the peer reviewers also agreed on new fishing mortality reference points for spiny dogfish. The new target is 0.207, which translates into each female pup producing 1.5 pups over her lifetime.
The new fishing mortality “threshold,” the point that would mark overfishing, is 0.325. At this rate, each female will only replace herself once – meaning at a 1:1 rate instead of a 1:1.5 rate – over her lifetime.
The current fishing mortality rate on the exploitable female stock is extremely low at 0.11, which is well below both the threshold and even the safer target rate, so overfishing is not occurring.
Proposed specs lower
NMFS published its proposed rule with 2010 dogfish specifications back on April 2. At the time, the agency proposed a 12-million-pound quota, which was consistent with early recommendations from the Spiny Dogfish Monitoring Committee and the Mid-Atlantic council itself. The New England council had recommended a much higher quota of 21.6 million pounds.
However, NMFS acknowledged in the proposed rule that the federal dogfish fishery management plan jointly developed by the Mid-Atlantic and New England councils “authorizes NMFS to update biological reference points through the specification process based on the results of a peer-reviewed resource assessment such as the TRAC.”
NMFS also said that “if the results of the TRAC assessment, including any additional analysis, provide a biomass target that indicates the stock is rebuilt, NMFS may consider setting a higher quota for fishing year 2010 in the final rule,” recognizing that the councils had analyzed the impacts of a quota as high as 29.5 million pounds.
Market considerations
On April 13, the two councils’ joint dogfish committee received another TRAC update from Paul Rago, who presented the peer review group’s revised biological reference points.
The committee jumped on the news and, in an April 26 letter to Kurkul, said that “on behalf of both councils,” the committee was encouraging NMFS to take into account the updated information in the final rule.
Well aware of processors’ concerns about being able to handle a sudden increase in landings after so many years of relatively small quotas, and harboring concerns about future quota swings, the committee asked NMFS to implement a commercial quota that was greater than 12 million pounds but less than the maximum analyzed 29.5 million pounds.
“Although a very large quota increase may be permissible, a more appropriate near-term quota would reflect a transition to a new phase of long-term stability in commercial harvest,” said Rick Robins, who signed the letter.
“Consequently, we would ask NMFS to consider setting specifications for the 2010 fishing year that would maximize landings at a level consistent with a constant-catch management approach,” he said.
NMFS agreed with the constant-catch approach and said that with a 15-million-pound quota, “there is a 98% chance that the stock will not decline to the level where it would once again be deemed overfished.”
The agency also said that a 15-million-pound quota would “avoid the need for significant quota fluctuations in future years.”
Weak year classes
Back in Portland at the June 23 New England council meeting, Rago did, after all, present additional information about the TRAC results following his 20-word synopsis and the council’s round of applause.
He noted a number of lingering concerns among scientists.
“The biological productivity of this resource ultimately depends upon the rate of recruitment to the resource and that, in turn, depends upon the size structure of the population,” he said. “Small females produce small pups, which have lower survival rates. That factor is incorporated into the reference points for spiny dogfish.”
Rago also said biomass inevitably would decline in the future due to a string of very poor year classes, which still troubles scientists.
“This population is expected to oscillate as the weak year classes that were produced from 1997 to 2003 enter into the adult stock. We should see some declines in overall abundance,” he explained.
“And there are major concerns about discards,” he added. “81% of the fishing mortality that occurs on male dogfish is via discards and about 42% of the fishing mortality on females is through discards.”
Population shifts
Furthermore, Rago noted that the population itself has shifted geographically.
“There have been some major changes in dogfish distribution with an increasing fraction of the resource found in inshore waters,” he said. “We see this in our surveys, we see this in the observer coverage reports, and we certainly hear about it through phone calls and newspaper articles and other sources.”
The male dogfish population remains large, but it’s mostly located offshore and the product currently is less marketable. Rago said cooperative research efforts were underway to identify areas and times when male dogfish possibly could be harvested should managers and industry decide to go down such a path.
That said, Rago still expressed confidence about the resource and the way it has been handled.
“I know there has been a lot of concern about dogfish over the years, and there were some unexpected factors and bumps along the road,” he said. “But I think this is a case of successful fisheries management. The rebuilding that has occurred is consistent with the premise of the original plan.
“Overall, I think this is a manageable resource, and that is an important take-home message,” Rago concluded.
Janice M. Plante
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