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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 34 Number 1
September 2006
Aug. 28, 2002 hagfish control date holds firm
GLOUCESTER, MA – Anyone interested in the Atlantic hagfish -– or slime eel – fishery should take note that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has “reaffirmed” the Aug. 28, 2002 control date previously adopted for the fishery.
At its last meeting in June, the New England Fishery Management Council, which intends to develop a fishery management plan (FMP) for hagfish, asked NMFS to publish a second notice in the Federal Register reaffirming the control date.
The notice, which came out on July 28, announced that the control date “may be used … to establish eligibility criteria for determining future levels of access to the hagfish fishery.” It further stated, “The council and NMFS may choose to give variably weighted consideration to participants active in the fishery before and after the control date.”
According to NMFS, a fishery for hagfish first developed in New England in the early 1990s. The first reported landings were documented in 1993 at 454 metric tons (mt).
Then, during the first four years of the fishery, landings quadrupled, exceeding the highest reported landings in all other North American hagfish fisheries, including those in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, and Nova Scotia.
Despite New England’s relatively high catch level, NMFS said landings may be underreported given that no permitting or reporting requirements currently exist for hagfish, and the level of discards from hagfish culled at sea or rejected by dealers is also unknown.
The control date is intended to “discourage speculative entry into the hagfish fishery while the council considers how access to the fishery can and should be controlled,” added the Federal Register notice.
NMFS also encouraged hagfish fishermen to “locate and save records that substantiate their participation in” the fishery.
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