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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 1
September 2007
Bluefin purse seine ban expires; inshore net regs to be revised
GLOUCESTER, MA – There will be no regulatory action to stop the one or possibly two purse seine boats still left in the bluefin tuna fishery from making a set in Cape Cod Bay in September.
A one-year ban, endorsed by the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Commission in 2006 and enacted by the state Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), officially expired earlier this year.
And, at its Aug. 2 business meeting in Gloucester, the commission refused to endorse a policy statement from DMF Director Paul Diodati that explained his intention to implement an additional one-year prohibition on tuna seining in the bay.
In a June 24 memo, Diodati wrote that banning the seiners for another year “affords continued access to the resource by less efficient gear types, reduces the potential for gear conflicts, allows purse seine operations the opportunity to regain access to state waters in the future, and does not diminish federal or international goals to prosecute a biologically and economically sustainable fishery for Atlantic bluefin tuna.”
The DMF director said he was confident he had the authority to extend the ban without a formal endorsement from the commission. However, Diodati added that he had no intention of acting without at least the tacit approval of the commissioners.
“If you reject my recommendation to close the bay then I’ll let it remain open,” he said.
No negotiation
The commission approved the one-year 2006 ban with the specific direction that the two parties – the seiners and the General Category Tuna Association (GCTA), which filed the 2004 public petition requesting the ban – come to some agreement on fishing in the bay.
A number of commission members were clearly disturbed by the reported refusal of the GCTA to engage in any kind of negotiations with seiner representatives.
Diodati told the commission that he personally discussed a compromise of allowing only a single seiner in the bay with a GCTA representative, and was told that the association felt a permanent ban was in order but would accept a three-year ban “at a minimum.”
Commission member Bill Adler said that he was annoyed and upset by the situation.
“It takes two groups to sit down and talk,” he said. “We asked them to and they didn’t do that.”
Added commission member Rodney Avila, “One party would not come to the table with the ban in place because there was no need to; they had already won. It’s not fair.”
After further discussion, commission Chairman Vito Calomo determined that the commission was not interested in entertaining a motion to accept Diodati’s policy statement and officially ended the discussion.
Any seiner that does venture into the bay will be heavily restricted by existing regulations, which include no fishing in a restricted area from Provincetown to the Cape Cod Canal until after Sept. 15 and no fishing on weekends or holidays in September.
Inshore net regs
Concerned that apparent shifts in menhaden distribution may foreshadow a recurrence of the baitfish in Massachusetts waters after a 15-plus-year absence, DMF has begun a process to clarify and possibly overhaul its inshore net permitting policies.
According to an extensive memo prepared by DMF Deputy Director Dan McKiernan and Jim Fair, a former DMF assistant director acting as a consultant, the primary gear types regulated by the Inshore Net Permit are surface gillnets, cast nets, beach seines, and purse seines.
Inshore Net Restricted Areas encompass all harbors and estuaries and all of Buzzards Bay. In the past, these nearshore permits have authorized the harvest of baitfish on a scale that ranges from personal use to large purse seine operations to gather bait for lobstermen and clear out massive fish kills from estuaries after dense aggregations of menhaden die off due to lack of oxygen.
While the primary target species of this activity has been menhaden, mackerel and sea herring also are listed as authorized species on the Inshore Net Permit.
Mishmash
According to McKiernan, a total of 314 Inshore Net Permits were issued in 2006. Of those, 240 reported surface gillnets as their primary gear type. But that’s about the only commonality among the permits.
“They’re all different,” McKiernan said, referring to the conditions attached to each permit. “A lot of this is done by policy, tradition, and negotiations with the DMF permit staff. The regs are poorly written and not well organized. We want to clean them up.”
McKiernan also said that a lot of people who obtain these permits don’t understand that an Inshore Net Permit to fish with surface gillnets for bait inside the Inshore Net Restricted Areas cannot be used to fish with surface gillnets outside of the restricted areas.
Purse seines
DMF also wants to clarify its policies for issuing purse seine permits for both Inshore Net Restricted Areas and for state waters outside of the restricted areas.
Currently, 10 vessels are permitted to fish with purse seines in the Inshore Net Restricted Areas – four in Boston Harbor and six elsewhere. Other than some recent fishing in Mt. Hope Bay on the Rhode Island border, there has been little if any activity by these vessels in many years.
The sense among commission members listening to the DMF staff discussion of the situation was that interest in seining could increase with the recent cut in the herring quota for Area 1A and reported shortages of bait for the lobster fishery.
David Ellenton of Cape Seafoods Inc. and Western Sea Fishing Co. in Gloucester was present at the Aug. 2 meeting. He said his company had purchased a purse seiner and was interested in obtaining a permit to fish in state waters outside of the Inshore Net Restricted Areas.
Commission Chairman Calomo said he, too, would be interested in obtaining a purse seine permit because the seine bait fishery had been his family business for generations. He personally ran one of the last seiners in the state’s inshore fishery until a lack of menhaden, compounded by recreational fishermen who complained that the seine operation took too many fish, forced him out of business.
The longer the conversation continued, the more complex it became. Ultimately, Diodati said that he would put an immediate moratorium on the issuance of any new state waters purse seine permits until DMF and the commission could devise some updated rules and take them out for public hearing.
Stepped up enforcement
During his opening remarks at the start of the meeting, Diodati informed the commission that Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Mary Griffin was making some personnel changes, one of which was hiring an additional attorney to work on departmental issues.
“That will free attorney David Hoover to work primarily on fisheries issues,” Diodati said. “And that could be bad news for anyone violating our regulations. Adjudicatory efforts will be stepped up.”
This subject came up later in the meeting in response to a DMF staff presentation on quota-managed species.
The commercial summer flounder fishery was closed on July 26 with 97.8% of the state’s quota harvested. This was a problem because 15% of the quota should have been reserved for a second winter season at the end of the year but the quota was exceeded because of late reporting by a major dealer.
The failure-to-report problem has led to sudden closures and overages more frequently in the last few years.
“Something has to be done with these dealers,” said commission member Mark Amorello.
Added commission member John Pappalardo, “They’re not soft on at-sea enforcement. If I’m caught doing something I shouldn’t be, it’s the end of the trip for me.”
The commission discussed setting up an automatic penalty schedule for failure to report infractions. Diodati was optimistic it could be done.
“With attorney Hoover’s new role, maybe we can get together and come back with a regulatory proposal for that soon,” he said.
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