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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 35 Number 1
September 2007
NE council OKs EFH for 27 stocks plus HAPCs
PORTLAND, ME – Capping off more than three years worth of work, the New England Fishery Management Council approved new essential fish habitat (EFH) designations for all 27 species within its jurisdiction, and it signed off on a number of new habitat areas of particular concern (HAPCs), including ones on Cashes Ledge, Stellwagen Bank/Jeffreys Ledge, and in and around the deep-sea canyons off Southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
The council took these actions during its June 19-21 meeting here and, in doing so, completed almost all of the work related to Phase 1 of its omnibus habitat amendment. This umbrella amendment eventually will modify all of the council’s individual species plans, including those for groundfish, scallops, herring, and monkfish.
The council’s last remaining task for Phase 1 is designation of an HAPC for the Great South Channel. It delayed this decision until September in order to gather more scientific and technical information about potential alternatives.
The council will next begin working on Phase 2 of the omnibus amendment, which will include evaluations of the impacts of fishing gear on habitat, especially in the HAPCs, and propose appropriate management measures for HAPCs.
EFH is defined as “those waters and substrate necessary to fish (the species themselves) for spawning, feeding, breeding, and growth to maturity.”
HAPCs are subsets of EFH that the council wants to highlight as needing “additional levels of protection from adverse impacts.”
“You have to have EFH first,” explained Leslie-Ann McGee, the council’s habitat coordinator. “Then you can designate HAPCs within EFH.”
The council also approved a detailed evaluation of the potential impacts of nonfishing activities on EFH, as well as descriptions of major prey species involved with each fishery management plan.
HAPCs
While EFH designations broadly identify important habitat for all the various life stages of each species, HAPCs are very specific areas that the council believes warrant extra protection. They are of the most interest to fishermen because extra management measures could be applied to them in the future.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) will have to approve both Phases 1 and 2 before any new HAPCs and management measures go into affect, which most likely won’t happen before 2009.
The New England council currently has only two HAPCs in place – one covering certain Maine rivers important to Atlantic salmon and another encompassing a small area in the northern portion of Closed Area II on Georges Bank for cod (see chart).
It renewed both of these HAPCs in Phase 1 of the omnibus amendment and then designated the following additional areas as new HAPCs (see chart for locations):
Bear and Retriever Seamounts;
Individual deep-sea canyons of Heezen, Hydrographer, Veatch, Hudson, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, and Norfolk;
Combined Alvin/Atlantis canyon area;
Combined Lydonia/Gilbert/Oceanographers canyon area;
Combined Hendrickson/Toms/Middle Toms canyon area;
The current Cashes Ledge Habitat Closed Area, which is mostly contained within the Cashes Ledge Closed Area used for groundfish management;
The current Western Gulf of Maine (WGOM) Habitat Closed Area, which is contained within the existing management closure and covers bottom on both Jeffreys Ledge and Stellwagen Bank; and
Inshore juvenile cod bottom within the 0-to-20-meter depth contour.
Although the inshore juvenile cod HAPC received no discussion during the council meeting, numerous industry leaders had supported this extra designation during committee meetings, calling it “a major step forward” in habitat protection for juvenile cod.
Leslie-Ann McGee stressed, “These HAPCs have absolutely no management restrictions associated with them. That’s reserved for Phase 2. For now, these are just areas the council identified as being particularly important.”
Stellwagen Bank
In early June, much to the disappointment of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary supporters, the council’s habitat committee voted to recommend designating the WGOM Habitat Closed Area as HAPC.
Sanctuary supporters had wanted a different alternative that encompassed the entire WGOM Closed Area (meaning the management area, which is bigger than the habitat area) and all of the Stellwagen sanctuary area.
The New England council went along with the committee’s recommendation and designated as HAPC only the WGOM Habitat Closed Area, which contains roughly 22% of the Stellwagen sanctuary area and includes the most complex habitats found within the sanctuary.
But the decision was a squeaker.
Massachusetts council member David Pierce moved to substitute the committee recommendation with one that included all of the sanctuary area along with the current GOM Habitat Closed Area.
“It’s clear to me and it should be clear to everyone else that the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary has unique designation,” said Pierce. “I believe there’s a very legitimate need for us to have that HAPC. We need to do a lot more for the sanctuary and this would accomplish that.”
Sanctuary supporters
John Williamson of The Ocean Conservancy in Portland argued equally hard for the larger area. Having previously served as chairman of the sanctuary’s advisory panel for four years, Williamson said he was convinced the HAPC designation was warranted.
“The sanctuary provided copious documentation,” he said. “This probably received the fullest analysis of all the proposals.”
Williamson emphasized that “there are two laws at work in the region” – the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the National Marine Sanctuaries Act.
“There will be regulations the sanctuary will have to develop under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act to fulfill its mandate, and some will involve fisheries,” he said. “The ideal course would be for them to come to this council and talk about how best that should happen.”
Williamson implored the council to view the proposal in a positive light.
“This is not intended to be an end run around the National Marine Sanctuaries Act or the council. It’s about encouraging good planning between two jurisdictions,” he said.
Going too far
New Hampshire council member David Goethel was adamantly opposed to the larger designation.
“The motion made by the committee covers the rare and complex bottom,” he said. “The areas left out are mostly sand and mud substrate.”
Goethel said the council needed to be sure its HAPCs had scientific merit.
“It will weaken our position if we declare large chunks of the ocean that are not rare or unique as HAPC,” he said.
Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition concurred and asked the council to consider the precedent that would be set by declaring all of the sanctuary an HAPC.
“This would make a designation that the entire habitat is rare,” which isn’t true, he said.
Giacalone further argued that “there are tremendous amounts of protection within the area” already due to the sanctuary designation.
Pierce’s motion to substitute the larger area failed in an 8-9 vote, so the HAPC designation remained limited to the WGOM Habitat Closed Area.
Canyons
The council also designated numerous steep-walled deep-sea canyons – and some intercanyon areas – as HAPCs because of their importance to corals and other “complex structures” such as sponges and sea pens.
Offshore lobstermen and red crab fishermen had been closely monitoring these proposals, and during the full council meeting, Bonnie Spinazzola, executive director of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, expressed numerous concerns. She said she was particularly worried about designating multiple canyons in the same HAPC, such as Lydonia, Gilbert, and Oceanographers, and including the bottom between them.
“Lumping three canyons together is not even a broad brush,” she said. “It goes beyond that. To bring things together by association is quite dangerous. Gilbert is practically devoid of anything.”
Spinazzola urged the council to reconsider.
“The information about the canyons is poor at best,” she said. “I think we need to look at these more closely and consider the impacts this could have on industry.”
But David Pierce said, “Where do we find 3-D structure that can be damaged by mobile gear? In the canyons. If anything can be termed HAPC, these canyons can.”
Council not swayed
Maine council member Terry Stockwell, however, had reservations.
“I have angst with the big box approach,” he said.
Stockwell attempted to amend the motion to eliminate multiple-canyon HAPCs and instead establish separate HAPCs for each one, which would free up the intercanyon areas.
“That would give protection to all the individual canyons,” he said.
But New Hampshire council member John Nelson disagreed.
“Often there’s structure stretching between the canyons. If we ignore that, we’d be missing a lot of the important area,” he said.
Corals
Another factor influencing the council was the recently reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act’s new requirement to better protect deep-sea corals. NMFS and the council, “subject to the availability of appropriations,” now are required by law to develop a program to, among other things:
Identify existing research on and known locations of deep-sea corals;
Locate and map deep-sea corals;
Monitor activity in locations where corals are known or likely to occur;
Conduct research, including cooperative research with fishing industry partners, on deep-sea corals and related species; and
Develop technologies designed to assist fishermen in reducing interactions between fishing gear and deep-sea corals.
Given these new requirements, NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul encouraged the council to be proactive.
“This is a habitat amendment and it is our opportunity to consider corals and other structure in these canyons,” she said.
In the end, Stockwell’s motion to go with the single-canyon approach failed in a 4-11 vote.
Great South Channel
The Great South Channel Cod HAPC proposal that went out to public hearing was extremely large, covering the bulk of the channel and Closed Area I and dipping into the northern part of the Nantucket Lightship Closed Area.
Comments received during public hearings were negative, and the council’s habitat committee didn’t have enough information at its June 5 meeting to whittle down the area and refine the designation. As a result, it did not have a Great South Channel HAPC proposal to put before the council.
Some suggested the council could develop this refinement in Phase 2 of the omnibus amendment, but Rhode Island council member David Preble argued against that course of action.
“It’s evident that we need to do something for the Great South Channel for an HAPC, and the big box for a number of reasons is unacceptable,” he said. “But I would be very much opposed to confusing Phase 1 and Phase 2.”
The council long ago agreed that Phase 1 would be reserved for identifying EFH and HAPCs, and Phase 2 would deal with management measures to minimize adverse impacts, including fishing impacts, to EFH and HAPCs.
Gib Brogan of Oceana strongly supported continued work on a Great South Channel HAPC to better protect sensitive juvenile cod habitat.
With a larger HAPC designation in the channel, he said, “we can look at the effects of gear on this area, and then we can allow fishing to go on in the appropriate areas.”
John Nelson wanted the council to take a deliberate approach to approving this last HAPC designation.
“All of the other HAPCs have been through a technical review,” he said. “If we arbitrarily say, ‘This looks great,’ I think we ought to be careful about that.”
The council agreed to have its habitat plan development team further examine the newly designated juvenile cod EFH within the Great South Channel and see if it could come up with a more refined HAPC.
The habitat committee then will review this information and make a recommendation to the full council for consideration during its Sept. 18-20 meeting in Plymouth, MA.
Janice M. Plante
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