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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 1
September 2009
Turtle measures to impact Mid-Atlantic fishermen the most
SILVER SPRING, MD – Mid-Atlantic fishermen who work on summer flounder or fish for Atlantic sea scallops with nets will want to pay particular attention to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Phase I turtle protection strategy, which is focused on trawl gear.
Summer flounder fishermen working off Virginia and North Carolina have been required to use turtle excluder devices (TEDs) since 1992. However, in this latest turtle protection effort, NMFS is considering expanding TED usage to the northern component of the summer flounder trawl fishery and increasing the required TED size to match shrimp trawl TEDs – 142" circumference with a corresponding 71" straight-line stretched measurement.
According to NMFS, a bigger opening “is expected to decrease escape times for all turtles and allow for the release of leatherbacks and all larger loggerhead and green sea turtles.”
Fishermen targeting sea scallops with trawl nets are on the Phase I list as well. NMFS said approximately 10% of all scallops are landed with trawl gear, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic.
One component of the flynet fishery takes place from North Carolina to New Jersey and targets Atlantic croaker, weakfish, and other finfish. This fishery, which uses high profile trawls fished just off the bottom, is being considered under Phase I.
The whelk fishery primarily takes place in state waters off Georgia and South Carolina but has been reported to occasionally occur in other states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, among others. This fishery, too, is on the Phase I list.
In its Aug. 10 written comments on the strategy, the Mid-Atlantic council said that, overall, it was in favor of NMFS’s “phased approach” to addressing turtle interactions as opposed to applying measures to all fisheries right at the outset.
However, the council said it remained concerned that some of the proposed spatial alternatives appeared to be “too broad with little contrast” between the options, and that some the proposed temporal alternatives appeared to be “unnecessarily restrictive.” In fact, the council asked that Temporal Alternative 3, which would require turtle measures to “apply throughout the year with no exceptions,” be removed from the list completely.
Although the council made numerous other comments about specific proposals, it said that, because the document lacked a “detailed analysis quantifying the expected reductions in sea turtle interactions for each of the alternatives presented,” it was “difficult to evaluate the tradeoff between conservation benefits of a proposed measure and the economic costs to the fisheries.” /cfn/
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