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Groundfish Sectors Back On The Table
One fisherman who is struggling to hold on after 45 years of fishing said the number of boats in his port has been halved in the last three years, and other boats are going without proper maintenance. Benign neglect by the council will mean only the big boats and big corporations will survive, he said. Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition in Gloucester, Mass., said the groundfish fleet was decimated by the latest round of cuts in the number of fishing days. The fishermen spoke in support of developing a sector management system now, during the Amendment 16 development process, rather than wait for the development of Amendment 17 to the Multispecies Management Plan. They and other fishermen successfully made their case. NEFMC agreed to go ahead with sector development despite warnings from the National Marine Fisheries Service that they would not be able to commit any resources to the process at this point. NMFS regional administrator Pat Kurkul said sector development should be put off, mainly because NMFS doesn’t have the resources for all the tasks the agency already has on the table. NMFS’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center Director Dr. Nancy Thompson agreed, saying that other tasks will fall off the table, due simply to lack of time, if they are asked to take on analysis for sector development. NEFMC fishery analyst Tom Nies said, that without the science center’s help, it is unclear how sector development will proceed. Dan Holland of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute said his organization would help with the development process. The GMRI has been working with several industry groups to move sectors forward. The sector concept, he said, has united the industry more than anything else in the past. At their September meeting, NEFMC voted to postpone sector development despite the sense of some members that sector development should be continued as part of the A16 process. NEFMC must select A16 measures in February 2008 for inclusion in a Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The amendment is scheduled to go into effect in May 2009. The decision to postpone came after NEFMC, its Groundfish Committee and Plan Development Team spent considerable effort on developing measures to allow the number of sectors to increase beyond the two currently allowed. Sectors are considered advantageous because they allow fishermen to be exempt from days-at-sea limits if they pool their days together and operate under harvest quotas. Earlier in the year, NEFMC received 19 sector proposals, some of which were considered placeholders rather than fully developed proposals, due to fishermen’s concern that they would be left out if they didn’t have some kind of sector proposal. NEFMC agreed that sector development would move groundfish management away from the current days-at-sea system, which is widely viewed as a failure.
“You want to fix days at sea?” said Chris Brown, president of the Rhode Island Commercial Fisheries Association. “Blow it up. Get away from it.” Brown said that anything less than full-retention fishing is irresponsible. The system now requires fishermen to throw away a significant amount of fish. “Fishermen cause landings. Bad fishery management causes discards,” he said. David Preble and others pointed out that many fishermen and their organizations have spent a lot of time developing fishing sectors that would work for them and the resource. “I’m encouraged by how far the industry has come, and I think we need to keep it moving,” Preble said. “We asked people to think outside of the box, and they did,” agreed Rodney Avila. “And all we’re doing is making a bigger box. We need to get on with this.” “The industry has a lot at stake, and they need to make major decisions that will impact their businesses,” Groundfish Committee chairman Rip Cunningham told NEFMC this month. “The industry needs to know what action this council intends to take.” “You’ve got organizations rallying around this concept,” said Giacalone, who said fishermen are not afraid of facing head-on the challenge of developing a system that will be in compliance with federal fishery law. “Why don’t we all roll up our sleeves and get something done?” he said. But one gillnetter, Dave Marciano, said he feared being cut out of the fishery if it’s divided into sectors. He said he’s already unable to participate in the Eastern U.S./Canada Haddock Special Access Program because his gear type wasn’t given a fair shake. “Fundamentally, I like the concept,” he said. “But because of my gear type, I’m going to get screwed out of existence.” David Goethel said the development of sectors is an important acknowledgement that the fishery will soon enough come down to allocation — the amount of fish allotted per boat. “It’s a dilemma we’ve kicked around for some time,” agreed Dana Rice. “It’s a responsibility we owe the industry. They’ve done their part...The industry is hanging on by a thread.” The Department of Marine Resources’ Terry Stockwell also agreed, saying the industry deserves to have the opportunity to work with a system that provides both flexibility and accountability. Mark Gibson said the idea of plans coming from the industry could potentially revolutionize groundfish management. Fishermen deplored the fact that the groundfish plan has been through 15 amendments, yet the resource and industry have made little headway. “I’m scared, because if we fail at doing this, we will have failed at every groundfish action,” said one council member. In other groundfish action, NEFMC agreed that A16 effort control measures would consider adjustments to the A/B DAS split, differential DAS, counting each DAS as a 24-hour minimum, and triggered trip limits. No other effort control tools, such as changing seasonal closures and gear changes, will be used. NEFMC will consider adjusting or eliminating the DAS transfer tax, and will consider a tax on the leasing of DAS. They will consider a hard TAC backstop as an alternative for meeting Annual Catch Limit and Accountability Measure requirements, and will consider mitigation measures to avoid a fishing derby and shutdowns. Other measures that remain in A16 are a research set-aside program and allowing a vessel to hold a limited access scallop and multispecies permit at the same time. There was also a motion that, while A16 will address the detailed process for ACLs and AMs, they will not “go live” until required in 2010/2011. |
