Homepage Back to April 2006 Issue
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by Jon Keller
Currently, the regulations for the scallop fishery divide it into two groups: The limited access and the general category. In Maine, most—if not all—of the scallop fishermen hold general category permits. “The problem the Council is trying to address with Amendment 11,” says Deidre Boelke, of the NEFMC, “is that there is a component of the scallop fishery (the general category fleet) that we do not have ‘direct’ control over. What I mean by that is it is open access and vessels are only managed by a 400 pound possession limit. So if the conditions are right (resource near shore and high prices) as they have been for the last couple years, general category vessels could fish 365 days a year and when you multiply 400 pounds by potentially 2,800 permits, that starts to add up.” As it stands, general category fishermen have a day or trip limit of 400 lbs. The NEFMC worries that, with scallop prices at $8-$10 per pound, more boats than ever will be fishing. Already, the numbers have doubled from 2004 to 2005. However, according to the NEFMC, overfishing is not the problem. “General category fleets harvest only about 5% of the total landings,” Boelke says, “and to curb overfishing you would potentially get more bang for your buck if you cut back the limited access fleet…” Boelke is concerned about boats coming from as far as the Gulf of Mexico to fish under a general category permit, and if these numbers went unregulated, the landings could potentially skyrocket. But these potentialities don’t make sense to everyone involved. Stan “Cappy” Sargent, of Milbridge, says: “They [the limited access fleet] will look right at you from their boats full of thousands and thousand of pounds of scallops and your catching less than 400 pounds and they’re telling you that you’re the problem.” Mike Ball of Spruce Head is another general category fishermen. He’s fished up and down the coast, captained big boats out of New Bedford for fifteen years. Now he’s wondering if there will be room left for him to fish at all. “Traditionally,” he says, “Maine fishermen fished 12 months, which included scalloping. And with groundfish the way they are, that left scallops.” While the limited access category is limited by Days at Sea (DAS), there is no limit to their landings, and their takes often exceed 40,000 lbs, an amount that would take Sargent or Ball over one hundred days. One of the options considered by the Council is the advent of a Hard TAC (Total Allowable Catch). A Hard TAC differs from a TAC in that landings can exceed that number. With a Hard TAC, when the number is met, the landings are over. Some fishermen worry this would lead to a race of sorts, the small guy inevitably losing. The question is how the Council plans on implementing further restrictions without destroying the general category. What has Sargent and Ball and other individual fishermen concerned is not a limit to their number of fishing days, but an intentional effort to consolidate the general category fleet, thus allowing more room for the limited access fleets. Already, the limited access fleets are responsible for 95-97% of the total scallop catch—and that with 340 permits, owned by a much smaller number of individuals or corporations. “There’s just so much money involved for the limited access fleet,” says Ball. “They had a lawyer sitting right there [at the Rockland meeting, February 7th]. We’re fighting for 20% total catch. They want to give us five.” Among the topics hotly debated is landing history. With a Control Date of November 1st, 2004, many small boat fishermen are worried that they’re being left behind and have argued for a later date, December of 2005 perhaps. This would allow fishermen who were not active within the allotted timeframe to stake their claims in the fishery, and not be pushed out. Unlike other fisheries, the landing history for scallopers is not transferable: that is, when a fishermen gets a new boat, he loses his past landings and simply receives a new permit. And in this business, the better your landing history, the better your future will be. This concerns Sargent. “It’s a Catch-22,” he says. “If you want a new boat, you lose your history. That’s it. You lost it.” Such was the case for Mike Ball, who recently purchased the Lori Lee, a forty two footer. “I bought a bigger boat for scallops because its safer. I could of got an old junker. Now I got no landing history for my new boat. Because of their control date, they’re cutting me out of it.” “Bottom line,” says Boelke, “is history cannot be transferred with an open access permit.” She goes on to say that “The Council is very aware of this issue and many people brought it up during scoping. There are ways to address this and the Scallop Committee will be considering alternatives...” One of the alternatives that Ball suggests is a history/no history permit, with a later control date to allow fishermen with new vessels a chance. “A guy with history,” says Ball, “gets 150 days. A guy with no history gets 50.” Ball recognizes that he has no history. “50 days is 20,000 pounds and I can make a living with that. Scallop, come home and lobster.” In addition to allowing fishermen without landing history to fish, Ball’s plan would curb the NEFMC’s worry about the general category fleet fishing 365 days a year. Boelke says, “There is a relatively small number of general category vessels that have been directing on scallops for a long period of time. For example, vessels from coastal Maine and Cape Cod have been very dependent on scallops and the Council is interested in developing measures that will enable those vessels to continue to operate as they have in the past.” Balls answer: “Draw a line right at New York Harbor and have that zone declared on your permit. And a quota of 5 million pounds on each side. Right now, the bigger New Bedford boats get all the quota. We have Closed Area 2 with 153,907 pound quota on the southeast part of Georges. That’s a 20 hour steam in a big boat. There’s no way to steam 200 miles in a small boat. I gotta make a living too.” The Fishery Survival Fund, which represents the bulk of the Limited access groups, says that they—like the NEFMC—are concerned with potential growth within the general category. With the number of permits skyrocketing, they see the potential for a rise in scallop mortality. The Fishery Survival Fund says that the goal is higher yields for everyone, and that can happen by a reduction in the general category. This leaves the general category fishermen wondering, who is “everyone”? “They don’t want those numbers to go up because scallop mortality would go up and their Days at Sea would go down. That makes them mad,” Sargent says. He goes on to say, “Limited access guys want the whole fishery tied up among the 100 or so people. It’s greed, pure greed.” By consolidating the general category fishermen, there will be less effort, less mortality. “Think about it,” Sargent says, “a 50 million pound resource at $8-$10 per pound, divided between the 100 guys that hold the 340 limited access permits. You do the math. They just want to get rid of the numbers. When they shake the tree they’ll eliminate a bunch of people who have virtually no impact on the fishery.” “The limited access and New Bedford boats don’t want us to get a piece of the pie. We’re just so unorganized and we don’t have the money they do,” says Ball. While the corporations that possess the limited access permits send lobbyists and lawyers to represent them, the general category is a rubber boots crowd, representing themselves. “Fifty percent of the meetings are reps from the limited access guys and it ain’t even about them. It used to be a way of life, now it’s big business. They want it [the fishery] and they’re upfront about it,” Sargent says. “You gotta go to the meetings and make sure the NEFMC understands it. We’ve lost so much ground on all other fisheries because we got no representation. We don’t have the money and lobbyists and clout to face them. But if the council knows that you understand and aren’t being greedy, they’ll listen. I have to give them that. So you can’t give up, no matter how flawed it is. You have to keep pounding them and pounding them and they’ll listen,” Sargent says. “What little chunk are we going to hurt?” Ball concludes. “May, June, July, August, September—one hundred days of fishing and your doing good. They [NEFMC] could limit the boat size for the general category, or crew size. Nine foot drags, a decent quota, let us fish April 1st to September 1.” General category fishermen like Ball and Sargent say they aren’t asking for a huge piece of the pie, just for a piece. They aren’t against regulations, they just want them to make sense, to be fair. |
