Grinding Out A Groundfish Plan
by Mike Crowe

Terry Stockwell (r) “The council is doing something that has never been done before. It is (the plan) a work in progress.” Sam Murfitt photo

Portsmouth, NH, February- The New England Fisheries Management Council continued to build parts of the plan that will be voted on at the June meeting in Portland. The plan will then go out for public comment. The plan being developed is part of Amendment 16, which is expected to include sectors. The council is faced with completing work on Annual Catch Limits (ACL) and Accountability Measures (AM). Both of these have been mandated by the Magnuson Stevens Act reauthorized last year and constitute two major issues.

These are just two of the dozens of acronyms that are tossed around the meeting rooms as the council attempts to build a plan that, said Terry Stockwell –Maine DMR, “they don’t want to be worse than what they have now.” Building the plan requires the consideration of a complex web of federal guidelines.

At every meeting members and the public tell the council they are worrying too much about one thing, or that they need to be more cautious about another. Councilman Jim Salsbury in responding to a discussion about accountability and guidelines for establishing a system. He said, “we have almost destroyed the possibility of having sectors because we have loaded on all these prohibitions. We’ve been so worried about something bad happening that we are preventing anything good from happening.”

The council, said Stockwell, ‘is doing something that has never been done before.’ Each of the monthly meetings have been held to decide on the shape and contents of a few blocks in the building that will be the plan. “It is”, says Stockwell, “a work in progress”.

Most agree that, as Gloucester Senator Bruce Tarr said Thursday, “the 800 pound gorilla in the room is allocation.” Councilman Jim Rhule said, “without settling allocation, none of what the council is doing will come to anything.” He said that until fishermen know what they are going to be allowed to catch, they cannot make a business plan. ‘

If allocation is the 800 pound gorilla, it’s 1,200 pound father is the council process by which allocation will be determined. That process, by law, has to operate under federal specs and consider the mandatory biological rebuilding schedule among other deadline driven requirements. The coming stock assessment will measure rebuilding progress. The current deliberations are for inclusion in the draft of the plan.

In coming months, the structural details of each acronym, ACL AM, TAC HTAC, OFL, ACT, etc., will have to be decided on, in one way or another, for the draft of the plan. It must be complete for the June meeting in Portland, after which it will go out for public comment. The selection of allocation options by the industry will be done by public comment and complete in September.

One aspect of accountability is monitoring, and it is “the big thing”, says Glen Libby. Libby has worked to develop sectors in the Port Clyde area. Libby’s version of a sector includes a wide range of factors that are aimed at taking responsibility for rebuilding and maintaining area stocks.

Monitoring could may be a very expensive component for most fishermen. The questions are what will it be, how will it happen, and who pays for it. Observer coverage is expensive and in some cases could be more expensive than the value of the fish on board, said Councilman Goethel. Another aspect is weighing the catch. The use of a weigh master system is common on the west coast, but it too is an expense added to the rising cost of operation.

“We don’t have much credibility and if we pass this we won’t have any.” —David Goethel Sam Murfitt photo

Rolling and seasonal closures were discussed in the afternoon session. Rolling closures were established to follow and protect spawning fish as they moved up the coast. They were then used to limit mortality. Some fishermen want to fish on these stocks. David Goethel moved to have rolling closures removed from the universal exemptions list and added to a list sectors cannot get an exemption from. That was withdrawn after discussion. It was then changed to removing them from the exemptions list only, and was passed.

The terms spawning closures and rolling closures have been used inter-changeably and therefore incorrectly, to describe spawning and mortality. Stockwell suggested fine-tuning the rolling closure structure in a way that will protect spawn and at the same time allow some stocks to be fished on.

The hook sector sought an allocation that would allow them to fish on rebuilt haddock stocks. The Cape Cod Hook Fishermen’s Association sought an emergency action in Closed area 1, but the motion failed. The hook sector has had a Special Access Program in Area 1 and whether or not that should count as history, since they we not catching something else, somewhere else, was debated. Goethel was opposed to counting it, saying, “We don’t have much credibility now, and if we pass this we won’t have any.” However, it passed 14-1.

That the final operations plan must include a list of all federal and state permits held by vessels that would be part of a sector. Passed: 16-0

A sector specific decision was that Amendment 16 alternative sectors will receive a hard TAC of all regulated ground fish, except pout, windowpane flounder and Atlantic halibut. There will be no cap on the share of a stock that can be allocated to a sector. This passed 16-1.

In any of the various sectors fishermen will get an allotment of fish to catch. This will replace DAS for some. The Cape Cod hook sector does have days at sea.

Aaron Dority, a member of Penobscot East said, “A small group of people go to the meetings. For many they are intimidating and confusing. Fishermen, he said, have ingenuity and can be effective on the local level if allowed by the council.”

Further east Dority said, “They lack permits and catch, and therefore have less influence.”

For Libby the prospect of sector development offers the opportunity to “Return to the hunting of specific fish with a higher value.” The development of more selective gear is a part of building stocks in his area. Local responsibility for locally maintained stocks,. Libby said, “A lot of optimism has been generated by the Mid Coast Fishermen’s Association plans.”