Scallopers Weigh Regs & Access

continued from Homepage

DeGraaf said the issue arose in response to an influx of new fishermen during the three-month fishing season just past.

“We had a lot of people come into the fishery this year,” she said. “Many were new arrangements between vessel owners and hired captain or hired crew members, plus reactivation of latent licenses.”

Preliminary figures show that more than 350 license-holders fished this year, she said. In past years, active license-holders numbered around 200.

“So there was a substantial increase in activity, which was expected to some extent, but was also the reason the access areas closed down early,” she said.

The SAC took up the owner/operator idea at its March 26 meeting, and voted to move it forward for discussion. Currently, the fishery doesn’t have an owner/operator requirement; however, the license-holder must be on board during fishing operations.

According to the DMR, “This past year, preliminary landings reports indicated that possibly 100-150 additional license-holders participated in this fishery compared to the past few years, for a total of approximately 358 active licenses. Anecdotal reports indicate that many of these newly activated licenses were crew members that were hired to work on vessels that previously had not participate in the fishery before this season.”

There are 665 licenses in the fishery, made up of 572 draggers, and 93 divers, said DeGraaf. “Therefore, a potential of 293 additional license-holders may come into the fishery in the coming years, putting even more pressure on the resource during rebuilding,” the DMR said. “An owner/operator requirement may stem some of this additional influx in effort from these latent licenses as well as decrease some of the newly activated effort this past year. It would also provide the added enforcement benefit of having the license directly tied to the vessel, resulting in the vessel and the license-holder together being suspended from fishing activity. An owner/operator requirement is one option to address the effort issue in this fishery, and other options will likely be considered for next season which could include harvesting the limited access areas (LAA) one day/week, requiring industry to opt-in to one or two LAAs, a reduced daily landings limit, and a reduced number of days in the season.”

On April 22-23, the SAC held meetings in each of the fishery’s three management zones to discuss the owner/operator concept. Reaction was mixed. There was concern the requirement could actually increase effort, because in many cases, currently, several license-holders congregate aboard one vessel. Many vessel-owners use hired captains and crews, and fishermen said they didn’t want to disturb those business arrangements. Likewise, currently, non-license-holders are able to participate in the fishery by taking a license-holder with them. Some commenters said there should be increased participation in the fishery, so the benefits are spread more widely, and they said it would be unfair to prevent latent license-holders from reentering the fishery. In the end, they said, the initiative will force more people into the fishery because they will want to show they have a landing history.

“We want to avoid impacts to existing business arrangements, especially people who had those arrangements last year or the past couple of years,” said DeGraaf. “But we want to avoid creating new non-owner/operator arrangements. If someone comes in, we want to make sure they are owner/operator.”

DeGraaf said that Keliher’s proposal to freeze reactivation of latent licenses for the 2013-2014 season was intended to maintain the fishing effort status quo for the time being, giving stakeholders time to develop an owner/operator requirement. The intention is that the DMR would report back to the legislature’s marine resources committee in its next session, with recommendations on how to transition to owner/operator not only for the scallop fishery but for the urchin, mussel, and sea cucumber fisheries.

License-holders with landings from the past fishing year would not be impacted, she said. At the April 29 meeting, the proposed freeze was panned. “How’s that gong to work for someone like me, who was going fishing and running boats since the early- to mid-‘90s?” asked fisherman John Mitchell. “I’ve held my license and decided to do something else while the fishery wasn’t there, and I’m in the process of getting the boat together because I decided to go in for scalloping again. And now I‘m going to get froze out with absolutely no warning?”

“The bank doesn’t let us freeze our mortgage for a year while the fishery’s frozen,” responded Mitchell. “I’ve been fishing scallops longer than some of these people been alive to fish and I backed off because there wasn’t a resource to fish on, and now to be penalized for it is just flat-out wrong.”

Even though entry into the fishery is limited, there is still too much effort for what the resource can sustain, said DeGraaf.

But fishermen said the freeze and the owner/operator proposals were two different things that didn’t sync.

“I have a friend who’s 19, who’s bought all the gear for his boat, has a license, hasn’t yet fished because he’s a young kid, who was going to go this year but he opted to rebuild the engine of his boat over the winter,” said Travis Fogg. “He’s not going to be able to fish the season, having already gained owner/operator and invested into the fishery? It just seems unfair to him.”

“I think it’s wrong,” agreed SAC member Paul Cox. “If he owns a boat and he wants to go fishing, I think he has the right. If not, three or four years ago they should have told him.”

“These guys bought their license,” said another man. “I don’t see how you can shut them out.” Another man said the rotational management system already provides a good handle on controlling effort. Cox said freezing latent licenses for a year might have the unintended consequence of impelling those license-holders to jump into the fishery the following year, lest they be frozen out again.

“We need to reduce effort because there are too many people fishing,” said SAC member Erin Owen, a fishery scientist at Husson College. “And it’s not clear to me that freezing the licenses would impact that, because it’s still open in December, when most of the scallops are landed.”

Mitchell objected to the sudden appearance of the freeze proposal. “This wasn’t even brought up last week, so that doesn’t sound very fully thought out to me,” Mitchell said. “So in one week, we’re going to have a brainchild on this bill, propose it in one week and then pass it in to law. That seems pretty sudden.”

DeGraaf said the DMR’s intention was to try to get the proposal to the legislature during the current session – a tight window of opportunity, at this point. However, she said, “I’m feeling the temperature in the room is to not be rushed, not put something that’s not fully considering everyone’s point of view in the fishery.”

SAC member Tad Miller said that, instead of freezing out latent license-holders, let them reactivate next year, if they wish, as long as they are owner/operators, and then figure out how to transition the rest of the fishery to owner/operator.

SAC members agreed with the amended proposal, which would take effect with the next round of license renewals on Jan. 1, 2014. It would keep in place all existing accommodations for current business arrangements.

SAC member Andy Mays supported the proposal, but also said he was concerned about folks who only had a scallop license and couldn’t afford a boat. “If you have to be an owner/operator and all you held was a scallop license, you couldn’t be an owner/operator,” Mays said.

The next SAC meeting is tentatively scheduled for May 30, 4 p.m. at the Ellsworth City Hall.

For more information, contact DeGraaf at 624-6554 or trisha.degraaf@maine.gov, or visit maine.gov/dmr.