Council Writes Letter on
Tuna Quota Reallocation

by Laurie Schreiber

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — At its January meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) said it would write a letter to express concern about a proposed reconfiguration of a system of quotas for the western Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery.

The proposal is part of Amendment 7 to the Consolidated Atlantic High Migratory Fishery Management Plan.

The letter will go to the U.S. Section to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). ICCAT is responsible for the conservation and management of Atlantic highly migratory species.

The goal of the proposal is to more accurately account for “dead discards” – incidental bycatch of bluefin caught by the pelagic longline fleet, which doesn’t directly target this species. The longline fleet has a bluefin quota to account for discards, but managers expect the fleet to exceed the quota, based on past performance.

At one time, ICCAT provided a separate quota allowance of 68 metric tons (mt) to account for dead discards. But in 2006, ICCAT discontinued the separate allowance and required discards to be accounted for within each country’s annual quota allocation.

NEFMC agreed with David Preble, who said the ICCAT committee should focus on finding a way to reduce dead discards, rather than on changing the quota system. Preble is a member of NEFMC and a technical advisory on the ICCAT advisory committee.

A quota reallocation, said American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) executive director Rich Ruais, is“going to hurt New England fishermen who are tuna fishermen, who are groundfishermen, and who are lobster fishermen.” The proposed reallocation gives the pelagic longline fleet substantially more quota to account for its dead discards. Because the U.S. western Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery must as a whole stay within its overall quota, the additional quota assigned to the longline fleet means it must be subtracted from other categories of tuna users.

“General category is the heart and soul of the New England fishery,” said Ruais. “Most of us, being general category, are not responsible for this very large growth in discards….They’re settling on this major upheaval of a traditional fishery.”

“It’s a considerable change for New England, and damaging for New England,” said Preble. “The longline industry has got considerable discarded bycatch of bluefin. So this year, they’ve increased tonnage being allocated to this fishery…There are a number of problems with this. It takes fish directly away from New England fishermen, and it violates a longstanding practice of keeping the quota percentages the same, over time.”

NEFMC agreed with Preble’s assessment that giving additional quota to the longline fleet rewards “wasteful practices.”

“And it takes the second-lowest of the quota categories and makes it the second-highest, which is profoundly unfair,” Preble said.

The pelagic longline fleet is acknowledged by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) as an environmentally responsible, economically important multispecies fishery. Objections by bluefin fishermen at a recent hearing on Amendment 7 were not against the longline fleet, but against the new accounting scheme.

ICCAT determines the rules for fishing and, in the U.S., the rules are carried out by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). under the dual authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the Atlantic Tunas Convention Act.

For 2013, ICCAT set a total harvest quota for western Atlantic bluefin of 1,750 mt, shared between the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. holds the biggest share, 57 percent. For 2013, that was 923.7 mt, plus 25 mt to account for bycatch related to longline fisheries in what is called the Northeast Distant gear restricted area, on the Grand Banks, for a total U.S. share of 948.7 mt.

The types of gear that U.S. fishermen use to harvest bluefin as a directed fishery are purse seines and handgear (rod-and-reel, handline, and harpoon). In 2013, the traditional rod-and-reel commercial sector was given the largest portion of the U.S. quota, with 435 mt; followed by the recreational (angling) sector with 182 mt. Allocations to the other direct-fishing sectors were: purse seine 172 mt, harpoon 36 mt, traps 1 mt. A reserve amount of 23 mt was set aside to account for in-season adjustments and scientific research.

In order to account for bluefin caught incidentally by the longline fleet, NMFS allocated 46 mt of the quota (plus the 25 mt in the Northeast Distant area). However, that amount is considered inadequate. For 2013, NMFS estimated the longline fleet threw back 145.2 mt of dead discards. NMFS estimated bycatch by handgear and purse seine gear to be relatively low.

“It might be helpful,” said NEFMC member Tom Dempsey, “to communicate our central concern that some of these alternatives will have a detrimental effect on New England’s targeted bluefin tuna fleet, and that, wherever possible, we should be looking to convert discards into landings, not bluefin targeted commercial landings into dead discards in another fishery. That’s a high principle I think we can all agree with.”