DMR Holds 2nd Meeting to Discuss Spending Fishermen’s Funds

The Maine DMR is holding a second meeting to discuss how to spend the $636,000 in discretionary funds being distributed to Maine for groundfish disaster relief on Wednesday, July 23rd, from 5-7 pm at the Lincoln County Communications Center in Wiscasset.

These funds are intended to aid fishermen, and we want to hear from Maine groundfish industry members how these funds could be best utilized to provide long-term benefit and relief to the fleet.

At the first meeting on June 18 and since then, the following suggestions have been offered:

• Allocating the funds to groundfish sectors to develop their own spend plans (sectors would need to provide these spend plans to DMR for approval prior to submission for grant to NOAA)

• Rebate of fees or subsidies (landings, fuel, ice)

• Direct aid to non-qualifying permit holders (eg those who met landings threshold but have an open access permit: DMR will have more info on how many people fall into this category on 7/23)

• Pursuit of MSC certification for pollock, haddock or redfish

• Revolving loan fund

• Purchase of capital equipment such as electronic monitoring equipment or fuel meters

• Cover costs for observer coverage, now (for sector exemptions) or in future

• Purchase of additional permits for Maine State Permit Bank, or lease quota on choke species

We are hoping to reach some agreement about the spend plan, or at least make significant progress in that direction, at the 7/23 meeting. If necessary, we will hold another meeting in the last week of July or early August. Please call Meredith at 624-6553 with any questions, and we hope to see you on the 23rd.

BACKGROUND

The groundfish disaster funding allocation was negotiated among the state fisheries agency directors and announced in June. The agreement splits the $32.8M evenly, allocating by thirds. This approach will result in Maine getting $2.2M initially from allocation of a total of $22M at the outset, and our fishermen potentially benefitting further when decisions are made about the allocation of the final third. The details of this breakdown are below.

The funding will be divided as follows:

1. $11M divided evenly among active vessels (or $10.9M).

• Active defined as a vessel with a min. of 5000 lbs of landings in any one fishing year between 2010-2013, but may be other qualification criteria

• Expect that around 50 Maine vessels/permits meet this criteria

• Expected amount: $32,461 per permit

• Full amount will allocated to each vessel (any admin fees will come out of second grant for discretionary funds).

2. $11M (actually around $10.9M) would be distributed by homeport revenue loss formula proposed by NMFS (used to determine the regional allocations from the initial $75M appropriated nationally). Maine will get $636,886. It is the spending of this pot of money that we will be discussing at the upcoming July 23 meeting.

3. $11M held in reserve for a discussion about using these monies for a federally-funded buyout of quota, or using them to subsidize the debt service on an industry-funded buyback. This will be an ongoing discussion that will engage industry members as well as states and other stakeholders.