There was also representation of trawl vessels that opposed Alternative 7 and supported Alternative 5. “To suggest,” said Mary Beth Tooley, executive director of the Camden-based East Coast Pelagic Association (ECPA), which represents 17 boats from Cape May, N.J., to Rockland, “that herring mid-water trawls fishing an area cause localized depletion and that those same boats fishing in the same area with purse seine gear will not, is illogical. A dead fish is a dead fish.” “How were purse seiners allowed to win the lottery?” asked Wayne Berry, a bait dealer who said he buys most of his bait from mid-water trawlers. “I see a lot of cost to the mid-water guys and none for purse seiners.” Leslie Raybers, owner of the mid-water trawler Providian, said she supported Alternative 5 because it does not exclude trawlers from 1A at any time of the year. “Localized depletion has been occurring since the beginning of time,” Raybers said. “Where will you get your bait?” A “hard TAC limit,” Raybers said, “will be an effective measure to limit access and said she would support a purse seine only area east of the 69-degree line, on an experimental basis.” East Coast Tuna Association (ECTA) Executive Director Rich Ruais said the hard TAC argument is not viable. “The overused axiom ‘A dead fish is a dead fish’ does not apply to the herring fishery when considering the impact of measures affecting gear use,” Ruais said. Restricting 1A The amendment’s seven alternatives consist of combinations of limited access and purse seine/fixed gear-only areas. Eligibility requirements are proposed for limited access permits. Alternative 7 is the preferred alternative of the council’s Plan Development Team (PDT). Three of the alternatives provide for a purse seine/fixed gear-only area within inshore Area 1A, east of the 69-degree line, from June to September, but Alternative 7 is the only one to provide for an exclusive area for all of Area 1A. Each of the alternatives excludes mid-water trawlers from the proposed areas for that time. Alternative 7 is the most restrictive alternative for Area 1, although not for Areas 2/3. At the moment, 23 vessels qualify to fish in Area 1 and 22 additional vessels qualify for Areas 2/3 only. Of those, 18 are active in Area 1. Under Alternative 7, six pair trawl and six mid-water trawl vessels that qualify for Area 1 would be impacted by the purse seine/fixed gear-only area. These vessels currently get about 60 percent of their landings from Area 1A. If the alternative goes through, the PDT says there would be considerable costs for vessels choosing to re-rig or operate beyond their usual areas. Fuel and other operating costs would increase for vessels that do not qualify for Area 1 and must steam to other fishing locations, with larger trawlers averaging an increase in fuel cost per trip of $4,000 to $6,000. For larger vessels re-rigging for seining, nets would likely cost $200,000 at a minimum, and $50,000 to $100,000 for smaller vessels, with additional costs for other rigging gear. According to the council, total re-rigging costs could range between $300,000-$400,000. The council is also considering a number of independent measures, which include options for bycatch limits and bycatch monitoring. Linchpin In The Ecosystem A wide variety of species depend on herring for forage, including groundfish, marine mammals such as whales and dolphins, and pelagic fish such as bluefin tuna, bluefish and striped bass. It is also crucial as bait in the lobster fishery. Many blame the increasing numbers of mid-water single and pair trawl boats for dominating the fishery, particularly in 1A, by scooping up the resource in a fraction of the time purse seiners and fixed-gear methods take. Mid-water trawlers drag huge nets behind the boat, sometimes in pairs, with two boats towing a net between them. Under the management plan, the inshore Gulf of Maine comprises Area 1A, adjoined by Area 1B offshore and Areas 2 and 3 to the south. The primary tool to date for managing the fishery is the total allowable catch (TAC) allotted to each area. TACs have never been reached in Areas 1B, 2, or 3, but there is concern that 1A is at risk of being overfished. National Marine Fisheries Service scientists say the available data shows a level of abundance in the entire stock complex, including Area 1A, that supports existing fishing levels. Still, the push is on to keep trawlers out of 1A for at least part of the year. One man said trawlers should be kept out of 1A all together, and an eye should be kept on purse seiners as well. But ECPA’s Tooley said existing TACs serve well to protect the resource without restricting gear types. “ECPA has been a strong advocate of developing a limited access program for this fishery,” Tooley said. “However, the combined measures contained in Alternative 7 have the greatest negative impact of any of the proposed alternatives on the herring industry and do not provide a rational approach to managing this fishery.” Tooley said Alternative 7’s access provisions will allow more rather than fewer boats to enter Area 1. At the same time, she said, the seasonal exclusion of trawls in 1A is unjustified because the fishery will continue to be managed through hard TACs. Impacts on excluded vessels will be significant, Tooley said. In 2005, the fishery had about 17 active vessels — three purse seiners and 14 mid-water trawls. Alternative 7, she said, would seasonally exclude vessels that have derived as much as 67 percent of all herring revenues from Area 1A during the June-September period. Some vessels, she said, would likely choose to convert to purse seining in Area 1A. But, she said, the council has underestimated the cost of conversion. “Vessel owners report actual costs to be much higher, with $500,000 being a minimal cost for many current participants,” Tooley said.
Jeff Kaelin also opposed Alternative 7. A state representative and member of the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee, Kaelin was on hand as a representative of Stinson Seafood, Bumble Bee LLC, the shoreside processing vessel Atlantic Frost, and Portland-based trawler F/V Providian. Kaelin said localized depletion of herring schools is an ongoing situation with the resource. It does not indicate that trawl vessels have wiped out herring, he said, but that the schools are not where somebody thought they would be. He said Alternative 7 could result in a bait crisis for the lobster fishery because purse seiners are unable to harvest enough. He said his clients support Alternative 5, with a seine-only area east of 69 degrees as an experiment. Kaelin also said seiners are as capable of overfishing spawning stocks as trawls are. But Gib Brogan, Mystic, Conn.-based campaign projects manager with the environmentalist group Oceana, said Alternative 7 represents the best balance between all needs and groups and is a good start to manage the expansion of the trawl fleet. Environmentalists and fishermen alike spoke to the linchpin role herring plays for the entire ecosystem, arguing that mid-water and pair trawls ruin spawning grounds, disrupt schools, and wipe out herring in short order without regard to the foraging needs of other species, which in turn move in search of food out of the reach of other user groups such as whale watchers and tuna fishermen. In addition, they said, large mid-water boats are responsible for catching everything else that feeds on herring. “Unfortunately, the lack of herring in the near-shore waters is causing problems not just for species like whales that rely on herring as a forage species, but also for commercial and recreational fishermen and nature-based tourism industries that rely on a healthy herring supply,” said CLF attorney Fleming. “Mid-water trawling — fishing that drags big nets through the middle and bottom of the water column — can cause severe damage to herring schools when schools form on near-shore spawning grounds. Intense effort by these vessels that concentrates fishing on herring schools is incompatible with maintaining sustainable herring populations and a healthy Gulf of Maine ecosystem. Herring trawl vessels strip too many herring out of the ecosystem, leading to localized herring resource depletion and serious impacts on other species that cohabitate with or rely on herring as forage food.” “This time the issue is threatening a keystone species,” said Allied Whale Research Associate Toby Stephenson. “If herring collapses, everything around it is going to collapse as well.” Stephenson and others said the issue also pertains to the loss of small, independent fisheries and owner-operator vessels, as larger vessels coming from multi-boat fleets take over the resource. “The notion that ‘how fish is harvested doesn’t matter’ isn’t true,” he said. Buffer Zone Klyver said the 1990s was a time of tremendous increase in the herring resource, which meant a lively abundance of marine mammals. “But in the last four years we have seen very little surface feeding,” he said. “During the beginning of September this year, we had a period of 10 days where we saw lots of surface feeding on herring, but other than that it has been a seldom occurrence. We have also seen less site tenacity and fewer whales in recent years.” Klyver said blaming the disappearance of herring on other causes — such as a change in ocean temperature, a decrease in plankton or simply that herring have gone elsewhere — is faulty logic. “We would argue,” he said, “that if there is a downturn in the ecosystem for any reason, then there’s all the more reason to take a precautionary approach when managing a fishery that is so important as forage to so many large pelagic species and groundfish.” Many called the proposed purse seine/fixed gear-only Area 1A buffer zone key to restoring a healthy balance. The buffer zone, said ECTA’s Ruais, “is critically important and necessary to prevent localized resource depletion and provide adequate forage necessary for recovering groundfish stocks, large pelagics such as bluefin tuna and several species of mammals and sharks.” The prohibition, Ruais said, “will have positive impacts for the resource because of negative characteristics of mid-water gear that are not shared by purse seine gear in filling any appropriate TAC.” Ruais continued, “It is well known that herring vessels frequently make sets or tows that result in catch that is unacceptable as product either due to the size of herring or feed content or bycatch of groundfish or mammals. With purse seine gear, the catch can be released alive with minimal mortality because the fish are alive in the net. With the condition of unacceptable levels of feed within the herring, the purse seine vessels have the additional option of retaining the fish alive in the net for several hours until the herring naturally purge. With midwater trawl gear, the only available option is to discard the mostly dead herring and/or bycatch to try another tow for a profitable trip or to stay within the limits of bycatch regulations.” Bycatch of haddock and other species was also a concern. Although the herring industry has a voluntary bycatch avoidance program, instituted over the past summer, many said better bycatch monitoring is needed, and some agreed with Oceana’s call for 100 percent observer coverage to monitor bycatch. “I want to see what’s happening with these mid-water trawlers,” said one purse-seine captain, adding also that the concept of purse seine/fixed gear-only areas should go further and include other areas. |
