The New England Council has bowed to political pressure and will now revisit its decision on 2010 scallop allocations. This is a positive sign for New England fisheries.
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton -Jan 12, 2010 – Undoubtedly there are some bruised feelings among some council members, council staff, and the NMFS regional office in Gloucester. In a highly publicized fight, the New England Council has bowed to political pressure and will now revisit its decision on 2010 scallop allocations. This is a positive sign for New England fisheries.
If two council members change their votes, a new scallop allocation will be recommended to NMFS.
For years, we have supported the idea that the 'best science' is required for fishery management, and condemned instances where the best science has been overridden for political reasons. One of the biggest reasons for the failure of European fisheries management, and the success of the U.S. model, is that the U.S. system makes it harder for political concerns to override scientific stock assessments.
But the scallop issue was not about science. After years of New England fishermen accepting cutbacks because of stock collapse, and rebuilding plans that required huge sacrifices, the region has finally accepted the principle that scientific stock assessments guide harvest levels. Don't laugh. This is a big change.
New Englanders suffered during the 1960's and early 1970's as the Soviets conducted pulse fishing off their coast – very often within easy sight of land. The soviet fishing style was to wipe out a productive area and then leave, hoping to return in 10 or 15 years when it had recovered again. This was the way they deployed their factory fleets around the globe.
When Magnuson was introduced in New England, there was such distrust and disgust over the government's failure to have protected the region that fisheries stock science was thought to be useless. The very first article I ever wrote about the seafood industry was in 1978, called 'Why Scientists Don't Fish Like Fishermen', and it explored how the survey method – fishing in a grid in the ocean and not on productive hot spots, appeared crazy to most fishermen. Why would they believe in something that appeared so stupid.
By 1982, the scientist's ideas about stock status and fishermen's feelings had diverged so greatly that catch limits were being almost universally ignored. New Bedford boats would come in, unload 40,000 pounds at night, and then show up and hail an additional 40,000 lbs at auction the next morning.
In 1982, bowing to political pressure from Massachusetts representatives and the impossibility of controlling catch limits, the council abandon hard TAC's. That decision sent New England fisheries into a 20 year decline. Most harvesters now look back on the early 1980's as a time when they could really catch fish, and concede everyone would be better off today if catch limits could have somehow been maintained.
In 1994, NMFS was sued by the Conservation Law Foundation for its failure to manage New England fisheries in a way that protected stocks. Instead of fighting the suit, NMFS agreed with the charge, and entered into a consent decree. This led to the development of days at sea restrictions, and a period of declining landings, although fishermen continued to land at levels often above the recommended total TAC's.
Nevertheless, by the early 2000's, New England stocks were showing signs of recovery. The last few years most stocks have been on a strong upward rebuilding trajectory, although not all. The fact that the groundfish complex in New England consists of 13 separate species in 17 or 18 different management units creates tremendous complexity, so that fully recovered stocks like haddock, now at the same levels as when the Russians came, can only be fished at a fraction of their allowable catch due to restrictions on other species.
The reauthorization of Magnuson in 2007 has made annual catch limits mandatory in all fisheries. At the same time, the New England Council has adopted a plan to transition to a catch share system for groundfish, in which all vessels would be allocated a share of their historical catch. Because the vessel histories cover time periods when the stocks were extremely low and even absent in many traditional fishing areas, many vessels received allocations that will not allow them to economically survive.
Estimates are that about 50% of the currently permitted vessels cannot survive with the 2010 allocations, although within a few years, larger stock sizes will make many of these permits viable for single vessels.
The council is faced with a problem: how to make a transition to a catch share program and at the same time protect the rebuilding trajectory that stocks are on.
In this light, the scallop reversal is a welcome lesson. The original decision to not allow scallopers to fish at the maximum recommended level was driven by essentially arcane management considerations. The number of vessels fishing in prior years had been underestimated. Yellowtail TAC's were being set at a very low level due to the high rate of discards and the precautionary principle. The upshot was that it was easier for managers, and many council members, simply to take the conservative route – and limit scallopers to a F 0.20 fishing level, despite the fact that the F 0.24 fishing level would also keep landings within annual catch limits and was scientifically acceptable.
This decision, if it stands, costs scallopers 25% of their income. They reacted furiously, and because it is such a large and well represented industry, they had the power to compel reconsideration. No such power exists among the scattered groundfishermen who are looking at draconian limits on yellowtail, pollock, Gulf of Maine cod, and some other species.
The reconsideration means that managers will face the economic issues that are driving the fishery as well as the scientific issues. This is a good thing.
New England fisheries are heading towards a complete disaster later this year unless NMFS and the Council are willing to adopt more flexibility in order to achieve larger management goals.
Much of the draconian limits on some of the most restricted groundfish species comes from the fact that managers don't know how many fish are being discarded (a natural consequence of low trip limits), and as a result, they make huge reductions in allowable catch levels to provide a buffer.
Yet the whole concept of catch shares is to prevent discards, to do away with trip limits, and to land all legal size fish that are caught. NMFS has the opportunity to create a buffer using the amount of fish set aside for precautionary purposes, and use this buffer to make the transition to catch share systems work economically. If the catch share system works, the amount of discards will fall dramatically.
The scallop reversal should help managers understand that at this time, trends on fishing mortality and stock recovery are moving in the right direction, in contrast to the early 1980's, and that embracing flexibility and finding economically viable solutions is key to maintaining the integrity of Magnuson and the rebuilding of New England Fish Stocks.
The scallopers are not the last ones whose voice will be heard. Already another coalition of recreational and commercial fishermen are planning a Washington DC rally in favor of the Schumer – Pallone effort to reopen Magnuson. If NMFS cannot show some flexibility when warranted on economic issues, the management of fisheries in New England will again collapse, and in the process, most of the historic fishing ports in the region will be lost as commercial entities.
NMFS can easily manage a fishery of a few dozen large vessels taking all of New England's fish. The problem is that that vision is a declaration of economic war on the rest of the industry, and as the scallop decision has shown, most harvesters are unlikely to accept this, with negative consequences for all of U.S. fisheries management.
After dealing with scallops, the council and NMFS should look into the ways in which they can be more flexible in implementing catch shares for groundfish. One place to start would be in allowing some economic flexibility by reducing the 'buffers' held in reserve for many stocks
Disclosure: John Sackton has been involved with the issue of catch shares for scallops since the late 1990's when new seafood company investments were being made in New Bedford. In 2009 Sackton accepted a contract with the Environmental Defense Fund to provide comments and analysis on the National Catch Share Policy paper put out by NOAA. Sackton has also been involved with ITQ programs in Alaska since 2005, as non-binding price arbitrator for the crab rationalization program (hired by both harvesters and processors), and has worked more than ten years on Canadian snow crab, shrimp and lobster pricing. Since 1994 Sackton has worked with hundreds of seafood companies, government agencies, industry associations and environmental groups providing seafood industry market analysis and research, in addition to his founding and editing of Seafood.com News.'