February 3, 2016 — PORTLAND — Last October, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) drastically constrained the ability of midwater trawlers to fish for herring in offshore waters for a period of more than six months, because the herring fleet had bumped up against its quota for the incidental catch of Georges Bank haddock.
As a result, at its December meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) heard a request from herring fishery interests to reconsider the level of constraint for the upcoming fishing year of May 1, 2016 to April 30, 2017, and for future years, since Georges Bank haddock appears to be plentiful and, they said, estimates of haddock catches by the herring fleet were inaccurate.
“A seven-month closure of a major fishery is very significant,” said NEFMC member Mary Beth Tooley, who is the government affairs representative for Rockland-based O’Hara Corp., which owns and operates two herring vessels. “We in the herring fishery don’t want to catch haddock. But that biomass is like locusts: They’re unbelievably abundant. It’s two-pronged: Let’s get groundfishermen catching haddock, and not close the herring fishery.”
Tooley said the herring industry agrees that there should be a limit on what the herring fishery takes from the haddock resource, and that accountability measures to enforce the limit are needed. But the methodology currently used to extrapolate estimates of how much haddock the herring fleet incidentally catches isn’t accurate, she said, and monitoring of harvesting operations, through observer or electronic programs, is inadequate for providing an accurate count of haddock catch.
“We need to have accountability,” Tooley said. “But with our current level of [observer] coverage…it’s become a real issue.”
In an action that became effective Oct. 22, 2015, herring midwater trawl vessels were prohibited from fishing for more than 2,000 pounds of herring per trip or day in the “Herring Georges Bank Haddock Accountability Measure Area,” a limit that will remain in place until the quota becomes available for the 2016 fishing year, on May 1.
The action effectively limited the midwater trawl fishery in Herring Management Area 3, because Area 3 falls within the Georges Bank Haddock Accountability Management Area.
Federally permitted herring vessels, all together, are allowed to catch 1 percent of the Georges Bank haddock resource. The overall allowable haddock catch on Georges Bank for 2015 was 53.7 million pounds (24.3 metric tons); 1 percent, which is further reduced a bit to account for management uncertainty, is 500,449 pounds (227 mt), according to NMFS.
According to data reported on Dec. 21, 2015, based on estimated haddock catches, the herring midwater fleet had reached 93.09 percent of its quota by September, and 104.49 percent by October.
The amount of haddock caught by the herring fleet is extrapolated from the amount of haddock caught on observer trips.