October 20, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission will decide in November whether the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery, which has been closed for the previous three seasons, will remain closed for the 2017 season.
The commission is scheduled to meet Nov. 10 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, first to review the most recent stock status report for northern shrimp and technical recommendations from the shrimp advisory panel. It will then set the specifications for the upcoming season.
Tina Berger, ASMFC spokeswoman, said the 2016 status report has not been finalized, but said she would be surprised if the stock status report revealed anything resembling an extraordinary comeback for the species.
“I haven’t seen the report, but I would be surprised if there was a season,” Berger said. “If there is one, it would probably be a very small one. But again, I haven’t seen the report.”
The stock status reports dating back to 2012 reveal a species in free fall, with record low levels of abundance and biomass and poor recruitment since 2012. Those assessments showed problems with overfishing, warming water temperatures and a dwindling number of spawning females.
The dire state of the fishery and the resulting closures also have given rise to a discussion among New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts about future fishery management options for the beleaguered fishery — including limiting access to what historically has been an open fishery.
Those discussions bogged down last year, and the ASMFC halted further development of the draft amendment addressing access to the collapsed fishery.
Berger said the states met again this summer to try to iron out differences, but came no closer to finding the common ground necessary to draft a workable amendment with limited entry at its core.
“It’s still in the development stages,” Berger said. “They figured that, given the state of the stock, there really was no reason to rush it at this point given the status of the stock.”
Maine harvesters dominated the fishery the last time it was open in 2013. Of the 207 vessels permitted to shrimp in the Gulf of Maine, 180 had hailing ports in Maine, while Massachusetts and New Hampshire each had 13. One vessel landed its shrimp in both Maine and New Hampshire.
Maine shrimpers in 2013 accounted for 83 percent, or 255.5 metric tons, of the total 307 metric tons of shrimp landed — which represented only 50.8 percent of the allowable catch and was the lowest seasonal harvest since the fishery was closed altogether in 1978.
New Hampshire was next with 10 percent (31.3 metric tons) and Massachusetts was third with 7 percent (20.3 metric tons).
This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.