The following is a Saving Seafood special report:
by Sarah Hanselman and John Cooke
Saving Seafood staff writers
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) May 24, 2012 — On April 19, NOAA announced that areas in the Gulf of Maine will be closed to gillnet fishing for the months of October and November to prevent the accidental deaths of harbor porpoises. Local fishermen, who say that the closure will have severe economic consequences, criticized the measure. NOAA determined that porpoise bycatch by gillnets is too high, and that the closure is necessary to protect the porpoise population.
Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), marine mammal “takes,” or accidental injury or death, are prohibited by law. Each year, NOAA calculates the bycatch rate and projected takes of harbor porpoises. Gillnetting is restricted if this projection exceeds a specific limit determined by historical bycatch highs. This year, the takes were deemed excessive and parts of the Gulf of Maine that have significant numbers of porpoises will be closed to gillnetters for two months in the fall.
However, the closure has met with resistance from many who believe it is not necessary. Northeastern fishermen argue that the decision is based on flawed data. They question both the methodology used in the bycatch estimates, and NOAA’s determination of the rate of compliance to requirements enacted to reduce takes.
A lack of communication?
NOAA formed the Gulf of Maine Harbor Porpoise Take Reduction Team, the body that enacted this closure, in 1996 with the goal of reducing harbor porpoise takes in the area to zero. It includes industry and environmental representatives, members of the fishery management councils, gear researchers, and state and regional management. However, the Take Reduction Team has been criticized by the fishing community for a lack of transparency in its decision-making process. One gillnet fisherman on the team, Bill McCann, told Saving Seafood that he has not been contacted by the organization in five years, since their 2007 meeting in Philadelphia, yet was still listed as an active member.
Jackie Odell, Executive Director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, criticized the overall Take Reduction Plan as misaligned with the existing sector management system that went into place in 2010. According to Odell, under the current sector management system, the fishery is well suited to deal with bycatch and regulatory compliance issues, and could possibly work directly with the fisheries regulators in a timely manner.
“[Issues surrounding porpoise bycatch are] not being communicated on a real-time basis with the fishing industry – or sectors who are presently required to report weekly to NMFS ,” Odell says. “[Sector managers] can deal with these consequences in real-time as opposed to waiting nine months for a NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) analysis.” Odell was also critical of the process explaining that the Take Reduction Team should have been convened to review and discuss the data prior to the closure taking effect.
The 2010 Harbor Porpoise Take Reduction Plan, put out by the team, established the bycatch limit for harbor porpoises in several different regions. In the Gulf of Maine, if the take estimate exceeds .031 harbor porpoises per metric ton (1 porpoise per 71,117 lbs) for two consecutive years, the Gulf of Maine Costal Consequence Closure Area is closed to gillnetters from October through November. This year’s findings, when averaged with last year’s data, created an estimated number of takes that was determined to exceed the limit.
The wrong metric?
Fishermen have criticized the porpoise take limits and estimates as inaccurate, noting that they are not based upon the observed number of harbor porpoise takes in a year, but instead on estimates. The estimates are based on past bycatch trends and the amount of gillnetting that occurred in the Gulf of Maine. There are several concerns about the methodology used to calculate the bycatch rate. These include a failure to account for uncertainty in the fishery data, the shift to sector management, changes in fishing patterns, a reliance on old data sets, and environmental factors including changing ecosystem dynamics and climate change.
“They basically just go by poundage, the more fish you catch and land, the more takes,” McCann says. The estimated bycatch rate is calculated by taking the observed number of takes in an area and dividing it by the pounds landed in that area (landings are used as a measure of fishing effort). This rate is then applied to the entire mass of fish caught with gillnets; creating the estimated number of porpoise takes across the Gulf of Maine. The more fishing that occurs and the higher poundage brought in, the more porpoise takes that will be recorded.
Using the amount of fish landed as the metric to measure effort is viewed by many in the fishing community as inherently inaccurate. The current measure emphasizes the number of fish caught, rather than the efficiency of the fleet or the amount of time the nets spend in the water, which would have a more direct impact on porpoise takes than the number of fish landed. As Odell mentioned, many argue that the fishery’s move to a catch share-based system has fundamentally changed the way in which the fishery operates, and that the Take Reduction Plan, designed between 2007-2010, does not reflect this.
“Based on the way we fish now this is not an accurate metric.” Odell says a measurement that reflects the industry’s efficiency, such as basing measurements on gear deployments, would be a better way of estimating porpoise takes. Some have even suggested that the number of hauls could be the most accurate information available.
Best available data may not be good enough?
NOAA officials claim that the reason pounds landed are used as a measure of fishing effort is because there is no complete, reliable data set for other measures cited by fishermen as a more accurate representation of effort. They say that Vessel Trip Reports (VTRs), the source of data on other measures of effort, are not being filled out accurately and consistently by the fishermen and therefore using these kinds of measurements would make estimates even more flawed.
“Right now we are using the only matrix that we can, and those other matrices might be a good source down the road, but we don’t know because we don’t even have enough information to make the analysis to compare and find out which is the best way to move forward,” says David Gouveia, coordinator of the NOAA Northeast Regional Office’s Marine Mammals Program. He says that landings data is the only consistent information available to calculate the harbor porpoise bycatch rate, and indicates NOAA’s willingness to adjust if better science becomes available.
Fishermen also argue that the growing biomass of the porpoises has not been properly accounted for in the take calculation. With a growing number of porpoises, the risk of accidentally entrapping one increases. NOAA officials have recognized that this is an issue, while they are looking into the situation, they did not factor it into the decision to proceed with this year’s harbor closing. NOAA is expected to release their 2012 Atlantic Harbor Porpoise Stock Assessment by the end of the month. After looking at the numbers from this report, NOAA states that it will reconvene the Take Reduction Team to make the proper adjustments to the policies, whether finding the stock in good or poor health.
Fishermen consider the scheduling of that meeting to be problematic, since although the team will reconvene to discuss the harbor closure, it will not be until after it has already been imposed on the gillnetters. “[The] current window is late October-early Nov, 2012 so that the draft abundance estimate for 2011, the bycatch estimate for entire population in 2011, and year two bycatch analysis for the consequence closure areas can all be available for the meeting,” writes Teri Frady, Chief of Research Communications Branch of the NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
Is zero takes a realistic goal?
The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) mandates that marine mammal takes eventually conform to a concept defined in the 1994 revision of the Act as the Zero Mortality Rate Trigger (ZMRT). For harbor porpoises, this is a number of animals that is 10 percent of the Potential Biological Removal (PBR). The PBR is defined by the MMPA as the maximum number of animals, not including natural mortalities, that may be removed from a marine mammal stock while allowing that stock to reach or maintain its optimum sustainable population. For harbor porpoises at the last stock assessment, the ZMRT is about 70; this number could change upon the release of the new stock assessment.
Many believe that this goal is emphasized too much and ultimately unattainable. “They aren’t looking to rebuild the stocks and protect the harbor porpoises. They’re looking for zero takes,” McCann says. “The only way you’re getting zero takes is zero gillnetters.” If the group isn’t accounting for the growth of the population and keeping up do date on the biomass, the take limits and ZMRT may not be appropriate. This reflects a possible issue of priority within the science. NOAA states that, historically, the ZMRT was consistently close to being reached between the years of 1998 and 2005, indicating that zero takes is a future possibility.
Controversy over “pingers”
In an attempt to reduce the number of takes, NOAA began to require, in specific fishing seasons, an instrument called a “pinger,” a small device attached to the top of the gillnet that emits a high frequency “ping” every four seconds. The ping warns the porpoise that something is in the area. According to NOAA, pingers are 90 percent effective in preventing porpoise takes. Without a pinger, or the correct number of pingers, harbor porpoises are attracted to the food in gillnets, and can become entangled, resulting in a take.
NOAA claims that the cause of a high porpoise bycatch is the low percentage of fishing boats that are fully compliant with pinger regulations. Though the low pinger compliance rate did not factor into the decision to close the harbor, NOAA believes it may be the cause for the bycatch exceeding the limit this year. “We were hoping to find out why the bycatch rate was so high, and that could be a possible reason why,” says Debra Palka, a research biologist for NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Fewer pingers in functional use translates into more harbor porpoise takes.
The calculated full pinger compliance (vessels with the correct number of pingers, all in working order) was measured by NOAA staff to be at only 41 percent, which reinforced their concerns about the harbor porpoise bycatch. However, area fishermen believe that the real compliance rate is much higher, perhaps even one hundred percent.
Bill McCann explains that pingers are temperamental and that the NOAA calculation of compliance is not lenient in regards to this. Pingers that are out of batteries, broken, or lost are still considered non-compliant. When fishing, a boat is required to have one pinger on each end of a string, and then one for each gillnet in between. Boats must have the correct number of pingers to be considered compliant. McCann expresses grief over this, claiming that the policy is too strict: “If you are missing one pinger out of one hundred nets, therefore you are in non-compliance.” He holds the opinion that pingers can fall off very easily in the fishing process, thereby allowing a boat making all efforts to follow the pinger policy easily fall into non-compliance. He believes that the accusation of a low compliance rate reflects poorly on the fishermen that are attempting to comply with NOAA’s policies.
Emergency measures
NOAA released a warning to gillnetters in late 2011 that stated the initial examination of the bycatch estimates appeared to exceed the limits. They warned that the closures outlined in the Take Reduction Plan might be enacted, in an effort to give gillnetters time to prepare. In response to this announcement, the Northeast Seafood Coalition wrote a letter to NOAA requesting that a Take Reduction Team meeting be convened to discuss the results of the initial analysis and to collaborate on ways to improve pinger compliance rates, which could potentially lower the ultimate bycatch rate. The letter was sent on December 27, 2011 to then-Regional Administrator Patricia Kurkul. When no response was received before Ms. Kurlul left that position, the NCS reminded NOAA that they awaited a reply. Ms. Kurkul was succeeded by Acting Regional Administrator Daniel Morris. and a reply has still not been received.
Shortly after the Consequence Area closure was announced on April 19, 2012, seven industry members of the Take Reduction Team wrote to NOAA requesting an emergency meeting of the team, stating that the gillnet industry was currently too weak to handle such a restriction. The letter included a request for the TRT to look into alternatives to meet the limits and PBR that would have less disastrous results than the closures.
NOAA Acting Regional Administrator, Daniel Morris refused their request in a May 15th letter explaining that the Consequence Closure Area is what the team had initially agreed to five years ago. He argued that the plan was strong incentive for compliance and maintenance of pingers, and that full cooperation in this would have led to corresponding lower bycatch. He also argued that it would not be productive to convene the team before the scientific results from the porpoise stock assessment and another season of bycatch estimates were completed and analyzed. Morris also wrote than any changes made to the Take Reduction Plan, including changing the policy on closures, would be subject to the standard rulemaking process, passing through a number of procedures before going into effect.