Management & Regulation

NOAA Fisheries Service Announces That Effective November 26, 2009, Vessels Issued Federal Permits For Atlantic Herring May Not Fish For, Catch, Possess, Or Land More Than 2,000 Pounds Of Atlantic Herring In Or From Area 1A Per Trip Or Calendar Day. Read the complete notice at NOAA.

Framework 44 Overfishing Levels (OFLs), Acceptable Biological Catches (ABCs), and Annual Catch Limits (ACLs)

The New England Fisheries Managment Council has posted an updated table of ACLs for FY 2010 – 2012 on their web page (www.nefmc.org). This table incorporates the allocation of yellowtail flounder to the scallop and groundfish fisheries.

Read the complete story at NEFMC.

Each week, WBSM in New Bedford, MA hosts the Saving Seafood Hour on "Morning Magazine with Phil Paleologos."

Attorney Dave Frulla of the DC law firm Kelley Drye joins Phil Paleologos and Bob Vanasse to discuss the actions taken at the New England Fisheries Management Council on Herring and Scallops.

[click here to listen now]

 

 

 

Given all of the factors now in play, it’s obvious the New England Fishery Management Council jumped the gun in June when it approved converting the New England groundfishery to a regulatory system of fishermen’s catch shares based on allowable quotas, rather than days at sea.

Indeed, it’s most telling that the New England Council and its staff didn’t participate in a major workshop on implementing the new system until four months later in October, when it hosted a retreat of sorts in Bretton Woods, N.H., at the foot of Mount Washington, not exactly an easy drive for fishermen or many other industry officials who, while the event was required to be public, were pretty much discouraged from sitting in.

But, amid calls for pushing the catch share conversion back a year, the council this week has to make perhaps an even more important series of decisions regarding the viability of any New England catch share: In its monthly meeting in Newport, R.I., (see Page 1 news story), the panel is poised to set the actual catch limits for the region’s groundfishery — and with it, show just how committed it truly is to all aspects of the fishery, notably the economic effect these changes may have on the industry, and communities such as Gloucester that are so deeply tied to it.

Read the complete story at the Gloucester Daily Times. 

The New England Fishery Management Council issued this press release on November 20, 2009

NEWBURYPORT, MA  The New England Fishery Management Council finalized scallop fishery management measures for 2010 at its late fall meeting in Newport, RI this week. Framework Adjustment 21 to the Scallop Fishery Management Plan will continue the successful management of the scallop resource through the use of an innovative program that employs area rotation along with specific measures in defined geographic “access” areas to control levels of fishing. The action represents a reduction in catch to ensure that the scallop resource is fished at sustainable levels.

Allocations for 2010 will include four access area trips. Two scallop trips will be allowed in the Elephant Trunk Access Area and one in the Delmarva Access Area — both off the Mid-Atlantic coast; and one in the Nantucket Lightship Access Area located south of Nantucket. Twenty-nine days-at-sea per vessel will be allocated to full-time scallop vessels fishing in the “open areas”, fishing grounds outside of the access areas. Forty percent of that will be reserved for part-time vessels and 8.33% for vessels in the occasional permit category. These measures were developed using a Council-approved fishing mortality target, or level of fishing that allows roughly 16 percent of the commercially-sized scallops to be harvested. 

Framework 21 also includes measures to comply with the recent finding prepared by the National Marine Fisheries Service that requires limited scallop fishing in areas and during the time of year when sea turtle distribution overlaps with scallop fishing activities. To reduce the risk of interactions, the Council selected a September-October closure of the Delmarva Access Area, as well as a restriction on the number of access area trips that can be taken in either the Delmarva or the Elephant Trunk Access Areas between June 15 and August 31. The outcome, with only two of the three available access area trips allowed in the Mid Atlantic areas during the period in which turtles are likely to be present, is expected to result in a shift of a portion of the projected fishing activities to other areas and/or times of year when turtles are less likely to be encountered.

The New England Fishery Management Council, one of eight regional councils established by federal legislation in 1976, is charged with conserving and managing fishery resources from three to 200 miles off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. 

The New England Fishery Management Council has removed a powerful disincentive for fishermen who have chosen to remain outside the catch share system and instead fish independently in the common pool next year.

But the margin of the vote Wednesday night — against running the fishing clock at double time against the common poolers for time spent on the inshore grounds — was most narrow, with the recommendation from the council’s Groundfish Committee rejected 8-7 with one abstention.

Moreover, the council has given Patricia Kurkul, the National Marine Fisheries Service’s regional administrator, nearly limitless authority to step in to change the fishing rules as she sees fit at any time after midnight on May 1, the starting date of the fishing year that will debut a partial catch share regulatory system with fishermen working in voluntary fishing cooperatives known as sectors.

Vito Giacalone, a founder of the Northeast Seafood Coalition and an innovative force in the organization of 13 sectors, said yesterday that giving Kurkul the authority to tighten the rules next year would encourage the derby the council should be trying to avoid.

In addition, Giacalone said the differential counting "feels punitive."

Council member Jim Odlin, a Maine boat owner, agreed.

"I’m wondering if we’re going too far, way too far," he said.

Giacalone said he favored tightening up limits on cod and pollock.

"That’s all we were looking to achieve," he said. "I hope the 2-1 counting and the mid-season authority (to change the rules) are removed."

Nies, the council’s executive director, also advised that giving Kurkul the authority to change the rules would encourage the derby they were seeking to prevent.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

If the New England Fishery Management Council made a mistake by recommending that federal regulators reduce the catch of herring by 45 percent next year, they erred on the side of necessary caution.

The purse seine fishery, which covers an area from Labrador to Cape Hatteras, is the primary source of bait for Maine’s lobster fishermen. It also provides herring for canned sardines and other processed fish products.

NEFMC members voted Tuesday to recommend that the National Marine Fisheries Service reduce the allowable catch from 194,000 metric tons this year to 109,000 tons in 2010.

The herring fishery is a special concern for regulators because, due to its small size and abundance, the fish is a important food source for many other species throughout its life cycle.

Read the complete story at The Kennebec Journal.

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service has determined that 80 percent of the butterfish quota for the 2009 fishing year has been harvested. Therefore, effective 0001 hours, November 25, 2009, the directed fishery for butterfish is closed and vessels issued Federal permits for butterfish may not retain or land more than 600 lb. of butterfish per trip or per calendar day.

Federally permitted dealers are also advised that they may not purchase butterfish from federally permitted vessels that harvest more than 600 lb. of butterfish until January 1, 2010. The directed fishery will reopen at 0001 hours, January 1, 2010, at which time the 2010 quota for the butterfish fishery will become available.

Read the complete notice from NOAA.

Each week, WBSM in New Bedford, MA hosts the Saving Seafood Hour on "Morning Magazine with Phil Paleologos."

November 12, 2009: Kristen Decas, Executive Director of the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission, joins Saving Seafood Executive Director Bob Vanasse and WBSM's Phil Paleologos to discuss the tightening of regulations on Red Crab, the City of New Bedford's partnership with the Atlantic Red Crab Company, and the recent certification of Red Crab as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.

[click here to listen now]   

 

 

At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), NOAA Fisheries Service announces an extension of the Red Tide/Shellfish emergency fishery closure through December 31, 2010, due to the presence of the toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning.

All bivalve molluscan shellfish fishing, with the exception of sea scallop adductor muscles harvested and shucked at sea, is prohibited in the northern component of the Temporary PSP Closure Area. The northern component of the Temporary PSP Closure Area includes all Federal waters bound by the following coordinates in the order stated: (1) 43°00′ N. lat., 71 °00′ W. long.; (2) 43°00′ N. lat., 69°00′ W. long.; (3) 41 °39′ N. lat., 69°00′ W. long.; (4) 41 °39′ N. lat., 71 °00′ W. long., and then ending at the first point.

See the notice from NOAA. [pdf]