Management & Regulation

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]

The following is a summary of the major Council actions on groundfish at the November 17 – 18, 2009 meeting in Newport, RI.  This summary does not include Nov. 19. • The Council approved Framework Adjustment 44 to the Northeast Multi-species FMP. FW 44 adopts specifications for FY 2010 – FY 2012. These specs include the overfishing limits (OFLs), Acceptable Biological Catches (ABCs), and Annual Catch Limits (ACLs), as well as the incidental catch TACs for the Category B DAS program and Special Access Programs. We will distributed a table with the final values to our sector contacts, and post them on our web page, in a few days. None of these are truly final until approved by NMFS and published in the Federal Register. Some specs for 2011 and beyond may be revisited ion the summer of 2010: we expect to receive a pollock assessment, GB YTF will be assessed again, and the scallop area management program may affect YTF allocations.

As part of the specs process, the Council decided to allocate GB and SNE/MA yellowtail flounder to the scallop fishery. In FY 2010 the allocation will be 100 percent of the amount the fishery is expected to catch, but it declines to 90 percent of the expected catch in FY 2011 and FY 2012. This allocation is an “other subcomponent” in the first year but becomes a sub-ACL and is subject to accountability measures in FY 2011 and beyond. If the overall YTF ACL is exceeded for either stock because the scallop fishery exceeded their sub-component allocation the Council plans to consider measures in Amendment 15 for 2011 or beyond to adjust for any overages from 2010.  Framework 44 also requires that all limited access scallop vessels be required to land all legal-sized YTF flounder as a measure to reduce by-catch and improve data collection of YTF by-catch in the scallop fishery. Scallop fishery catches of CC/GOM YTF will not be specifically allocated but will be lumped together with incidental catches form other fisheries.

FW 44 also modifies common pool measures that will be effective May 1, 2010 (if approved). The GOM cod trip limit will be 800 lbs./DAS to a maximum of 4,000 lbs/trip. This change automatically returns the handgear A and B permits to 300 lbs. and 75 lbs. of cod, respectively. A pollock trip limit of 1,000 lbs./DAS and 10,000 lbs./trip will be adopted. The Regional Administrator will be authorized to modify trips limits or DAS counting to reduce the likelihood that the ACL of any stock is exceeded, or to facilitate the harvest of nay ACL. Please note the Council considered but did not adopt 2:1 differential DAS counting in the inshore Gulf of Maine. FW 44 will be submitted in December and reviewed by NMFS; the goal is to have the measures in place May 1, 2010.

    • The Council voted to initiate an action to consider modifying the GB yellowtail flounder rebuilding strategy. It is unclear at present whether this will be an amendment or a framework adjustment. The expectation is this will not be completed in time to change the GB YTF ACL for FY 2010.

    • The Council voted to initiate a joint scallop/groundfish action to allow the transfer of yellowtail flounder between groundfish sectors and scallop sectors. The details on this action are not yet developed.

    • In other issues, the Council discussed 2010 priorities. Other than the two preceding bullets, no specific groundfish action is planned. There are no plans to immediately pursue an amendment for area management or ITQs, for example. The Council tasked the Interspecies Committee to consider catch share issues and the possibility of combining management plans; the exact extent of this Committee’s work is still being resolved because of the decisions to initiate the two actions mentioned in paragraphs 2 and 3. The Council recommended to NMFS that the eastern US/CA areas not open for trawl gear until August 1, 2010 next fishing year (a similar rule was in place the last two years). They voted to endorse sector requests for an exemption from the May, Block 138 rolling closure.

If there are any questions contact Tom Nies at the New England Fisheries Management Council, e-mail: tnies@nefmc.org, phone: 978-465-0492 (ext.19)

A frustrated New England Fishery Management Council yesterday found reasons to rethink the seven-year rebuilding program for yellowtail flounder.

The 10-7 vote to "initiate an action" to adjust the rebuilding strategy reflected a deeply conflicted council and was taken after hours of fruitless discussion and debate aimed at controlling the bycatch of yellowtail in the scallop fishery.

The dilemma was framed by the imminent imposition of catch limits in the groundfishery next year, as required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. With hard catch limits, the mixing of yellowtail in the scallop stocks brought on a conflict that had councilors exasperated for more than three hours.

The council tacitly conceded the need to give the scallop fleet its needed allocation of yellowtail. The most lucrative and healthiest stock in New England, scallops have made New Bedford the No. 1 value port in America, so there was no sentiment to limit the scalloping which is conducted up and down the coast through the Middle Atlantic states.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

The council voted to adopt a lower fishing level (0.2) instead of 0.24, and the result will be a cut in the days at sea allocation from approximately 39 days this year to 29 days per vessel.

At the same time, NMFS announced that part of the reason for this is that they believe this year there are about 20 or 25 more full time scallop vessels fishing on the resource than they had counted in last year’s plan.

But the primary reason is that the SSC thinks fishing effort on scallops has been too high. Preliminary calculations suggest that this year’s level of fishing is at F=0.30, which is above the target fishing level for the stock. SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton – Nov 19, 2009 – Newport, RI- Despite avoiding additional cutbacks due to yellowtail flounder, scallopers were glum after yesterday’s council actions. After all, they had lost about $300,000 per boat.

The council voted to adopt a lower fishing level (0.2) instead of 0.24, and the result will be a cut in the days at sea allocation from approximately 39 days this year to 29 days per vessel.

At the same time, NMFS announced that part of the reason for this is that they believe this year there are about 20 or 25 more full time scallop vessels fishing on the resource than they had counted in last year’s plan.

But the primary reason is that the SSC thinks fishing effort on scallops has been too high. Preliminary calculations suggest that this year’s level of fishing is at F=0.30, which is above the target fishing level for the stock.

The reductions mean first, boats will lose one of their trips to the closed scallop areas, reducing the number of trips annually from five to four, and they will also be cutback in the number of days at sea.

A number of scallop vessels stack their days at sea, but overall, the measure will reduce fishing time.

The average scallop boat has a gross stock of about $1.2 to $1.5 million, and according to industry representatives, this action will chop about $300,000 off the gross stock of each vessel.

Scallopers did make out better on the two other action items before the council on scallops. One was turtle interactions. Despite the extremely low level of reported turtle interactions, NMFS is developing a protection measure to reduce the impact of scallopers on turtles. The measure adopted would close the elephant trunk area during September and October, when interactions with turtles are most likely to occur. This is not a prime time for fishing in this area, and the industry feels this will have little impact.

A more serious issue was a NMFS proposal to create a new closed area in the Great South Channel. Although the industry has had good experience with rotational closed areas, analysis of this plan showed it was flawed. First, it would displace a lot of effort into a smaller area outside the closure, resulting in more intensive dredging of the bottom. Secondly, there would be a tremendous revenue loss, but little return from the closure. As a result the idea was dropped.

Finally, the scallop industry had to deal with yellowtail allocations. The basic problem is that the aggressive rebuilding plan currently in place for yellowtail reduces fishing far below levels that are permitted in Canada, and represents allowing only about 20% of the tonnage of yellowtail that could be landed legally under Magnuson without overfishing occurring.

For Georges Bank yellowtail, the total US TAC is around 1500 tons. This amount has to be divided between scallopers and ground-fishermen, and is a limiting factor in both fisheries.

The initial proposal before the council was to limit scallopers to 90% of their necessary allocation in 2010. This would have resulted in another 9% reduction in revenue, on top of the cuts already made.

Ron Smollowitz, speaking for the Fisheries Survival Coalition, made a strong point that it was unconscionable for the council to be even considering further reductions on scallop effort due to Yellowtail by-catch considerations, after the industry had already made a great many changes and sacrifices to reduce the by-catch.

The momentum of the meeting seemed to change, and quickly an amendment was adopted to allocate 100% of Yellowtail needed by the scallop fleet in 2010 from the Annual Catch Limit.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher
Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441
Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com

Source: Seafood.com News