WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – On Wednesday, NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, released a report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery from May 2010 – April 2011.
The evaluation conducted did not examine: (a) the costs associated with joining a sector; (b) vessel operating costs; (c) the effects of annual catch entitlements trading; and (d) changes in ownership patterns. An expanded version of this report scheduled to be released in the Fall of 2011 will include analyses of these factors.
Read the report
According to the Associated Press:
Northeast fishermen are continuing to fish and catch less, while revenues are becoming increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. The report also indicates that prices for groundfish jumped 17 percent in 2010.
The report said 20 percent of all vessels accounted for 80 percent of revenues last year. That's up from the 20 percent of vessels that accounted for 68 percent of revenues during the previous three years.
The number of boats that went groundfishing at least once fell 20 percent last year, to 450, while the number of fishing trips plummeted from about 26,000 to 14,000. New Bedford and Gloucester, the region's biggest ports, had the greatest percentage drops in active vessels, 38 and 22 percent, respectively.
And the total catch for groundfish, which include cod, haddock and flounder, was down to 81 million pounds last year — it had never been below 102 million pounds in the previous three years
But the drop in catch was partially offset by a robust average price per pound of $1.44, compared to $1.23 the year before. So revenues fell just 2 percent, from about $85 million to $83 million.
Kitts said the strong prices could reflect higher demand, since fewer fish were being caught. But it also might show that fishermen were taking advantage of the new system to bring in certain species when the market was good, he said.
There were also indications that fishermen were increasingly looking outside the traditional groundfish fishery to get by.
Read the Associated Press story by Jay Lindsay in the Boston Globe
According to the New Bedford Standard-Times:
Groundfish landings and revenue are down, the fleet is consolidating and there are fewer jobs for crew members, according to a report on the 2010 performance of the groundfish fleet in the Northeast.began on May 1, 2010, and ended April 30.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said the report was simply confirmation of what fishermen have been experiencing firsthand and drew an analogy with the scallop industry in the 1990s.
"New Bedford is the No. 1 port today because we were able to convince the Secretary of Commerce back then to overrule the extreme environmentalists," he said.
A similar appeal on behalf of groundfishermen for raising catch limits, made directly to then-Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, was rebuffed in January.
The news drew an immediate response from Sen. Scott Brown, who issued a statement Wednesday evening.
"The NOAA report on the 2010 fishing year in New England confirms what many fishermen already know; there are fewer jobs in the industry, the number of boats are declining, and more of the revenue is being concentrated among fewer boats. It's clear that Congress needs to act to relieve the burden of these regulations on our hardworking fishermen in Massachusetts," Brown, R-Mass., wrote.
With respect to consolidation of the groundfish fleet, the report notes that 7.6 percent of the boats accounted for 50 percent of the revenue. This compares with 11 percent of the fleet during the 2007-2009 years. The report points out that these findings continue a trend that has been apparent since 2007. However, even though groundfish gross revenues has declined, higher prices at the dock resulted in 2010 gross revenue from all species landed being higher than in 2008 or 2009.
"There is certainly a mix of news," said Drew Kitts, a fisheries economist at NEFSC and the lead author of the report. "Overall, if the effort is down but revenues are up, economically it means that some segments are doing better than others. Larger vessels are doing better than smaller ones and particular ports may not be faring as well as others."
Read the New Bedford Standard-Times story by Don Cuddy
According to the Gloucester Daily Times:
Gloucester's groundfishing fishing fleet lost 21 vessels last year and now numbers just 75 working boats, while regionally, the industry continued to consolidate, according to a government report Wednesday.
From Maine to Montauk, N.Y., the number of working groundfishing boats dropped 20 percent, from 566 to 450 active vessels.
The total number of New England crew positions also dropped, but only by 6.8 percent, from 2,442 to 2,277 because some groundfishing boats shifted to target other forms of seafood.
Crew positions by port were not available. But, in all forms of fishing, Gloucester had a fleet of 110 boats, a loss of three from 2009 and 14 from 2007, while regionally, the number of active commercial fishing boats dropped from 973 to 900.
Total gross revenues for the industry – including New England ports as well as New York/Long Island's – climbed by 9.8 percent from 2009 to 2010 to $297.7 million, due to a shift of effort away from groundfish to non-groundfish.
Groundfish revenues regionwide were off by 2 percent to $83.3 million, while non-groundfish landings were up 15 percent to $214.4 million, as fishermen sought seafood not so intensely regulated as the stocks in rebuilding regimens.
But in multiple places, the authors – Andrew Kitts, Evan Bing-Sawyer, Matthew McPherson, Julia Olson and John Walden – cautioned that, without considering operating costs and costs associated with organizing the sectors and monitoring the trips and the impact of transactional costs associated with the trading of catch shares, drawing conclusions about the relative strength of the fishery operating under the new dynamics and rules was impossible.
"An expanded version of this report scheduled to be released in the fall of 2011 will include analyses of these factors," the authors wrote.
Read the Gloucester Daily Times story by Richard Gaines