SEAFOODNEWS.COM By Peggy Parker — October 20, 2014 — In an historic emergency meeting of Pacific Fishery Management Council last Friday, fishery managers found a way to protect chinook salmon, stay under the darkblotched rockfish quota, and allow the Pacific whiting fleet to fish the remaining 21,000 mt of quota.
The Council took immediate action to protect chinook salmon bycatch in the Pacific whiting trawl fishery by moving the mothership and catcher processor fleets to deeper water, beyond the 150 fathom contour. A “guideline” harvest limit of 11,000 chinook salmon was taken by the Pacific whiting fleet last week. All vessels in the three-sector fishery are impacted by more restrictive management measures.
The shoreside Pacific whiting fleet will fish outside the 100 fathom line for now. If and when that sector catches its quota, and if and when additional transfers are made from the tribal allocation, which is expected, the shorebased fleet will also be restricted to fishing beyond the 150 fathom line.
That restriction was hotly contested by members of the industry who testified against that additional precaution.
“The Chinook bycatch mitigation area moving out to 150 fathoms rather than 100 fathoms disadvantages the shoreside processors and harvesters,” pointed out Rod Moore, executive director of the West Coast seafood Processors Association.
“In considering this, the Council is narrowly skirting violations of National Standards Four, Five, Six, Seven, and Eight,” Moore said.
An unexpected catch of darkblotched rockfish last week exceeded the mothership sector’s bycatch quota and triggered the voluntary shut down with a third of their annual quota still in the water.
Even with the “lightning strike” of darkblotched rockfish, the entire annual allowance of that species for the groundfish fishery was still in good shape. About 20% of the budgeted bycatch had been taken as of last week.
The catcher-processor sector has taken only a third of their allowance of darkblotched rockfish to date and is unlikely to use it all before their Pacific whiting quota is caught. So Dan Waldeck, executive director of the Pacific Whiting Conservation Cooperative (catcher/processor sector) issued a “cease fishing report” to NMFS on Friday, offering up 3 mt of their darkblotched quota to the mothership sector.
The letter was required before NMFS could approve the transfer.
The two-hour teleconference was a rare example of how managers and industry, despite intense pressure to harvest remaining quota, found a solution within the regional council procedural protocol.
“Truly an amazing event,” said Brent Paine, executive director of the United Catcher Boats. “I have never seen NMFS truly go to bat for us like Frank Lockhart's group did, and Bob Turner's leadership to get this done. And also Phil Anderson's creative thinking to solve the problem. They deserve a lot of credit.”
Using three “automatic actions”, the Council implemented the Ocean Salmon Conservation Zone, which moves the fleet to deeper water to avoid Chinook salmon, asked NMFS to make an immediate transfer of 3 mt of darkblotched rockfish from the catcher/processor sector to the mothership fleet, and reapportioned the unused tribal allocation of Pacific whiting to the three trawl sectors to be distributed pro rata, on the condition that all of that redistributed whiting quota is taken beyond the 150 fathom line.
On Saturday afternoon, Dave Fraser, manager of the Whiting Mothership Cooperative (WMC), issued a start fishing order for midnight Saturday night.
The WMC Board of Directors met twice over the weekend to further develop additional coop rules to manage both darkblotched rockfish and Chinook salmon, such as installing excluder panels for the salmon.
Using “inseason acton” which may take a week or two to implement, the Council mandated that the shoreside sector may catch their original whiting quota outside the 100-fathom contour, but any future reallocation from the tribal quota must be caught beyond the 150-fathom line.
Finally, the Council “paid back” the 3 mt loan of darkblotched rockfish from the CP fleet to the mothership sector, by reducing the darkblotched allowance of the open access sector (for instance, shrimp trawlers) by 3 mt and restoring the CP annual bycatch allowance to 9 mt. Shrimp trawling ends on October 31.
Both industry members and Council members questioned the need for an emergency meeting when the Council’s next scheduled meeting is in early November.
“We have a situation where the fishery is high-volume and labor intensive,” said Phil Anderson, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and a member of the council.
“The offshore sector can only keep crews on for a limited time,” he said, referring to the motherships and catcher/processors being tied up for a week so far. “Getting the crews back, if they leave, would be extremely difficult if not impossible.
“I asked the [council] chair to consider calling an emergency meeting so that the economic benefits to the nation could be derived that otherwise would be lost, if we waited another three weeks,” Anderson said.
The last time the Pacific council was called for an emergency meeting occurred 25 years ago.
This story originially appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.