WASHINGTON – January 26, 2012 — At the most recent meeting of the Scallop Oversight Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council, the Committee took significant action to address problems with fishing in the Delmarva access area, while not yet making any concrete moves on yellowtail flounder bycatch.
The Delmarva Access Area is one of several scallop-fishing grounds that are open to scallopers on a rotating basis. While a summer 2011 assessment concluded that the biomass was healthy enough for fishing, a subsequent assessment revised the estimate downward to where it is now considered neither economically nor environmentally viable to fish the area. As a result, the Scallop Committee voted 7-0-2 to recommend that the Council recommend to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) that it initiate an emergency action to move the 2012 Delmarva Access area trips that had been allocated to half the fleet. The Committee had concluded that it was important to take action, and recommended an emergency action, after deciding that dealing with the issue would be more complex after the 2013 fishing year. Still yet to be decided is whether to reallocate the effort into the Hudson Canyon Access Area or to convert it to open area Days at Sea (DAS) using a conversion factor.
The Committee did not, however, come to a firm decision on the issue of Southern New England Yellowtail Flounder (SNE YTF). The SNE YTF area is subject to closure as an "accountability measure" for the scallop fishery's being projected to exceed the yellowtail flounder sub-ACL (Annual Catch Limit). The accountability measure could be triggered if NMFS estimates that the scallop fleet caught more than its allocated flounder. There is concern about the accuracy of the estimation as it does not use a full year's worth of data and makes many assumptions that could be seriously flawed. The Council must decide if it wants to move forward with a closure of an important scallop area, if it is not sure about the veracity of the yellowtail flounder estimate. Groundfish Framework 47 is probably the best way to re-open the area in 2012, provided that the overall 2011 yellowtail flounder Total Allowable Catch (TAC) is not exceeded, and that the scallop fishery has not exceeded its Annual Catch Limit (ACL) by more than 150%.
The full New England Fisheries Management Council will begin meeting on January 31st in Portsmouth, New Hampshire