A report by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) released Sept. 21 highlights results of the first year of the groundfish-sector management program in New England. The dramatic management shift appears to be helping the fishery turn the corner to a more economically and environmentally sustainable fishery.
With the first full fishing year of operation (May 2010 to April 2011) under sectors now complete, results of the program’s performance are encouraging. Sector fishermen stayed within their allowed catch levels, groundfish revenues were essentially stable, overall revenues were up, fishermen received higher prices for fish, and the amount of wasted fish dumped overboard was substantially reduced.
The report also highlights that the fishery still faces challenges, many of which are the continuation of historical trends. For example, the number of active groundfish vessels has been declining for over a decade. The 8 percent decline in the 2010 fishing year was similar to the decline from 2007 to 2009.
In May 2010, after two decades of challenging conditions, the New England groundfish fishery underwent a substantial management overhaul. At that time, fishermen were asked to choose between one of two fundamentally different systems: sector management, in which fishermen voluntarily formed fishing cooperatives, or “sectors,” and pledged to keep their catch within strict limits as required under the renewed federal fisheries law (the Magnuson-Stevens Act); or the “common pool,” a continuation of the days-at-sea and daily trip limits structure. All fishermen were placed under new, federally mandated Annual Catch Limits (ACLs), which had been previously slated to take effect in 2010.
More than half of the fishery’s permit holders — representing 98 percent of the fish harvested — chose to join sectors. In 2011, an additional 10 percent of permit holders joined the sector program, bringing the total number in the program to 836 permit holders, representing 98.8 percent of the fish harvested. Several hundred vessels remain in the “common pool” and fish under days-at-sea management.
So how has the new system fared?
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