SavingSeaFood - NOAA cuts 'common pool' limits in half

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NOAA cuts 'common pool' limits in half

The federal government has abruptly cut by 50 percent the fishing opportunities for the small number of groundfishing permitholders who are not part of the new "catch share" system, and are fishing out of the so-called common pool.

The president of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction described the action announced Wednesday as providing the coup de grace to the few fishermen still struggling to remain viable under the old Days at Sea regulatory rules.

And the executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, which warned against the instability in empowering mid-year adjustments, agreed.

"Just another slash or nail in the coffin for anyone who remained in the common pool," said the coalition's Jackie Odell.

The seafood coalition, the largest industry group in New England with members in New York as well, advised the government last winter against allowing mid-season adjustments.

"Through no fault of their own," the coalition said in public comment, "vessel owners have no choice but to participate in the common pool. The vessel owners deserve to be given a reasonable and fair opportunity ... to survive in the groundfish fishery. This includes providing common pool fishery participants with some reasonable measure of certainty for planning their annual fishing operations.

The common pool substratum is made up of fishermen who, for the most part, lacked the 10-year landings history needed for a viable share of the total allocation and a place in the catch share system now entering its fifth month.

The creation of a two-tiered system allowed the federal government to skirt a requirement in the Magnuson-Stevens Act that requires a proof by referendum that the industry sought to convert into a catch share system format.

So many advantages and preferences were loaded into the catch share sector side of the fishery last year — the pivotal votes were in June 2009 at a Portland meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council — that virtually the only permit holders choosing the common pool were holding permits that had little catch experience connected to it.

The mid-season adjustment by the office of Patricia Kurkul, Gloucester-based regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was the latest in a series that shaved trip limits in an effort to "ensure a stable supply of groundfish throughout the fishing year," according to the text of the Tuesday announcement.

By the system of time-keeping employed by NOAA, with a vessel charged with a full day at sea for any part of a day, the mid-season adjustment "will ensure the differential rate is effective in reducing effort sufficiently," the agency explained.

"The total trip length will be first rounded up to whole days," NOAA explained, "and then the differential rate will be applied."

By this system, a fishing trip of 13 hours would take 48 hours or two days off the permitted time allowed fishing.

Read the complete story from the Gloucester Daily Times.

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