Management & Regulation

National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul's December 22 response to Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries Director Paul Diodati's December 2 letter regarding the November decision of the New England Fisheries Management Council on Scallop Framework Adjustment 21 has been released by the New England Fisheries Managment Council. Read Regional Administrator Kurkul's response and Director Diodati's original letter

The controversial agenda for the January 26-28 New England Fishery Management Council meeting has been released.

What is likely the most controversial meeting agenda in the history of the New England Fishery Management Council has been released.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of New Bedford, 17 Members of Congress, and well over 1000 members of the public who rely on the scallop fishery wrote or signed letters asking the Council to reconsider their November vote on Framework 21 to the Atlantic scallop fishery management plan.

The reconsideration is not on the agenda.  The scallop fleet's trade association, claiming they have polled a majority of Executive Committee members, issued a press release saying  that the Executive Committee agreed the matter should be reconsidered and accuses the council chair of unilaterally reversing that decision "without any transparency or debate."

Read the New England Fishery Management Council's Agenda.

The Fisheries Survival Fund, the largest national organization dedicated to protecting and strengthening the nation’s Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery, today in a written response strongly criticized the New England Fishery Management Council’s recent justification for Framework 21 to the Atlantic scallop fishery management plan and expressed profound disappointment at the Council’s decision to remove reconsideration of Framework 21 from its January 26-28 meeting agenda.

The Fisheries Survival Fund accuses the New England Fishery Management Council staff of undertaking "an unprecedented effort to issue press releases and other public statements to build justification and support for the Atlantic scallop fishing levels the Council had recommended in November to the National Marine Fisheries Service."

They note that "The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of New Bedford, 17 Members of Congress, and well over 1000 members of the public who rely on the scallop fishery all asked the Council to reconsider this decision."  And make the claim that the "Council’s own Executive Committee agreed the matter should be reconsidered at the Council’s January 26-28 meeting."  The argue that the "decision was reversed, apparently without any transparency or debate.”

The Fisheries Survival Fund represents the interests of the full-time limited access scallop fleet.

Read the FSF press release and statement in its entirety.

On one hand, it makes sense for the National Marine Fisheries Service to further extend the deadline for fishermen to join one of 16 fishing cooperatives — or "sectors" — now being firmed up for the debut of the controversial catch share management system in New England starting May 1.

But if an agency is going to make that type of change, shouldn't it at have spoken to the sectors' prime organizers to see how it might impact their work?

When Jane Lubchenco took the reins of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, parent of NMFS, last spring, one of her promises was to tackle the "dysfunctional" relationship between fishermen and their regulators. Yet Kurkul's changing of the deadline without communicating with the Seafood Coalition shows just how dysfunctional fishery management continues to be.

If the Obama administration is truly looking for "change" and more inclusion, that word hasn't gotten to the folks at NOAA and NMFS.

Fishery management needs trust and communication between the government and the industry. This issue is just one more sign of how wide that gap remains.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Since Congress passed the first major fishing law in 1976, the main federal body that governs fishing has quadrupled in size.

Fishermen say the government is just about everywhere these days. Some are required to have black boxes on their boats that use satellites to track them wherever they go. They periodically have to take “government observers” out to sea with them on fishing trips. Everything they catch is recorded. The type of gear they use, what they can keep and what they must throw back, what safety equipment they must carry: The government controls all of it.

“We’re the second most regulated industry in the U.S. behind nuclear power plants. In the last 20 years we’ve lost 75 percent of the commercial fleet and regulations have quadrupled,” says Hank Lackner, a squid boat captain at Lund’s Fisheries in Lower Township.

Read the complete story at The Press of Atlantic City.

New Jersey’s commercial fishermen are adapting to what fish they can catch as regulations increase and the ocean changes. The emphasis on regulations will lead to job loss in New Jersey’s $1 billion-per-year industry. Unfortunately, all that government attention has not translated into a better safety record; commercial fishing remains the most dangerous occupation.

Wark, who grew up in Ship Bottom and came from a family of bay clammers, has survived by finding fish where others could not, and finding them at the right time. But he has to use every skill he has learned to keep ahead of the growing number of government regulations. He and other fishermen have been barred from catching fish such as sturgeon and shad because of fish-management rules. He can no longer let his nets soak overnight, because they could affect bottlenose dolphins. He just took classes about how to avoid sea turtles.

Wark, 46, of Barnegat Light, began fishing in 1982 and bought his own boat in 1986. All he had to do back then was purchase a state net-fishing license. There were no federal permits nor any fishery management plans yet for bluefish, weakfish, monkfish, croaker, sturgeon, bunker, spiny dogfish sharks or any other species that could land in his net. He just went fishing and caught what he caught.

Now, almost every fish species has a management plan. He used to catch 100,000 pounds of weakfish per year, but now he is allowed only 100 pounds per day. He blames fishery management plans that allowed the ocean to grow too many spiny dogfish sharks and striped bass, which prey on baby weakfish.

Read the complete story at The Press of Atlantic City.

Recent reports in the press prompt a clear statement from the New England Fishery Management Council about its recent activities concerning sea scallops. The rationale behind the Council ‘s Framework 21 vote is provided in the statement.
"In short, the fishing activities of the fleet exceeded the expected landings set forth in the Scallop Plan for 2008 and 2009, a circumstance that led to increased harvests that were at or above the scallop overfishing level. Landings in 2009 are calculated to increase over 20 percent above levels projected, and revenues for the fleet will increase by around $65 million beyond what was originally estimated. The 2010 catch will be reduced in the framework, but the action is expected to result in 5 million additional pounds of scallops over several years and should increase annual fishery revenues by about $10 million from 2011-2016."

Read the response, deliberations and rationale from the New England Fisheries Management Council.

The National Marine Fisheries Service — for the second time — has extended the deadline for New England commercial groundfishermen to join one of 16 fishing cooperatives now in the late stages of organization and work under the new catch share system of hard quotas and negotiable rights set to begin May 1.

According to a letter to multispecies permitholders, the fishermen now have until April 30 to decide whether to join a cooperative "sector" and participate in the region's venture into catch share fishing, the new system championed by Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The previous joining deadline was Nov. 20.

Lubchenco last month announced the national catch share policy, which encourages the policy wherever possible. The draft policy is now in a lengthy public comment phase.

The letter announcing the addition time for fishermen to join sectors and avoid fishing in a common pool of individuals working under restrictive effort controls was posted on Dec. 23 by Patricia Kurkul, the Gloucester-based regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, the fisheries' agency within NOAA.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

NOAA has published the Amendment 16 proposed rule. The comment period ends January 20, 2010.

The proposed rule includes an unexpected new provision allowing that "A state- operated permit bank sponsored by NOAA shall be considered a Sector for the exclusive purpose of transferring ACE to qualifying Sectors."

According to the New England Fisheries Management Council, this issue was not addressed in Amendment 16, a fact that was noted during review of the draft regulations when NEFMC was asked to "deem" them consistent with the amendment, and the changes were added by NMFS.

According to the proposed rule "NMFS is currently working with the Maine Department of Marine Resources on a Memorandum of Agreement that would establish a permit bank operated by the State of Maine and sponsored by NMFS. Allowing a permit bank to lease ACE to Sectors would facilitate the ability of the permit bank to minimize any adverse socio-economic impacts to fishing communities associated with catch- share programs."

Industry groups are currently examining the potential ramifications of this unexpected addition.

Read the complete proposed rule from the Federal Register.

NOAA Fisheries Service / NMFS has announced an additional opportunity for sectors to add eligible NE multi-species permits to their rosters as well as an opportunity for permit holders that have signed a sector contract to change the sector affiliation of their permit, for fishing year 2010 (May 1, 2010, through April 30, 2011).

Read the complete story at NOAA News.