Management & Regulation

This Sea Scallop Fact sheet was prepared by the NEFMC staff as part of the package of documents in preparation for the scallop reconsideration scheduled at the Council meeting in Portsmouth, NH. Read the sea scallop fact sheet here.

Paul Weckesser, a New Bedford scallop boat owner, wrote the following in a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe.

"The National Marine Fisheries Service’s Scientific and Statistical Committee reported that 80 million pounds of scallops could be legally caught without exceeding the overfishing limit, and that 65 million pounds of caught scallops was both sustainable and precautionary with only a 25 percent chance of the scallop biomass being overfished.  The scallop industry supported a proposed catch of 47 million pounds, 18 million pounds less than the conservative allowable catch that would keep the 2010 fishing days at sea the same as 2009."

"When the scallop industry realized it was going to lose more fishing days without a reasonable explanation, it asked local, state, and federal representatives for support in persuading the council to revisit the issue. Governor Patrick asked the council chairman, John Pappalardo, to come to his office on a Sunday in order to understand the issue, and to ask Pappalardo to allow the council to reconsider its vote."

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

Amendment 16, a controversial rewrite of the rules of commercial fishing in the Northeast, was approved Friday by NOAA's Fisheries Service and will take effect May 1.

"I've been dealing with fisheries for 25 years. This is, in my estimation, one of the darkest hours this industry has ever seen," said Gloucester fishing industry attorney Stephen Ouellette.

The amendment restructures much of the fishing industry into 17 new cooperatives called "sectors." Sectors will have the ability to decide for themselves how to develop rules for taking and allocating their allowed catch to the various members.

Robert Lane of Bourne, a former owner of two draggers out of New Bedford, said he quit the business after a brief experience in a sector in Maine.

The sector system, he said, "I think is going to collapse of its own weight with all the paperwork managing the thing," he said.

"The quotas force you into groups, and it's a huge amount of work trying to manage it that way," he said.

Pat Kurkel, the northeast regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, has been a defender of the amendment and the science behind it, saying that "the real issue is that we've just been unable to eliminate overfishing." The existing system should have been changed years ago, she told reporters at the rally.

Read the complete story at the Standard-Times [subscription]

NOAA Fisheries Service Clarifies the Notification and Reporting Requirements for Participants in the Federal Atlantic Herring Fishery

This letter clarifies the notification and reporting requirements for participants in the Federal Atlantic herring (herring) fishery. If a vessel harvests, possesses, or lands herring in or from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on any fishing trip, it is considered to be participating in the Federal herring fishery. As you may know, some vessel owners and operators failed to comply with reporting requirements in previous years. These violations undermined the monitoring program established to assure that catch in the fishery does not exceed specified levels. Please share this information with all of your vessel operators….

Read the complete letter from NOAA.

A nationwide review of how the nation’s fisheries are policed has found that Northeast fishermen were given double the fines of other regions, and it urges reforms to make the penalty process appear “less arbitrary and unfair.”

The report, released Thursday by the Commerce Department’s inspector general, followed persistent complaints by New England fishermen.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, came down hard Thursday on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for what she called “egregious mismanagement” of federal fishing law enforcement in the Northeast.

NOAA is supposed to enforce federal laws designed to conserve and manage the nation’s fisheries. Although the agency is known more for science than law enforcement, it oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Office of Law Enforcement.

Read the complete story at Bangor Daily News.

NOAA Fisheries Service Announces That Period 2 Of The 2009 Spiny Dogfish Fishery Will Close Effective 0001 Hours, January 26, 2010.

A revision of federal groundfishing rules known as Amendment 16 has been approved by NOAA’s Fisheries Service. The final regulations required to implement these measures are expected to be published in late April or early May.

The Fisheries Survival Fund has sent a letter to John Pappalardo, chairman of the New England Fisheries Management Council, outlining FSF's positions regarding the upcoming reconsideration of Scallop Framework 21.

The letter makes six major points:

1.      The buffer between Acceptable Biological Catch ("ABC") and the target landings level is overly precautionary.

2.      The scallop fishery was not subject to overfishing in 2009.

3 .  The under-estimation of open area catch rates that led to F(target) being exceeded in 2008 and 2009 has been corrected.

4.      The SSC's ABC of 65 million pounds conforms with the National Standard 1 Guidelines' advice for precautionary management; a target F of 0.24 for 2010 presents a virtually nonexistent chance of overfishing.

5.      The virtually imperceptible economic advantages of the F=0.20 approach are highly uncertain and do not outweigh short-term economic impacts.

6.      The differences in projected yellowtail flounder by-catch cannot justify the F=0.20 strategy.

Read the letter from the Fisheries Survival Fund

The New England Fishery Management Council should ignore the politicians and stick by its guns. To prevent overfishing of the region’s scallops, the council voted last fall to reduce the number of days that scallopers can be at sea.

The panel recognized that the $360 million a year scallop industry could become dangerously depleted without some reasonable limits. But now, in the face of political pressure from Governor Deval Patrick, Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney, and others, the council has agreed to reconsider the restrictions at a meeting later this month.

The restrictions are necessary. In both 2008 and 2009, scallop catches considerably exceeded the council’s projected target levels. To get the catch for 2010 back down to the 2009 target, the council recommended cutting days at sea from about 37 to 29 and limiting access to protected fishing grounds.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

The State of New Hampshire has been notified by the National Marine Fisheries Service of vacancies for New Hampshire’s obligatory seat and two at-large seats for the New England Fishery Management Council. New Hampshire’s obligatory seat is currently held by David Goethel of New Hampshire.

To assist in filling these vacancies, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department’s Marine Fisheries Division will host a candidates’ interview night on Monday, February 8, 2010, at 7:00 p.m., at the Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth, N.H. Potential candidates must be prepared to present their qualifications at the session. Interested candidates should contact Doug Grout, Chief of Marine Fisheries for the N.H. Fish and Game Department, at (603) 868-1095.

Read the complete story at Fishing RSS Feeds.