April 19, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
During its mid-April meeting in Mystic, CT, the New England Fishery Management Council took steps to streamline the process used to develop annual specifications for Atlantic sea scallops. It also reviewed, refined, and ranked its 2018 scallop priorities and voted to send letters to NOAA Fisheries on: (1) enforcement-related matters; and (2) implementation of real-time, online transfers of limited access general category individual fishing quota (IFQ).
The Council recognized that several basic scallop measures regularly are included in annual specifications without being modified from one year to the next. As a new work priority, the Council approved having its Scallop Plan Development Team (PDT) compile a list of these now-routine provisions with the intent of turning them into “standard default measures.” This way, the Council will be able to include default measures in specifications packages without having the PDT conduct extensive and repetitive analyses each year.
The Council determined that this move would:
• Help streamline the specification-setting process;
• Increase the prospect that final specifications will be implemented by the April 1 start of the scallop fishing year;
• Lighten the PDT’s analytical workload during the busiest time of the year for scallop analyses;
• Reduce the number of decisions the Council needs to make during final action; and
• Lead to more predictable outcomes for industry.
Given these considerable benefits, the Council readily agreed to add the item to its 2018 scallop priorities. It also voted to remove an item that initially was on the priority list – “gear modifications to protect small scallops.” While recognizing the importance of this work, the Council noted that gear modifications could be considered in future years and that several other actions were more pressing.
The Council then ranked the five items on its revised 2018 scallop priority list in the following order:
- Develop an action to modify scallop access areas consistent with the recently implemented Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2;
- Develop the newly approved “standard default measures” approach;
- Review and address monitoring and catch accounting provisions in the fishery, including those related to hail requirements, IFQ vessels exceeding their quota, and possession limit overages, among others;
- Consider limited access general category IFQ trip limit modifications; and
- Revisit and potentially modify Northern Gulf of Maine Management Area measures
In spite of this ranking, the Council emphasized that its most critical actions this year are focused on the 2018 scallop benchmark stock assessment and the specifications package for fishing year 2019 with default specifications for 2020. The Council then will work its way down the items on the list above, recognizing that work on several priorities may require more time to develop than is available this year.
As for the 2018 benchmark assessment, the Scallop Stock Assessment Workshop (SAW) Working Group, which includes several members of the Council’s PDT, is conducting the assessment as part of the 65th SAW/SARC. The SARC is the Stock Assessment Review Committee, which will peer review the new assessment.
The scallop working group held a data meeting in early February and then met again in late March. The next meeting is scheduled for April 30-May 4. The scallop assessment results will be peer reviewed during the June 26-29 SARC meeting. A benchmark stock assessment for Atlantic herring also will be reviewed at the same SARC meeting.
View the release in its entirety here.