February 25, 2020 — New Jersey herring fishermen are going to court challenging a new rule forcing them to pay for at-sea monitoring, which they say will cost more than $700 a day for observers and cut their revenue from herring trips by more than 20 percent.
A half-dozen vessels associated with Lund’s Fisheries, based near Cape May, N.J. are named in the lawsuit filed last week against the New England Fishery Management Council, NOAA and the Department of Commerce.
Cape Trawlers, H&L Axelsson and Loper Bright Enterprises contend regulators have no statutory authority from Congress to impose industry-paid monitoring in addition to a separate, federally-funded observer program.
“The regulation also has the potential to modify other New England fishery management plans to allow for standardized implementation of additional industry-funded monitoring programs in the future,” Lund’s Fisheries said in a joint announcement with the Cause of Action Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based legal and free-market advocacy group.
A final rule published in the Federal Register Feb. 7, to take effect March 9, would require Atlantic herring trawlers with areas A and B permits to pay toward a 50 percent at-sea monitoring coverage target for the first time.
Originating with the 2018 Industry-Funded Omnibus Amendment approved by the New England council, the potential for levying new monitoring requirements had been in the background since being okayed by the Department of Commerce.