The session was the first of five that the fisheries service plans in New England this week and next, to give fishermen the details of how they will file vessel trip reports, call for on-board monitors in advance, and so on.
This time there were no political bigwigs in the room as NOAA's Fisheries Service New England staffers led about 75 local fishermen and their families through the complexities of fishing regulations to be launched on May 1 under Amendment 16 to the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
The mood in the conference room at the Days Inn on Tuesday was one of resignation. There was no talk of postponing Amendment 16 to allow more study. There was only one reference to the alleged illegal shredding of documents by NOAA's chief law enforcement officer.
There were only the details of the new way of doing business that, in the words of boat owner Carlos Rafael, is "being shoved down our throats."
Nearly 500 boats in the Northeast have opted out of the sectors and will fish in the "common pool," according to NOAA. In Rafael's view, they may be doomed because they represent only a tiny fraction of the permits that are in place now, which will translate into new allocations as of May 1.
Those 500 boats will compete for just 2 million pounds of fish, while sector boats will be assigned more than 150 million pounds. That is because 98 percent of the permit holders went into sectors as of last summer's deadline, most of them feeling they had no choice, according to Rafael.
Jim Kendall, president of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, contended that NOAA has no backup plan in case sector management fails, which he expects it will. And he criticized NOAA for modeling the program after two experimental sectors on Cape Cod for hook-and-line fishing. Those sectors supplied the only data NOAA has for New England, yet they are both defunct, and the boats that belonged to them are either out of business or have joined other sectors.
"Your poster child is dead," he said.
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