May 29, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries announces a temporary rule to extend portions of the fishing year 2019 carryover provisions in the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan into fishing year 2020. At the request of the New England Fishery Management Council, NOAA Fisheries is taking emergency action to implement these measures.
This action:
- Allows limited access general category individual fishing quota vessels to carryover all fishing year 2019 unharvested quota into fishing year 2020.
- Allows any access area carryover pounds and unharvested research set-aside compensation pounds from fishing year 2019 to be available for harvest through August 31, 2020.
- Extends the time period vessels may utilize their 2019 access area allocation in the Nantucket Lightship-West through August 31, 2020, and then close the area on September 1, 2020, in order to minimize unwanted bycatch.
Extending these carryover provisions further into fishing year 2020 will give vessels more flexibility: to harvest some carryover that would otherwise be lost (~5.2 million lb fleet-wide) to land this allocation at the opportune time, and to avoid unnecessary adverse economic impacts. Extending these carryover provisions will not cause any annual catch limits to be exceeded in the scallop fishery. The measures in this temporary rule are effective for 180 days, but the rule may be extended for an additional 186, if necessary.
Read the temporary rule as filed in the Federal Register, and the permit holder bulletin posted on our website.