"It’s not any less sustainable, but the management system has changed so it will be managed more conservatively." Chris Kellogg, New England Fishery Management Council staff.
Atlantic Red Crab is the first company on the East Coast to attain Marine Stewardship Council certification, and Williams was proud to receive the recognition for a business that was also contributing new jobs and revenue to the city.
Just two weeks later, however, the New England Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee spoiled the party and stunned the industry by recommending that the allowable catch for 2010 be pegged at the 2007 level. The decision has left Williams perplexed because, he says, 2007 was a complete anomaly.
"In 2007 the market was drying up. We only had one customer — Red Lobster — and they told us up front that they only wanted to buy 2.8 million tons from us because they had found a bunch of crabs from South America cheaper. So that’s all we landed. Two thousand seven was the lowest annual catch since 1995 and it was purely market-driven."
If adopted, the figures from 2007, around 1,200 metric tons, would mandate a reduction of up to 40 percent in historic catch totals.
According to the council’s Chris Kellogg, red crabs are a "data poor" species. "We don’t know a lot about them. We don’t even know their maximum life," he said. The regulators are bound by the rules, he said. "The reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in late 2006 made it a requirement that quotas could not exceed catch levels recommended by the committees. The SSC has adjusted the maximum sustainable yield for scientific uncertainty. It’s not any less sustainable, but the management system has changed so it will be managed more conservatively."
Read the complete story at The South Coast Today.