New England Fishery Management Council Archives - Page 100 of 101

NEFMC Seeking Scientific and Statistical Committee Members

October 23, 2015 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The NEFMC seeks applicants who are interested in serving on its Scientific and Statistical Committee for the upcoming three-year term, beginning in January 2016. The Council may potentially fill more than one vacancy. Qualified individuals should have demonstrated expertise in one of the following: as an economist, fisheries scientist with expertise in population biology, or in marine ecosystems. The deadline for applications is November 18.

If you are having trouble opening the attachment which contains more complete details, please go to the Council’s website – RequestforSSCApplicants_3-yr-term.pdf. If you have questions about the SSC, the work it does and the time commitment required, please contact Chris Kellogg at ckellogg@nefmc.org or 978 465 0492, ext. 112.

View a PDF of the Notice

NILS STOLPE: So how’s that “catch shares” revolution working out for groundfish?

FishNet USA/October 22, 2015 — NILS E. STOLPE — Most of you probably remember when newly appointed NOAA head Jane Lubchenco went to New England and announced that she was going to save our nation’s oldest fishery. But if it didn’t make a lasting impact on you, quoting from the Environmental Defense blog, EDFish by Tesia Love on April 8, 2009, “Sally McGee, Emilie Litsinger and I got to witness something pretty wonderful today. Jane Lubchenco came to the New England Fishery Management Council meeting to announce the immediate release of $16 million to the groundfish fishery to help move the fishery to ‘sector” catch share management by providing funding for cooperative research to help fishermen get through a tough fishing year with very strict limits on fishing effort.” She went on to quote Dr. Lubchenco “we need a rapid transition to sectors and catch shares. Catch shares are a powerful tool to getting to sustainable fisheries and profitability. I challenge you to deliver on this in Amendment 16, to include measures to end overfishing. I will commit the resources to my staff to do their part to ensure Amendment 16 is passed in June. We are shining a light on your efforts and we will track your progress. There is too much at stake to allow delay and self-interest to prevent sectors and ultimately catch shares from being implemented.”

I’m sure that you were there with the rest of us, heaving a huge sigh of relief with visions of Dr. Lubchenco on her shiny white steed, first riding to the rescue of the New England fishery, and then on to all of the rest of our struggling fisheries. “Hyo Silver! Away!”

So how did she do? A couple of years back NOAA/NMFS released the 2012 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2012 – April 2013). It’s available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1401/. The report included a table – available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1401/tables.pdf – included a table titled Summary of major trends (May through April, includes all vessels with a valid limited access multispecies permit) for the fishing years 2009 to 2012. The table only takes up a single page, is pretty easily understood and is well worth your consideration in its entirety but I’ll take the liberty of synopsizing what I think are the major points it illustrates. In each of the four years the groundfish revenues, landed weight, number of active vessels that took a groundfish trip, the total number of groundfish trips, and the total crew days on groundfish trips decreased. The non-groundfish revenues and landed weight increased. The days absent on a non-groundfish trip increased slightly then decreased.

And then we come to 2013 (it seems that according to NOAA/NMFS, 2014 hasn’t gotten here yet). Had the myriad benefits of Dr. Lubchenco’s and her ENGO/foundation cronies’ Catch Share Revolution finally arrived? Apparently, not quite yet. According to the 2013 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2013 – April 2014), just about everything that was falling in FY 2009 to 2012 continued to fall in FY 2014. I won’t go over any of the details, but the corresponding Table 1 for that year is available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/read/socialsci/pdf/groundfish_report_fy2013.pdf.

Oh well, I guess she deserves a few points for trying – and we shouldn’t forget that before she could really focus on fixing groundfish she was distracted by having to dump a couple of millions of gallons of Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico.

Thirteen species are included in the New England Fishery Management Council’s multi-species fishery management plan, the “groundfish” FMP. Four of those species support no or minimal directed fisheries. The landings of those that support a significant commercial fishery are in the table below (from the NOAA/NMFS commercial landings database). Looking at these data, it’s impossible to suggest that after years of intensive management this management regime is anything that could be considered a success – unless your idea of success is putting a whole bunch of people out of work. In fact only the most charitable among us could term it anything other than disaster – and it’s a disaster that has been in the making since long before Dr. Lubchenco so fatuously announced that she was going to fix it.

(I’ll add here that catch share management is not a cure-all for all that’s wrong with fishery management nor is it the reason for management failures – though at the time Dr. Lubchenco and her “team” apparently believed it was. It is nothing more than an option for dividing the catch among users. As such it can have profound socioeconomic impacts on participants in the fishery and on fishing communities that depend on it, but not on the fishery resources themselves.)

Species	Year	Metric Tons	Value	Species	Year	Metric Tons	Value

Atlantic	2009	8946	$25,223,364	Haddock	2009	5,818	$13,655,842
Cod	2010	8039	$28,142,681		2010	9,811	$21,715,488
	2011	7981	$32,596,942		2011	5,709	$16,316,219
	2012	4766	$22,200,043		2012	1,959	$7,833,001
	2013	2261	$10,455,352		2013	1,869	$6,002,480
Plaice	2009	1395	$3,886,809	White	2009	1,696	$3,556,719
	2010	1413	$4,498,591	Hake	2010	1,807	$4,116,221
	2011	1387	$4,274,757		2011	2,907	$5,849,790
	2012	1480	$5,048,688		2012	2,772	$6,933,743
	2013	1318	$4,688,995		2013	2,238	$6,484,444
Winter	2009	2209	$8,094,381	Pollock	2009	7,492	$10,010,039
Flounder	2010	1587	$6,959,547		2010	5,158	$9,529,022
	2011	2124	$8,002,376		2011	7,193	$12,292,573
	2012	2395	$10,331,500		2012	6,743	$13,185,509
	2013	2746	$9,899,924		2013	5,058	$11,395,943
Yellowtail	2009	1605	$4,759,536	Acadian	2009	1,440	$1,572,292
Flounder	2010	1318	$4,193,981	Redfish	2010	1,646	$1,959,681
	2011	1827	$4,762,969		2011	2,014	$2,754,692
	2012	1808	$5,396,502		2012	4,035	$5,891,429
	2013	1278	$4,199,927		2013	3,577	$4,337,163
Witch	2009	949	$4,036,115
Flounder	2010	759	$3,773,526
	2011	870	$3,955,053
	2012	1037	$4,247,528
	2013	686	$3,735,330

How might it be fixed? In the original FishNet article I quoted a couple of paragraphs from a National Academy of Sciences study Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Stock Rebuilding Plans in the United States (available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18488/evaluating-the-effectiveness-of-fish-stock-rebuilding-plans-in-the-united-states). I can’t think of anything more valuable than repeating those words here. On page 178 of the report the authors concluded “the tradeoff between flexibility and prescriptiveness within the current legal framework and MFSCMA (Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act) guidelines for rebuilding underlies many of the issues discussed in this chapter. The present approach may not be flexible or adaptive enough in the face of complex ecosystem and fishery dynamics when data and knowledge are limiting. The high degree of prescriptiveness (and concomitant low flexibility) may create incompatibilities between single species rebuilding plans and EBFM (Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management). Fixed rules for rebuilding times can result in inefficiencies and discontinuities of harvest-control rules, put unrealistic demands on models and data for stock assessment and forecasting, cause reduction in yield, especially in mixed-stock situations, and de-emphasize socio-economic factors in the formulation of rebuilding plans. The current approach specifies success of individual rebuilding plans in biological terms. It does not address evaluation of the success in socio-economic terms and at broader regional and national scales, and also does not ensure effective flow of information (communication) across regions.”

In other words, the fishery managers need more informed flexibility to adequately manage our fisheries. It has been the goal of the fishing industry’s friends in Congress to provide this necessary flexibility (with adequate safeguards, of course). Conversely it has been the goal of a handful of foundations and the ENGOs they support and a smaller handful of so-called fishermen’s organizations to prevent this, and it seems that they have been willing to resort to just about any tactics to do it. As they have been successful in their efforts the fishing industry has continued to lose infrastructure that will never be replaced and markets that will be next to impossible to recover – and the percentage of imported seafood that we consume will continue to increase in spite of the fact that our fisheries are among the richest in the world.

View a PDF of the opinion piece

September/October 2015 NEFMC Newsletter

October 22, 2015 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The Council Report summarizes major actions approved at NEFMC meetings or highlights items of interest to interested parties.

At its September 29-Oct 1, 2015 meeting in Plymouth, MA, the Council:

Approved Amendment 18 to the Groundfish Plan
Refined elements of Framework 55 (annual groundfish specs)
Approved the 2016- 2018 Atlantic herring specifications
Selected preferred alternatives for Scallop Amendment 19 and reviewed information related to Framework 27
Modified the red hake specifications
Initiated frameworks for the Skate Complex FMP and Habitat Amendment

If you would like to receive notices for committee meetings and other types of Council information via email, please click on Subscribe at the top of the homepage and receive e-notices.

View a PDF of the NEFMC Newsletter

2016/2017 Monkfish RSA Federal Funding Opportunity

October 5, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:

Dear Interested Parties:

For those who may not have heard, NOAA Fisheries is soliciting monkfish research proposals to use 500 Monkfish Days-at-Sea per year that have been set-aside by the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils to fund monkfish research through the 2016 Monkfish Research Set-Aside (RSA) Program. Proceeds generated from the sale of monkfish harvested during a “set-aside day-at-sea” will be used to fund research activities and compensate vessels that participate in research activities and/or harvest monkfish while fishing under an RSA day-at-sea.

The deadline for receipt of the proposals is November 16, 2015. Please read the attachment for more detailed information or, if you have questions, contact Cheryl A. Corbett, Cooperative Programs Specialist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, 166 Water Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543 or at 508-495-2070, or cheryl.corbett@noaa.gov. Her fax number is 508-495-2004.

Read the full announcement from NOAA here

NOAA to pay for at-sea monitors through November

October 1, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries will continue bearing the cost for at-sea monitoring of Northeast multispecies groundfish vessels at least through the end of November, three months past the target date the agency initially set for the expense to shift to permit holders.

This extension — the second in as many months — is based on the same rationale as the first: with fishermen producing fewer fishing days because of slashed quotas and area closures, the money the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budgeted for at-sea monitoring for at least 24 percent of total fishing days is lasting longer than the agency expected.

NOAA initially said the money for at-sea monitoring — which runs to about $710 per vessel per day — would run out around Aug. 31 and then the responsibility for paying for the legally mandated at-sea monitoring would have to be borne by the fishermen.

In early August, NOAA said decreased effort by the fleet had reduced monitoring expenditures enough for the money to last through Oct. 31. Now that same reduction in fishing effort has given the fleet another month-long reprieve, but it has not solved the long-term dilemma of how to pay for the at-sea monitoring.

The issue certainly is not going away.

NOAA is adamant that it expects permit holders to ultimately assume the cost of monitoring, while fishermen flatly state that the additional expense — heaped upon already miniscule, if non-existent, profit margins — simply will sink the fleet.

In late July, NOAA flatly rejected the request of the New England Fishery Management Council to use its emergency powers to remove all at-sea monitors from groundfish boats for the remainder of the 2015 fishing season.

Instead, NOAA, as well as the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, advanced the idea that the cost of monitoring be covered by some portion of the $6.9 million remaining in the Bay State’s third phase, or Bin 3, of the federal fishing disaster assistance.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishermen planning to stage protest in Plymouth

September 25, 2015 — PLYMOUTH – Local fishermen angry over federal catch-limit policies are gearing up for a demonstration at Wednesday’s meeting of the New England Fisheries Management Council in Plymouth.

Fishermen said the regional fisheries council has stonewalled input from smaller, family-run fishing operations in favor of larger, corporately owned boats.

Stephen Welch, who lives in Hanover and fishes out of Scituate and Hyannis, plans to be at Wednesday’s demonstration.

Welch, who owns a 45-foot trawler called the Mystic, said federal regulations on fishing implemented five years ago have hurt fishermen like him and are not doing a good job of protecting certain fish stocks.

“I used to have two boats and eight employees. Now I have one boat and one employee,” said Welch, a member of Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a fishermen-led organization.

Read the full story at The Patriot Ledger

2016/2017 Atlantic Sea Scallop Research Set-Aside (RSA) Program – Proposals Due October 31, 2015

September 2, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NMFS, in coordination with the New England Fishery Management Council, is soliciting Atlantic Sea Scallop research proposals to utilize scallop Total Allowable Catch that has been set-aside by the Council to fund scallop research endeavors through the 2016/2017 Atlantic Sea Scallop Research Set-Aside Program. No federal funds are provided for research under this notification. Rather, proceeds generated from the sale of RSA quota will be used to fund research activities and compensate vessels that participate in research activities and/or harvest set-aside quota.

Click here for Information about this opportunity. To apply for this NOAA Federal Funding Opportunity, go to www.grants.gov, and use the following funding opportunity #: NOAA-NMFS-NEFSC-2016-2004548.

Questions? Contact Olivia Rugo, Regional Office, at 978-675-2167 or Olivia.Rugo@noaa.gov.

Live Streaming Information for next week’s SSC meeting, Sept 1, 2015

August 28, 2015 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

Dear Interested Parties:

Meeting: The public is invited to listen in to the September 1, 2015 Scientific and Statistical Committee Meeting (SSC). It is scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. at the Hilton Garden Inn Boston Logan Airport, 100 Boardman Street.

Location: See Hilton Garden Inn for further information about the venue.

Webinar Registration: For online access to the meeting – https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1465020447061066241.

The webinar will be activated beginning at 8:00 a.m. and end at approximately 6:00 p.m. EST.

Charges for Listening: There are no charges if you access the webinar via your computer. If dialing in, your normal phone charges will apply.

Dial in number: Toll: +1 (646) 307-1706

Access Code: 227-977-093

Meeting Materials: Please consult the Council’s website Sept. 1, 2015 SSC Meeting. You will find an agenda and copies of the materials to be considered.

Fishing managers taking comments on changes to herring rules

August 25, 2015 — PORTLAND, MA — Federal fishing managers are looking for comments about the issue of localized depletion in Atlantic herring fishing.

Localized depletion is when fishing takes more fish than can be replaced locally or through migration. The request for feedback comes as the New England Fishery Management Council is working on an amendment to make sure future Atlantic herring catch limits are based on “scientific uncertainty” and the status of the herring stock.

Read the full story at the New Jersey Herald

NEFMC Solicits Groundfish Advisors

August 12, 2015 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC):

The New England Fishery Management Council has two vacancies on its Groundfish Advisory Panel. If you are interested in serving or have questions, please take a look at the details on the notice and, if appropriate, fill out the application form.