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by Janice M. Plante
DANVERS, MA - Limited-access scallopers should now be in line to receive an increased number of days-at-sea for the next two fishing years and controlled access to two Mid-Atlantic closed areas.
All that's left is for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to approve and implement the measures, which are contained in Framework Adjustment 14 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan (FMP).
The framework was adopted by the New England Fishery Management Council at its Jan. 23-25 meeting here.
Since last fall, the council's scallop committee and plan development team (PDT) had also been considering and analyzing a series of potential new closed areas for Framework 14.
However, at the last minute, the council scrapped the idea and agreed to hold off on additional closures until its long-term rotational management program can be implemented through Amendment 10 to the FMP, which is still under development.
Framework 14 does contain a ban on shellstocking -- except for 50 US bushels -- inshore of the days-at-sea monitoring line south of 42°20'N latitude, and an allowance for general category boats to keep up to 100 pounds of scallop meats from the Mid-Atlantic closed areas.
Although Framework 14 started out as a "housekeeping" action to adjust days-at-sea and provide scallopers renewed but controlled access to the Hudson Canyon and Virginia/North Carolina closed areas, it turned out to be the most complicated and drawn out scallop annual adjustment to date.
Yet scallop committee chairman John Williamson of Maine said the effort wasn't wasted.
"This experience with putting together Framework 14 has taught us a lot about what we need to do with Amendment 10," he said.
More days
The easiest part of Framework 14 was increasing the fleet's days-at-sea allocations.
Under Amendment 7, full-time, part-time, and occasional scallopers were scheduled to receive 49, 19, and 4 days-at-sea respectively in the 2001 fishing year -- and even fewer days in 2002.
The council, highly encouraged by an extremely positive stock assessment update for scallops (see related story page 12A), voted unanimously to increase those category allocations to 120, 48, and 10 days respectively for both 2001 and 2002.
Timing glitch
The only outstanding issue is timing. While no one is questioning that NMFS will approved the increase, the earliest the agency can review, process, and implement Framework 14 is late April or early May.
The 2001 fishing year, however, begins on March 1, which means the fleet will have to start off the new fishing year with Amendment 7's soberingly low days-at-sea allocations, an unnerving proposition under any circumstance.
The New England council was initially supposed to take final action on Framework 14 in November, which would have provided adequate time for a March 1 implementation date.
Yet the council was forced to delay signing off on the framework until January because, back in September, it agreed to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement for the framework.
Normally, simpler "environmental assessments" are produced for frameworks, but mounting pressure from environmental groups over habitat and other scalloping issues convinced the council to go the extra mile as a safeguard. And the extra mile took a lot of additional and precious time.
More closures?
With the days-at-sea formality aside, the first really big Framework 14 issue the council wrestled with involved whether to implement new area closures.
Last fall, the PDT recommended four possible "hot" spots for new closures, two in the Mid-Atlantic and two in New England, which contained concentrations of small scallops.
The council's scallop advisers, on the other hand, narrowed the field to two potential closures -- one on Georges Bank and one in the New York Bight (see CFN November 2000 for more details).
But the release of the latest scallop stock assessment made industry members sit back to rethink their position. By the time the full council met in late January to cast its final votes on Framework 14, industry members were calling for status quo, with no new closures until Amendment 10.
"What do you do when there's great recruitment almost everywhere?" asked attorney David Frulla, representing the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF).
"The question becomes: 'What is a reasonable amount of the historic fishing grounds to leave open to spread the fleet out?'" he said.
Scallopers considered their worst case scenario. What if the council implemented the four new closures recommended by the PDT, and kept in place Closed Area I, Closed Area II, the Nantucket Lightship Closed Area, and only provided restricted access to the existing two closed areas in the Mid-Atlantic?
Frulla said, "You can see how difficult it would be in a nine-closure world. You start having to fish the edges. You start having to go inshore where nobody wants to go."
Scalloper and Mid-Atlantic council member Bill Wells put it this way.
"You don't find an area where there are only large scallops and no small scallops," he said. "Every place where we want to be is closed."
Rebuilt stock
Referring to the new stock assessment, FSF biologist Trevor Kenchington called the resource "essentially rebuilt," recognizing that the Mid-Atlantic stock is presently just slightly under its designated reference point.
"Scallops have a tremendous growth spurt in the spring," said Kenchington. "By the time Framework 14 goes into place, scallops will be rebuilt. The 120 days is going to give a resource-wide fishing mortality rate of considerably less than the target."
The Fisheries Survival Fund continued to express support for rotational management, but given the upbeat outlook in the assessment, industry members didn't want to reduce area access unnecessarily or risk delaying the implementation of Framework 14 any longer given the desperate need to implement the days-at-sea increase.
Frulla said, "We may take an interim step that closes things down too far too fast. Amendment 10 is following close along."
Council divided
By the January meeting, most council members weren't even considering the PDT's four-closure option any longer, but many did weigh the scallop committee's recommendation for implementing the two closures originally selected by the industry advisers.
Council member David Pierce of Massachusetts, who originally supported the two-closure alternative, said, "In light of very convincing arguments made by the Fisheries Survival Fund, I've had a change of heart."
Pierce reminded the council, "The original intent of this framework was to increase the days and put in placed an access program for the Mid-Atlantic areas."
Backing up Kenchington's statement, Pierce agreed that scallops grow quickly and many of the individuals that were just under the full recruitment size during the survey would have spurted into a larger category by springtime.
"There's no resource problem here," Pierce said. "Some of the partial recruits will be full recruits by the time the framework is implemented."
But council member Doug Hopkins of Connecticut was on the other side of the fence.
"This option (of no new closures) breaks the chain that we've been building to get to Amendment 10. I think it would be a mistake," Hopkins said. "This framework was intended to be a bridge Š (that) moves us in the direction we need to be moving."
NMFS concern
NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul also expressed concern about sticking to status quo.
"Going with no new closed areas would be, in my opinion, unfortunate," she said. "You'll be going to a full-scale program soon. To do that, you need to start having areas that you can rotate through."
Like others, Kurkul referenced the latest stock assessment.
"I think we've had extremely good news on the part of the scallop fishery, but we don't want to overreact to that news," she said.
Massachusetts council member Jim Kendall, on the other hand, argued in favor of status quo.
"It's an issue of success, not of failure," he said.
The council's original motion was to adopt the two-closure option. The council voted to substitute that scenario with "no new closures" by a 9-to-6 margin with one abstention.
Mid-Atlantic areas
While the council approved most of the measures for providing scallopers with access to the two Mid-Atlantic closed areas at its September meeting (see CFN November 2000 for details), it did vote on a few additional related items at the January meeting.
The council agreed to provide full-time and part-time limited-access scallopers with an initial allocation of three trips per vessel into the Mid-Atlantic closed areas for each of the 2001 and 2002 fishing years, with occasional scallopers receiving one trip.
The trip limit will be 17,000 pounds for 2001 and 18,000 pounds for 2002, and the trips can be taken in either one or both of the closed areas.
Broken trips
One remaining contentious issue related to the Mid-Atlantic access program involved broken trips due to bad weather, mechanical problems, injuries, or other emergencies.
The way it stands now, anyone enrolled in a closed area trip automatically receives a 10-day deduction from their annual days-at-sea allocation, even if the trip lasts only five days.
Industry is concerned that many scallopers won't bother with closed area trips because if they run into unexpected problems and have to head home, they will still lose 10 days-at-sea, even if they haven't harvested any or many scallops.
In an effort to come to terms with this program detraction, the council's scallop committee and industry advisers recommended allowing broken trips as part of the Mid-Atlantic closed area program.
In order to prevent potential abuses, however, they also recommended that a significant surcharge be assessed against the vessel reporting difficulties.
The penalty recommended by the scallop committee was a deduction of two days-at-sea plus one additional day for each 1,500 pounds of landed scallop meats.
Massachusetts council member Bill Amaru, who strongly supported the measure, said, "The sacrifice is far worse than the completed trip. This is the kind of thing that will encourage access into the closed areas. It has great potential to be a positive part of rotational area management."
FSF representative Ron Smolowitz also urged the council to adopt the provision.
"We'll need it for Amendment 10," he said. "The best way to get a handle on it is to go out and do it."
Enforcement
Despite the strong industry support, Dick Livingston, special agent in charge with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Enforcement for the Northeast region, expressed total opposition to the proposal.
"The potential for abuse is enormous," he said. "We cannot protect the closed areas if you allow this."
Livingston said his office already had a policy in place to deal with broken trips -- in general for all fisheries -- on a case-by-case basis.
"In the case of emergencies, we have stepped in with a common sense approach," he said.
Williamson explained that the committee had discussed the enforcement issues but had decided to recommend the broken trip provision nonetheless.
"The scallop committee is very sensitive to enforcement concerns," he said. "But the feeling was that there's a significant enough penalty here that it won't be abused."
According to Kurkul, however, the concerns go beyond enforcement.
"There are administrative concerns," she said. "I understand that this is where the industry wants to get to, but this is not the way to do it."
1999, 2000
The council's discussion about broken trips was strictly limited to the Mid-Atlantic closed area access program, and Kurkul stressed that NMFS was able to effectively address broken trips under the last two scallop closed area programs and could continue to do so for the Mid-Atlantic program.
Illustrating this point, Kurkul said that, during the 1999 Closed Area II program, the agency received 44 requests for days-at-sea rebates because of broken trips. Twenty-four were approved, mostly for broken trips resulting from Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Floyd. NMFS rebated a total of 122.13 days as a result of those requests.
During the 2000 Sea Scallop Exemption Program, which covered Closed Area I, Closed Area II, and the Nantucket Lightship Closed Area, NMFS only received nine requests for days-at-sea rebates as a result of broken trips. Two of those were approved -- one for weather reasons and another for vessel problems, and 16.45 days were rebated, said Kurkul.
After listening to the debate, the council voted to strike the broken trip provision from Framework 14 and put it on the agenda for Amendment 10. NMFS will continue to address cases under its existing policy.
Shucking off clock
One of the most passionate issues included in Framework 14 was whether to ban shellstocking.
The overwhelming majority of industry members who testified before the council or submitted written comments adamantly opposed the practice of allowing vessels to deckload scallops and come inside the COLREGS line to shuck the product off the days-at-sea clock.
"It is bad and it is wrong and it will kill this fishery," said Bill Wells, whose scalloping operation is based in Virginia.
"Once the meat count came in, it ended shellstocking because you couldn't shellstock and obey the meat count. Right now it's: 'How many scallops can seven men handle?' This circumvents the seven-man crew limit," he said.
FSF's Ron Smolowitz emphasized that same point.
"Now we can harvest more scallops than the crew can shuck" during the course of a normal fishing trip, he said.
As for shucking off the clock, Smolowitz said, "We have to close that door."
Wells also expressed concern that the reinitiation of shellstocking would lead to poorer quality product and lower prices. Furthermore, shellstocking could increase the possibility that one boat someday could run into a paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) complication -- a problem the industry has so far successfully avoided.
"I don't think we can take the risk as a result of the PSP problem," said Wells.
Inshore grounds
The council initially considered banning shellstocking inside the days-at-sea monitoring line.
But then the issue became complicated because in northern New England, especially in Maine, a significant portion of the inshore scallop fishery takes place inside the demarcation line. A ban on shucking inside the line would actually interfere with day-to-day fishing practices.
After extensive deliberations over the course of several meetings, the council voted to restrict "the possession of in-shell scallops to 50 US bushels inshore of the days-at-sea monitoring line for trips transiting or fishing south of 42°20'N latitude."
General category
The final Framework 14 issue that generated considerable discussion was whether to allow general category vessels to participate in the Mid-Atlantic closed area access program.
Mid-Atlantic vessels with general category scallop permits currently don't target scallops, but instead use the permits to keep scallops as bycatch to other fisheries, a different situation from that in Maine where many scallopers target scallops with general category permits and limit their catches to 400 pounds of meats.
Mid-Atlantic representatives have vehemently opposed allowing general category permit holders to participate in the Hudson Canyon and Virginia/North Carolina closed area program, believing their participation could create a whole new directed scallop fishery for 400 pounds that previously didn't exist.
General category scallop permit holders have been fishing all along inside those Mid-Atlantic closed areas for several species under other permits, but they haven't been allowed to retain scallops.
Maine council member Barbara Stevenson argued strongly that, once limited-access scallopers were allowed back into those areas, general category permit holders should at least have the ability to retain their scallop bycatch.
"They should have the same rights they had before the area was closed," she said.
Doug Hopkins, on the other hand, believed the topic was too complicated for the framework.
"There are very significant issues that would need to be addressed if general category access were to be allowed," he said.
Kurkul, agreeing that the issue eventually needs to be figured out one way or the other, concurred with Hopkins.
"It's not something we can ad hoc through the framework process," she said. "That's something we need to do through the full amendment process."
In the end, the council voted to allow general category boats to retain 100 pounds of scallop meats with a zero shellstock possession limit while fishing in the Hudson Canyon and Virginia/North Carolina areas when the access program was in progress.
