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by Janice M. Plante
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Fisherman Peter Inniss spoke at the Portland, ME rally, while his daughter, Shelby, and wife, Elizabeth, were among the supporters. (Peter K. Prybot Photo)
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DANVERS, MA - The New England Fishery Management Council met here on May 16 for a day-long session focused on the development of Amendment 13 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan.
The meeting was taking place within the emotionally charged atmosphere throughout the region as the groundfish industry and its supporters rallied to protest the remedial order issued on April 26 by US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler. While the judge vacated her original order on May 23, the groundfish fleet still faces the effort reductions reached in the settlement agreement, which will keep boats tied to the dock or fishing under new restrictions (see also, Commercial Fisheries News, page 1B).
Amendment 13 will replace the settlement agreement and Kessler's rules with new ones selected by the New England Fishery Management Council and approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).
According to Kessler's order, the amendment is to be implemented in August of 2003 and comply with the overfishing, rebuilding, and bycatch provisions of the Sustainable Fisheries Act.
Frustrated public
But after everything the industry has been through over the past few months - and considering the bleakness of the year ahead - staging the future is a daunting task, as was clearly evidenced during the May 16 meeting.
The council spent 14 grueling hours picking broad management strategies for further analysis and possible inclusion in an Amendment 13 public hearing document.
The major concepts - area management, sector allocation, hard total allowable catches (TACs), and even the judge's original rules - all made it in, at least for one more round of scrutiny (see story next page for full list).
Urged on by Chairman Tom Hill of Massachusetts, the council raced against the clock, well-aware of the need to meet this first critical deadline to stay on track with getting the amendment in place by next summer.
Meanwhile, the audience, packed with fishermen from Maine to New York, all frustrated, all with so much at stake, squirmed for a chance to speak, but didn't get it until 9 pm. In bitter disappointment, many simply went home toward dinner time, still hours before the invitation to walk up to the microphone was offered.
June comments key
Hill announced early in the day his determination to keep the council focused and to ensure that it picked five or six major management themes to send to the groundfish plan develop team (PDT) for a fuller work-up.
He said the council will look at these strategies once again during its next meeting, when it will spend two full days on groundfish and offer much more opportunity for public comment. That meeting will be held June 24-26 at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, ME.
The final public hearing document alternatives won't be selected until July, said Hill.
But those words didn't provide much comfort for industry members, who wanted the opportunity to express points of view on the first cut - before the council even voted on initial strategies for PDT analysis.
Hill, caught between the crowd's demands and the need to meet court deadlines, said he feared the council wouldn't finish its work if public comment was accepted on each motion.
As the day unfolded, the council first agreed that it would send both the negotiated settlement agreement and the package of measures contained in the judge's order to the PDT for analysis as alternatives for Amendment 13.
Area management
Next, the council intensely debated the subject of area management.
According to the council's groundfish plan coordinator Tom Nies, fishermen who turned out for the recent series of local groundfish committee meetings had numerous concerns about area management, especially about the boundary lines between areas. Many offered new proposals.
"There was little consensus on the concept of area management," said Nies. "A lot of people questioned whether we had enough time to proceed with an area management approach in this amendment."
Massachusetts council member David Pierce, who made the motion to include area management in the list of alternatives, said, "I'm still uncertain as to whether or not area management is the way to go. However, a lot of people put a lot of time into it, so it should at least go forward to the next step."
Opposition strong
Massachusetts council member Jim Kendall reminded the council of a recent petition submitted by dozens and dozens of New Bedford fishermen against area management. Kendall had hand-carried an additional 40 signatures to the meeting.
Petition signers want to keep the existing three management areas - Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic - as divided by the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank cod exemption line and the Southern New England small-mesh exemption line.
"We're very concerned that we're being continually divided," said Kendall.
Those left in the audience at the end of the day also voiced strong opposition.
Steve Welch, a Massachusetts offshore gillnetter, said, "I'm opposed to further dividing the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. I just feel like this area management thing is going to blow up in our face. Fishermen travel. We go all over the Atlantic. It's what we do."
Rhode Island vessel owner Liz Rowell added, "When you take away flexibility, you increase mortality. When you put us in a box, we do what we can to survive in the box. If we draw these lines for area management, we're going to have to declare into one or two areas and that will take away flexibility."
TACs, sectors
The council did endorse asking the PDT to analyze an option centered on hard TACs.
Given the court case and ongoing environmental cries for cut-and-dry quotas, NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul said, "I do think this amendment needs a hard TAC alternative. You need to go through the process of considering it and accepting or rejecting it."
The sector allocation idea - divvying up TACs or "population shares" by gear type, for example - was also forwarded to the PDT for further analysis. But the concept didn't get a much better reception than area management.
"I think it's going to split the industry. It's just going to be a disaster," said Gloucester fisherman Paul Vitale.
Even Paul Parker, executive director of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association, which had begun supporting such an approach, said he saw "a small amount of promise in sector allocation," but feared that the idea also would have encountered significant opposition if it had undergone as much scrutiny during groundfish committee meetings as area management.
Industry needs hope
As exhaustion settled on everyone by the end of the day, it was impossible to even guess where things would go next.
"There wasn't much hope in what came out of today's meeting," Parker told the council in the closing hours. "I didn't see anything new that I can bring home to Chatham to tell the fishermen that it will be better in 2003 than in 2002. I think that's all people are looking for - the hope that a year in the future will be better than a year in the past."
The council did pass a motion earlier stating that every alternative in the public hearing document would be compared to the set of groundfish regulations in place as of April 30, 2002. This comparison would cover biological, social, and economic impacts so people could see the difference between each proposal and what existed before the court order.
"It's important to the industry to show what we're giving up," said Maine council member Barbara Stevenson. "We need to compare it to something."
Public chance to comment on possible Amendment 13 strategies: New England Fishery Management Council Meeting June 24-26, Samoset Resort, Rockport, ME
