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by Janice M. Plante
MANOMET, MA - Groundfish fishermen have begun making carefully controlled trips into Closed Area II on Georges Bank to prove that the healthy stock of yellowtail flounder there can be harvested on a seasonal basis without catching cod or haddock.
From experience, fishermen who worked that area before it was shut down in 1994 know that, by June, the cod and haddock have finished spawning and have returned to Canadian waters, making it possible to cleanly harvest yellowtail on the US side of the line.
"This project will seek to document that historic knowledge," said Chris Glass, director of the marine fisheries conservation program at the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences.
In 2001, the New England Fishery Management Council's Multispecies Monitoring Committee estimated that the spawning stock biomass of Georges Bank yellowtail was at 357% of its Amendment 7 threshold and 128% of the much tougher Amendment 9 threshold. The fishing mortality rate was also "well below" the target.
Project start
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The purpose of the project is to prove yellowtail flounder can be harvested in Closed Area II on a seasonal basis without catching cod or haddock. These photos were taken during the September trip aboard the trawler Isabel S of New Bedford, one of 12 boats involved in the project. (Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences photos)
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Manomet and the Associated Fisheries of Maine (AFM) Groundfish Group teamed up almost two years ago to propose the project as an experimental fishery requiring an exempted fishing permit. They sought funding from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) through a cooperative research grant.
With a positive recommendation from the New England Fishery Management Council's Research Steering Committee, NMFS ended up supporting the project. And on Sept. 11, the agency, though behind schedule, issued the necessary exempted fishing permits to let the work begin.
Ten days later, the Isabel S of New Bedford and the Lydia & Maya of Portland - two of 12 boats involved in the project - steamed to the southern half of Closed Area II (see chart).
With two observers aboard each boat, the vessels towed through 45 different sampling stations and caught over 10,300 pounds of yellowtail in three days. The bycatch? Zero cod and four haddock.
"I thought it was very positive from every aspect," said Glass. "There are virtually no haddock or cod."
20-minute tows
The object of the project is not to catch massive volumes of yellowtail. In fact, participating vessels are being paid a fixed charter fee per day-at-sea and any profits from fish sales are pumped back into the experiment.
The boats are making 20-minute tows in each of the sampling areas to find out where the yellowtail concentrations are and to prove that cod and haddock bycatch is not an issue.
"It's a demonstration project," said AFM spokesperson Maggie Raymond. "We're trying to cover as much area as possible so we can show the New England council that cod and haddock are not there at this time of year."
"This time of year" refers to July through December. The way the project is set up, two vessels will make trips into Closed Area II to tow the 45 sampling stations during each of those six months.
Since the exempted fishing permits came so late in 2002, the trips will take place during September, October, November, and December of 2002, and July and August of 2003.
The 12 participating vessels were selected by lottery from a pool of interested AFM members.
Bad weather
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Many of the yellowtail caught in the first trip were of good size as shown above and by Gregg Morris below. (Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences photos)
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On Oct. 15, two more participating vessels - the Mary K of Woods Hole and the Teresa Marie III of Portland - returned to port from the second scheduled round of trips.
However, the October trips were hampered by bad weather, making it impossible to complete all the stations.
At press time, catch results were still being tabulated.
Each experimental trip lasts five days: one day to steam to Closed Area II; three days to tow the stations; and one day to steam back.
Almost all of the marketable fish on the September trips turned out to be flounders, with yellowtail dominating the catch. Blackbacks were also present in noteworthy quantities.
No scallops, lobsters
In the early stages of project development, AFM members decided that any scallops or lobsters harvested during the experiment would be immediately returned to sea. This project, they said, was about yellowtail and regaining access to traditional fishing grounds, not about keeping species of concern to two other major fisheries.
In fact, groundfish fishermen took a page from the scallopers' handbook when designing the experiment, incorporating several successful aspects of the program developed by the University of Massachusetts School of Marine Science and Technology and others to gain access to the large scallop biomass in Closed Area II.
Manomet and AFM even used some of the data collected on cod, haddock, and yellowtail distribution during the scallop program to build their case for the yellowtail experiment - and were grateful for the information.
"The scallop project was a little gold mine of useful information about groundfish distribution in the southern portion of Closed Area II," said Raymond.
Conditions
Time for access
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The project is set up to allow two draggers at a time to make a 5-day trip into the southern part of Close Area II, shown by the hatched area on the chart above. The boats, with each carrying two observers, will tow 45 stations in the closed area. (Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences photos)
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Manomet and AFM voluntarily attached numerous conditions to the permit to keep the experiment under tight control. Besides carrying two observers, each vessel agreed to be limited to 40,000 pounds of yellowtail per trip.
In the off chance that boats did run into cod or haddock, the bycatch limits per day-at-sea were 2,000 pounds for cod and 3,000 pounds for haddock.
Project participants also agreed that the NMFS regional administrator could terminate the project if more than 220 metric tons of yellowtail were caught overall.
While the experiment still has a long ways to go, the results from the September trips proved to be extremely promising, backing up what fishermen have been saying about an area that has been off limits for eight years now.
Jim Odlin, owner of the Teresa Marie III, said, "The closure has done its job in rebuilding fish stocks. Now it's time to re-open the area."
Isabel S owner Bob Lane agreed, saying he hoped the experiment would pave the way to re-establish a fishery that had historic significance and economic value for the port of New Bedford.
