PORTSMOUTH, NH - Sometimes the hassles of participating in an experimental fishery really pay off. It looks as if they did for Maine fishermen who worked hard to establish a permanent whiting grate fishery in the inshore Gulf of Maine.
    At its Jan. 28-30 meeting here, the New England Fishery Management Council signed off on Framework Adjustment 38 to the groundfish plan, which, if approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), will establish a new "exempted grate raised footrope trawl fishery" - possibly by July - in a carefully defined area off mid-coast Maine and eastward (see chart below).
    This victory was achieved following several years of experimental fishing by inshore whiting fishermen who worked hand-in-hand with the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR).
    The project started off in 1995 with dozens of vessels hailing from Cundys Harbor, Five Islands, Phippsburg, Portland, Sebasco Estates, and several other Maine ports, along with a few New Hampshire and Massachusetts vessels.
    Determined to prove that fishermen could harvest whiting with very little groundfish bycatch, these vessels - over 60 of them in 1996 - initially worked with a Nordmore-style grate fabricated with 40 millimeter (mm) bar spacing, though over the years, bar spacing as wide as 63.5 mm or 2-1/2" was tested.
    Whiting is a small-mesh fishery, meaning that groundfish needs to make up less than 5% of the total catch, a requirement of Amendment 5 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan.

    Gear trials were conducted in 1995, 1996, and 1997 with the full compliment of volunteer vessels, but the experimental fishery then had to be narrowed in scope, partly to provide better monitoring.

    At that point, two Maine vessels - Proctor Wells' Tenacious and Vincent Balzano's North Star - continued the work, still under the leadership of DMR's Dan Schick.

    Tow by tow, the two vessels and their crews fine-tuned the gear with extremely positive results in 2000 and especially 2001.

    And then, 2002 was the cincher. The gear was perfected enough to consistently keep groundfish bycatch below the 5% cap.

    What did the trick was a sweepless raised footrope net with a 2.5" diamond- or 2.2" square-mesh codend and a grate with 50 mm bar spacing.

    This is the gear that ended up being approved by the council in January, except the council restricted the minimum codend mesh to 2-1/2" diamond or square to be consistent with most other whiting regulations for the Gulf of Maine.

    Based on a recommendation from its groundfish committee, the council set a July 1-Nov. 30 season for the new grate fishery and recommended that the DMR monitor at least four trips per month using observers.

    The council also passed a motion stating that it "desires 10% observer coverage in this fishery" and that "no later than 2006, NMFS, in consultation with the groundfish plan development team (PDT), will determine if this level of observer coverage is sufficient to monitor catch and bycatch Š with an acceptable level of precision."

    The PDT nonetheless can recommend changes prior to 2006 and the council can adjust the observer level accordingly.

    In one of the other parameters outlined for the fishery, the council established a whiting/offshore hake possession limit of 7,500 pounds, along with "incidental catch" allowances for red hake, squid, butterfish, mackerel, alewife, and herring "up to the amounts allowed by the regulations for those species."

    Possession of many species will be totally off-limits in the grate fishery, including monkfish, lobsters, skates, crabs, longhorn sculpin, sea raven, summer flounder, ocean pout, dogfish, and, of course, all regulated multispecies.

    The council said, "The prohibition of possession of monkfish, lobsters, and skates helps to ensure that the fishermen rig the net correctly so that the footrope is not in contact with the bottom and thus less likely to catch these species.

    "The prohibition on crabs, longhorn sculpin, sea raven, and dogfish is designed to reduce damage to whiting, a soft bodied fish, from abrasion and puncture, as well as to encourage keeping the footrope off the bottom," added the council.

    Almost all of the designated inshore area for the whiting grate fishery is less than 75 fathoms, a key factor intended to eliminate redfish bycatch since redfish are generally located deeper than that.

    NMFS must still review, approve, and implement Framework 38, but the goal is to have the exempted fishery package in place prior to the July 1 start of the anticipated season

Northern area fishermen should have more opportunities to catch whiting this summer if the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) approves two pending framework adjustments to the groundfish plan. Under Framework 38, fishermen willing to use a sweepless raised footrope trawl equipped with a Nordmore-style grate with 50-millimeter bar spacing would be able to work from July 1 to Nov. 30 in a new inshore Gulf of Maine area. Under Framework 37, which is expected to gain approval from NMFS in the near future, the Cultivator Shoal whiting fishery would be extended by an extra month to run from June 15 through Oct. 31 instead of ending on Sept. 30. The raised footrope trawl fishery off Cape Cod is a fixture now as well, authorized from Sept. 1-Nov. 20 in the entire area with additional fishing opportunities from Nov. 21 through Dec. 31 in the eastern portion. Small Mesh Areas 1 and 2 remain viable fishing options, though raised footrope trawls now are required in both areas. The Area 1 fishery runs July 15-Nov. 15. Area 2 is open Jan. 1-June 30. Specific gear and bycatch restrictions apply to each of the above fisheries. For more information, contact Lori Steele at the New England Fishery Management Council at (978) 465-0492 or call the NMFS Northeast Regional Office information line at (978) 281-9278.