Herring rule changes allow midwater trawlers into fishery

The New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) has approved an amendment to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan (FMP) that will allow over a dozen, large midwater trawlers into the Gulf of Maine fishery while eliminating a small Eastport-based purse seiner. Weir and seiner fishermen argue that the trawlers are taking over the herring fishery and can overfish the stocks, although there is a quota for the fishery. The proposed Amendment 1 to the management plan, approved by the council at its January 31-February 2 meeting, will not take effect until adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which will be reviewing the plan beginning this spring.

The additional trawlers are being allowed into the fishery because of a change in the control date for vessels to qualify for access to the fishery. A vessel must have documented landings during the control date period. The control date had been from 1988 to 1999, but in November 2005 it was changed by the council to the period from 1993 to 2003. That change knocked out a small Eastport purse seiner and allowed in 15 large vessels. According to Lori Steele, a fishery analyst with the NEFMC, most of the vessels are midwater or pair trawlers from Massachusetts and southern Maine. Steele says that although the council used the earlier control date when it put the plan out to hearing, the other control date was always considered as an alternative.
The last year that the 47-foot purse seiner Burton G, based in Eastport and owned by Darren Turner of Perry, had landings was in 1988. "You can't say that the Turner family has not been involved in the herring fishery for the past 50 years, and that's what this is saying," says his father, David Turner, who is president of the Downeast Fixed Gear Association and one of the owners of Christina M Fisheries. "We're going to lose any fishing that we've had any connection to, from a purse seine point of view."

Turner is pleased, though, that the trawlers will have to convert to purse seining to fish in Area 1A, the inshore Gulf of Maine, during the summer months of June through September. "The trawlers have been pounding the stocks. They can fish 24 hours a day," he says, noting that seiners can only fish at night. If the trawlers haul up herring that are full of feed and can't be sold, the fish are dumped back dead, he maintains, while seiners can release fish with feed before they die. Turner also argues that trawlers break up the schools of herring.

Referring to "an ethnic cleansing" of the Downeast herring fishery, Turner notes that the NEFMC meetings are usually held over 400 miles away in Massachusetts or Rhode Island, so it's hard for Downeast fishermen to make their views heard. "They should at least have these meetings centralized."

Jeff Kaelin of Winterport, an independent contractor who works to represent the Providian, a trawler based in Portland, agrees that the change in the control date will allow too many large vessels into the fishery. "We don't think the current date protects long-term participants, based on their historic fishing practices," he says of the position of the East Coast Pelagic Association. He favors a proposal to have part of the quota allotted to those who have been in the fishery for a longer period.

Kaelin, though, is "completely opposed" to the ban on trawlers during the summer months. Noting that the fishery has a hard quota, he says, "There's no difference if the fish are caught by a seiner or a trawler. Boats will have to invest money to go seining and will catch the same fish. There's no biological benefit for the resource, but it has an economic impact on the fishermen."

Kaelin also maintains that there's no evidence that trawlers break up schools of herring. "There's no scientific information that supports that trawlers run herring off Jeffrey's Ledge." He argues that if people are concerned that too many fish are being caught, then they should work to change the quota. "I believe it's a sustainable harvest now."

However, Kaelin notes that the summer ban on trawlers will affect the supply of bait for lobstermen. "There's more certainty of supply with midwater trawlers," he maintains, noting that seiners have to wait for fish to come to the surface. "We will see bait shortages in the Gulf of Maine."

Both Turner and Kaelin will be seeking changes in the rule amendment. The amendment will be forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service before May 1, which will review it and will offer a 30-day comment period. NMFS can approve part or all of the amendment. The changes are expected to be implemented by next January.

Inshore plan approved
Along with the NEFMC herring management plan, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved on January 25 management measures for Amendment 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for herring, which covers inshore state waters. Downeast weir and stop seine fishermen are pleased with those measures. The Downeast fixed gear fishery will be included as part of the 20,000 metric ton allocation for the New Brunswick weir fishery and therefore not counted against the Area 1A total allowable catch (TAC). A 500-metric ton TAC set-aside for fixed gear fisheries west of Cutler was also approved.

Washington County fishermen have argued that if their catch is included in the 60,000-metric ton TAC for Area 1A, the quota can be caught before the herring come into Downeast waters in the fall of the year. The Downeast weirs are then closed out of the fishery, while New Brunswick weir fishermen can reap the benefits of the fish moving inshore. "We don't get started until August or September," notes Turner. "And that's when the spawning closure comes on and the fishery is closed for four weeks.

Also approved was an exemption from spawning restrictions for fixed gear fisheries east of Cutler. In the late 1990s the state had made it illegal for the fixed gear fisheries to take spawn fish east of Cutler. Turner notes that New Brunswick fishermen are allowed to take those spawn fish, so the law did not serve as a conservation measure.