Community-based Sectors for the New England Groundfish Fishery

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Amendment 7, implemented in 1996, accelerated the DAS effort reduction program first established in Amendment 5, but failed to bring about sufficient reductions in fishing mortality due to the large amount of latent effort that existed in the fishery. Vessel buybacks in 1996 and 1997, using $25 million in government funds targeted at active groundfish vessels, purchased 79 vessels and permits that had accounted for approximately 20% of the revenues in the fishery. Despite this, the SEIS for Amendment 13 notes that the number of active groundfish vessels remained relatively constant between 1996 and 2001 (NEFMC 2003) implying that previously inactive vessels must have been activated following the buybacks. In 2001, there were nearly three times more multispecies permits than vessels that actually reported landings of groundfish (NEFMC 2003). Another federally funded buyback with an appropriation of $10 million was carried out in 2001 but purchased only permits and was directed at latent effort. The program ended up purchasing 245 permits for $9.6 million in total. Of these only a few were active vessels; the rest were inactive vessels reflecting the programs focus on latent effort. Despite these reductions in active capacity and latent effort, increasingly strict limits on effort, and other measures such as year-round and seasonal closed areas and trip limits, overall groundfish landings generally trended upward between 1994 and 2001, and fishing mortality on some key groundfish stocks continued to exceed overfishing thresholds. Substantial latent effort still existed. Over 1300 limited access multispecies permits with individual or fleet days at sea (DAS) allocations remained in the fishery as of 2001, but only 861 of them were active in the groundfish fishery. Open access permits increased from 1381 to 2140 between 1996 and 2001 though less than 800 of these landed groundfish in 2001 (NEFMC 2003). In December 2001, the Conservation Law Foundation and other organizations successfully filed suit against NMFS alleging that the rebuilding plans that NMFS implemented were not consistent with Amendment 9 overfishing definitions (Conservation Law Foundation et al. v. Evans et al.). After a long series of negotiations among various parties, interim measures were adopted by the court, and NMFS was instructed to submit a management plan to comply with the law. The response to this was Amendment 13, which was developed over a four-year period to meet the MSA requirement to adopt rebuilding programs for stocks that are overfished and to end overfishing. Amendment 13 was approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service in March, 2004 and became effective on May 1, 2004. Amendment 13 adopted a broad suite of management measures in order to achieve fishing mortality targets necessary to rebuild overfished stocks and meet other requirements of the M-S Act. The most important changes were to reduce DAS available to fishermen and to proscribe the reactivation of latent permits. Rather than simply cutting the DAS of all permits, Amendment 13 created three categories of DAS (“A”, “B” and “C” DAS). Only “A” DAS can be used to fish for groundfish under the normal fishery rules. “B” DAS can only be used for certain special access programs designed to allow fishermen to access fish stocks for which catches were well below target TACs if bycatch of other stocks can be avoided. “C” DAS are unusable at this point. Active vessels saw 40% of their DAS turned into “B” DAS and the other 60% were made “A” DAS. A large number of vessels with groundfish permits that had not been active in the fishery received no allocation of “A” or “B” DAS and were effectively removed from the fishery. Although the possibility was left open that “C” DAS might in future be “activated” allowing these boats to return to the fishery, the likelihood of this occurring appears remote. However, vessels with only “C” DAS can regain access to the fishery by buying or leasing “A” DAS or through membership in a sector 1 . 1 A vessel with only “C” DAS would probably not bring any additional allocation to the sector, but, could participate in harvesting a sector’s allocation if they were granted entry to the sector. 8
Although Amendment 13 effectively eliminated a large number of permits holders from the fishery by allocating them only “C” DAS, it also reduced DAS allocations for the remaining vessels to the point that the economic viability of many operations was threatened, particularly for vessels that did not also have the ability to participate in other fisheries. In recognition of this, Amendment 13 included programs including DAS leasing, sectors and special access programs that could allow fishermen to increase profitability without causing additional fishing pressure on stocks of concern. Both the leasing program and the sector program create the possibility of increasing profitability by consolidating fishing on fewer platforms. The leasing provisions of Amendment 13 allowed both leasing and permanent transfer of DAS between vessels. The program was authorized initially for two years but was extended by Framework 42. To avoid transfers that would increase effective fishing power, transfer or leases can only be made between boats of the same size or from larger boats to smaller boats. Permanent transfers of DAS also incur a 20% conservation tax (e.g. 50 DAS on the initial boat becomes 40 DAS on the boat it is transferred to). Because of this requirement, few permanent transfers have been made 2 . However, the conservation tax has not prevented consolidation as many permit holders have simply purchased additional permits and leased the DAS from those vessels to other vessels they own. In some cases the permits have been transferred onto skiffs. This allows the permit owner to avoid the unnecessary costs of maintaining the inactive vessels, while they maintain the rights of the owner to lease DAS to vessels up to the size of the original vessel or to transfer the permit back onto a vessel of that size at a later date. Nearly 15 percent of the baseline allocations were transferred through the leasing program in the first year and indications were that the percentage increased in the second year of the program. The leasing program resulted in significant consolidation of DAS as the primary users of the program were those vessels that received the highest baseline DAS allocations (NEFMC 2006). Amendment 13 also contained provisions that allowed groups of fishermen to voluntarily form “sectors” and create limited self management systems. A sector could apply for an allocation of catch of one or several regulated groundfish species. The allocation would be based on the catch history of the group of vessels relative to the total catch for that species. The group would then receive an annual allocation equal to the target TAC 3 for that species multiplied by the ratio of the group’s catch to the total commercial catch. If a sector requested an allocation for all regulated stocks, and put in place an operations plan that would limit their catches to their allocation, they could, in theory, avoid some of the other current regulations including DAS limits, trip limits and seasonal area closures. Sectors provide another potential means of consolidation since sector members can, if they choose, fish their allocation of catch with a subset of the vessels/permits that make up the sector. Since 2001, landings and revenues of groundfish have declined fairly steadily in the New England region as a whole. The decline has occurred throughout the region, but has been more severe in some areas than others. Revenues from regulated groundfish in Maine and Massachusetts, which together account for over 90% of groundfish revenues, were 29% lower in 2 The author has been told by several individuals that there have recently been a number of purchase and transfers of vessels with only “C” DAS. These permits do not provide the vessel with any additional fishing opportunity, but the increase the vessel’s baseline number of DAS which allows them to lease a greater number of DAS. 3 In cases where a share of the TAC is utilized by the recreational sector or as bycatch in other fisheries, presumably the sector’s share would be a percentage of the commercial TAC once those other user groups were accounted for. The regulations are not explicit about this and the issue has not yet been dealt with. 9
Page 1 and 2: Community-based Sectors for the New
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents Executive Summary
Page 5 and 6: Community leaders in Portland and P
Page 7 and 8: of community-based permit banks. Th
Page 9: 1.0 Introduction The groundfish fis
Page 13 and 14: somewhat vague on how the allocatio
Page 15 and 16: 2.2 Experience with Existing Sector
Page 17 and 18: me to explore the idea further and
Page 19 and 20: period is that which was used to de
Page 21 and 22: shown above in Table 2. Revenue pro
Page 23 and 24: Table 3a: Port Clyde Sector Revenue
Page 25 and 26: ecruitment and could be either high
Page 27 and 28: increased. They also have caught a
Page 29 and 30: 3.2.1 Strawman Sector Structure and
Page 31 and 32: Table 8: Portland Sectors A and B V
Page 33 and 34: discussed earlier these price proje
Page 35 and 36: Table 9b: Portland Sector A Revenue
Page 37 and 38: Table 9d: Portland Sector B Revenue
Page 39 and 40: Table 10b: Portland Sector A Revenu
Page 41 and 42: Table 11b: Portland Sector B Specie
Page 43 and 44: vessels would be leased to sector v
Page 45 and 46: is ostensibly to reduce excess capa
Page 47 and 48: Table 15: Projected Total Revenue,
Page 49 and 50: later. However, rolling baselines c
Page 51 and 52: 4.4 Communities without Catch Histo
Page 53 and 54: opportunities for consolidation of
Page 55 and 56: References Alexander, Yvette 2006.M
Page 57 and 58: Appendix A: Landings and revenue pr
Page 59 and 60: Appendix B: Groundfish Price Model
Page 61 and 62:
Appendix C: Sector Proposals Submit
Page 63 and 64:
Port Clyde Community Sector Glen Li
Page 65 and 66:
Full Retention All fish caught 1. e
Page 67 and 68:
Reasons for Existence: 1. end overf
Page 69 and 70:
Gloucester Fixed Gear Sector Peter
Page 71 and 72:
New Bedford Channel Trawl Sector Ri
Page 73 and 74:
Point Judith / Southern New England
Page 75:
Pier 6 Initiative Michael Walsh Req
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Community-based Sectors for the New England Groundfish Fishery

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