Community-based Sectors for the New England Groundfish Fishery

period is that which was used to determine allocations of cod to the two existing sectors. The
shares of total commercial catches landed by Port Clyde vessels for these species for these two
periods are shown in Table 2 5 . With the exception of witch flounder and winter flounder, the
“current” Port Clyde fleet landed a higher proportion of total commercial catch in fishing years
2001-2005 than in 1996-2001. Consequently their shares of TACs and ACE allocations would be
higher if the 2001-2005 years were used to determine their allocation. It should be noted that the
current regulations do not allow sectors to request allocations of monkfish; an amendment to the
Monkfish FMP will be required to make this possible.
Each year the sector would receive annual catch entitlements (ACE) for each species. These ACE
allocations become hard TACs for the overall sector. The ACE allocated to the sector each year
would be equal to the shares of the overall target TACs shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Port Clyde Sector Vessels’ share of landings
for two different allocation periods (FY01-05 and FY96-01)
Stock and species
Total FY01-05
Landings
Port Clyde
Sector Share
Total FY96-01
Landings
Port Clyde
Sector Share
GOM COD 42,105,000 1.3% 56,395,433 1.3%
GOM HADDOCK 10,769,000 1.9% 10,209,311 0.7%
GOM/CC WINTER FLOUNDER 6,072,000 0.7% 7,137,377 1.8%
GOM/CC YELLOWTAIL 16,218,000 0.3% 20,140,336 0.1%
GOM/GB WINDOWPANE 274,000 0.1% 3,416,338 0.0%
PLAICE 27,593,000 7.8% 52,992,348 5.6%
POLLOCK 52,853,000 0.8% 56,561,783 0.6%
REDFISH 4,461,000 2.3% 4,061,337 1.4%
WHITE HAKE 37,850,000 2.8% 38,320,463 1.9%
WITCH FLOUNDER 32,599,000 5.1% 30,024,873 6.9%
NFMA MONKFISH 142,821,000 4.1% 147,201,370 3.6%
The actual number of pounds of ACE allocated to the Sector each year would increase or
decrease in proportion to increases or decreases in the target TACs. Under the strawman
operational plan, sector members would be required to retain all legal sized fish of regulated
species for which the Sector received an allocation of ACE, and all sector members would be
required to stop fishing once total sector catch of any species equaled the sector ACE for that
species.
The Port Clyde sector would restrict the operations of member vessels to the Gulf of Maine,
specifically to statistical areas 511, 512, 513, 514 and 515. Because the catch of all managed
species would be constrained by hard TACs, the sector would request that it be exempted from
other regulations designed primarily to control fishing mortality. Specifically the sector would
request to be exempted from: Northeast Multispecies Days at Sea (DAS) limits (including
5 The catches for sector vessels for estimating sector allocations reflect the catches in the allocation years of
the permits associated with the current Moratorium Right ID of the vessel. The Moratorium Right ID is an
the means of tracking the catch history of a permit that may have been transferred amongst vessels over
time. The permit number changes with each change of vessel, but the Right ID does not. To calculate the
catch history attributable to the current permit, I determined its current Right ID and then determined the
permit numbers associated with that right ID historically. In some cases the catch history attributable to a
particular current permit may have been generated by multiple vessels and permits over time. It may also
be that the catch history for a current permit does not include all of the catches by that vessel in previous
years since its current Right ID may have been associated with a different vessel in previous years and then
transferred to the current vessel.
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