Community-based Sectors for the New England Groundfish Fishery

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target TACs or through consolidating catches on fewer platforms. One of the permit holders noted that the ability to trade ACE freely within the sector would have substantial advantages over the current DAS leasing provisions since it would eliminate restrictions on trades between vessels of different sizes which make it difficult for large vessels to find DAS to lease. To develop an understanding of whether and why the surrounding community would be supportive of a community base groundfish sector, I spoke with officials from the City of Portland and the Portland Fish Exchange including: Ellen Sanborn (Assistant Director of Finance in the Portland City Manager’s Office); Judy Harris (Portland Ports and Waterfront); Tom Valleau (President of the Portland Fish Exchange); and Hank Soule (manager of the Portland Fish Exchange). A key concern of all of these individuals is to increase the volume of fish handled by the Portland Fish Exchange or to at least keep it from falling. The Fish Exchange, which is owned by the Portland Fish Pier Authority, is currently losing money and needs to maintain a higher volume in order to remain solvent. The city will subsidize it for a while, but it is in danger of being shut down in the near future. Judy Harris also explained that the City has explicitly tried to maintain a diverse economic base and that the fishing industry is an important part of that. Consequently the city has forgone potentially higher property taxes by restricting development of the waterfront to maintain working waterfront. Ellen Sanborn explained that the city has a strong interest in supporting the groundfish fleet in Portland and keeping them here but is unlikely to expend substantial taxpayer dollars to do so. A key factor that the City would want to get out of their support for the industry is keeping enough fish going through the Portland Fish Exchange to keep it solvent. The Fish Exchange can be subsidized for a time by the fish pier authority out of revenues generated by services of the fish pier authority. However, that will run out in a year to 18 months and the city is unlikely to be willing to spend tax dollars subsidizing it after that. Ms. Sanborn thought that the city would be happy to subsidize the salary of a sector manager if the sector was landing all its catch at the Fish Exchange. Keeping the volume of landings up at the Fish Exchange also results in more business for ancillary service providers (e.g. ice, fuel, supplies, maintenance, etc.). Many of these businesses are facing difficult times due to the decline in the number of groundfish boasts fishing out of Portland and the number of days each is fishing. Determining the make-up and structure of a community-based sector in Portland is considerably more difficult than for Port Clyde. The Portland fleet is highly heterogeneous in terms of vessel size, areas fished and ports of landing. There is no Portland or Southern Maine groundfish fishermen’s association that would sponsor a community-based sector. Associated Fisheries of Maine, whose members recently submitted a sector proposal, includes members from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Many of its members land much or all of their catch in ports other than Portland. A primary interest of Portland officials involved with fishery issues is to maintain landings in Portland, so the case study was conducted based on two hypothetical sectors with membership determined by the percentage of the vessels’ groundfish revenues associated with fish landed in Portland in the 2005 fishing year. Discussions with the proponents of the sector proposed by Associated Fisheries of Maine (called the “Sustainable Harvest Sector) were helpful in preparing this analysis and many of the vessels that are likely to join that sector are members of the hypothetical sector analyzed here. However, the sector membership used for the analysis below is quite different from the Sustainable Harvest Sector as it excludes many vessels that do not land the majority of their fish in Portland and includes many vessels that are not in the Sustainable Harvest Sector. 26
3.2.1 Strawman Sector Structure and Operational Plan: Analysis is done on two hypothetical Portland sectors. Portland Sector A includes all groundfish vessels with more than 50% of their groundfish revenues in fishing year 2005 from landings in Portland. Portland Sector B is a subset of Portland Sector A that includes only groundfish vessels with more than 90% of their groundfish revenues in fishing year 2005 coming from landings in Portland. The hypothetical sectors included only mobile gear vessels. Table 7 shows the vessels included in the two hypothetical sectors along with the vessel characteristics. Sector A includes 76 permits while Sector B includes only 50. All vessels are mobile gear vessels between 36 and 85 feet in length (Table 7). A strawman operational structure for the sectors was developed and evaluated through discussion with a number of groundfish permit owners and vessel operators in Portland including (Maggie Raymond, Barbara Stevenson, Jimmy Odlin, Bobby Tetrault, Vincent Balzano, and Yvette Alexander) . . The strawman does not represent a consensus on how these individuals think a sector should be structured, but is reflective of many of the opinions voiced by them. Under this strawman, the sector would receive allocations of all regulated groundfish species it regularly encounters as well as monkfish. The groundfish stocks for which allocations would be requested include: GB cod, GB haddock, GB winter flounder, GB yellowtail flounder, GOM Cod, GOM Haddock, GOM/CC winter flounder, GOM/CC yellowtail flounder, GOM/GB windowpane flounder, American plaice, pollock, Acadian redfish, SNE/MA haddock, SNE/MA winter flounder, SNE/MA yellowtail flounder, white hake, witch flounder, northern monkfish and southern monkfish. As was done for the Port Clyde case study, the analysis of the allocation and economic feasibility of the sector is done based on sector and overall commercial catches for two different allocation periods: (1) from May 1, 2001 through April 30, 2006, and (2) from May 1, 1996 to April 30, 2002. The shares of total commercial catches landed by vessels in the respective Portland Sectors A and B for these species for these two periods are shown in Table 8. For the hypothetical Portland sectors, allocations based on fishing years 2001-2005 (relative to 1996- 2001) result in higher sector shares for some species but lower shares for others. As the economic analysis shows, an allocation based on the 2001-05 years results in an overall portfolio of ACE that is more valuable. 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 8. The total pounds of ACE 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. 27
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 and 10: 1.0 Introduction The groundfish fis
Page 11 and 12: Although Amendment 13 effectively e
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: increased. They also have caught a
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

Community-based Sectors for the New England Groundfish Fishery

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