Fish council eases scallop catch limit

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Scallopers all along the New England and Middle Atlantic coasts achieved a landmark victory yesterday when the federal regional fishery managers reversed an earlier vote and approved a new 2010 catch plan that can yield an estimated $41 million at the dock and multiples of that to port economies.

After a half day of often bitter debate, the New England Fishery Management Council voted 10-5 (with two abstentions) for the less conservative of two options that will now allow 47 million pounds of the nation's top-dollar seafood from a fully recovered stock to be landed this year.

Opponents of the higher allocation argued that deferring a higher allocation would prove more lucrative in the long run, but industry advocates said the bird in the hand was what the economy desperately needed.

Other councillors protested the precedent, heavy media coverage and the intense lobbying.

Rhode Island Councilor David Preble — who voted against the larger allocation — denounced "filthy political maneuvering that produced a campaign of propaganda from a malignant and ignorant press."

Dozens of scallopers and a handful of environmental organization employees, rivals on the issue, filled the ballroom of a hotel.

In November, the same council voted 10-7 with one abstention for the more conservative option, allowing landings of 41.7 million pounds.

More days, access

The difference in allocation comes from the addition of nine more open access days for general permit scallopers to 38, and four more trips into closed areas for big boats with limited-access permit boats.

In between the two votes came heat on the council.

It took immense political pressure and the personal intervention of Gov. Deval Patrick to convince John Pappalardo, the chairman of the council, to bring the issue back from the shelf and put it up for reconsideration by his members. And it took powerful economic arguments yesterday from as far away as Virginia and New Bedford, the scallop capital of the Ocean Nation, to reverse the vote.

A significant contribution was made by the region's groundfishermen, who gave public approval to the loss of an estimated 4 percent of their potential yellowtail flounder allocation to the scallopers.

The flatfish and the shellfish are caught together, so a higher limit for scallops means a higher yellowtail bycatch.

In past allocations, the fishing cousins were wont to fight with each other for fair share of limited resources, but not yesterday — and never again, industry leaders prophesied.

The motion to up the allocation was made by David Pierce, deputy director of the Division of Marine Fisheries in the Patrick administrations.

'Brothers in arms'

"We were brothers in arms, hugging today and tomorrow," Drew Minkiewicz, lawyer for the Fishermen's Survival Fund, said after the vote for the larger allocation to the scallopers was announced. The fund filed more than 1,000 signatures in a petition for the council to reopen and liberalize the scallop catch limit.

"The key thing was the groundfishermen said they would work with the scallopers to make this happen," said Rich Canastra, an owner of the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction.

"We don't want yellowtail to trip a $40 million loss in scallops," Vito Giacalone, the Gloucester industry analyst and informal spokesman for the groundfishing fleet, told the council.

In the hours before the final vote, groundfishing interests from Maine and around to the southern New England coast centered Point Judith, R.I., let the councilors know they were good with the concession to the scallopers.

The decision by Pappalardo to allow the council to vote on redoing their November action on scallops was induced by a degree and style of pressure that stuck uncomfortably in the craw of a number of members, and left others to ponder how and where trust was lost.

Failed 'relationship'

Pappalardo, who was summoned to a Jan. 10 meeting in the governor's office to be lobbied by the state's highest official, began the meeting with a rumination of a relationship with the scallop industry gone bad.

"In my opinion," he said, "we always had a good relationship with the scallop industry. Sometime after November things went awfully wrong, and took a terrible turn — an unprecedented situation in my eyes."

In a statement, the governor said "the council did right today by Massachusetts scallopers."

No previously completed management plan for New England fisheries has ever been pulled from the out box for modification, Pappalardo and others said.

He explained that the governor's point "that Sunday" that the scallop industry would be taking the largest dollar "impact" in one year "weighed heavily in my mind."

New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang also mused on the frayed relationship. He told the council he spurned the regions' fishermen's protest rally at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration East Coast headquarters in Gloucester out of respect for the council.

But Lang said that changed with the earlier council vote in November. It saddled the industry with a catch limit plan of 41.7 million pounds of scallops. That was nearly 16 million pounds less than was estimated caught last year, a level calculated to cost the boats $64 million, even though the Science and Statistical Committee, arbiters of the best available science, had advised the management council it was comfortable with a 47 million pound catch.

The difference was about $41 million at the dock and four to five times that by the accepted economic pass through rule of thumb.

Dramatic breach

"What happened in November was a dramatic breach of that relationship," Lang told the council. He also told councilors that New Bedford would be devastated if forced to absorb the greater of the economic blows in the more conservative allocation.

"We will collapse this industry, this city (under the more conservative allocation)," he said. "Our darkest hours were when we thought there would be no reconsideration."

Minkiewicz, speaking for the Fishermen's Survival Fund, laid out a case for "diminishing returns" from the more stringent allocation, which he estimated would make a difference of "less than 1 percent in the biomass" of the stock.

Canastra argued that "we've been sacrificing so things could be better" and asked the council to imagine the impact on the groundfishing fleet if the scallopers were rewarded for their patience and sacrifice by asking them to absorb a cutback without significant counterbalancing conservation impact.

And Bill Wells, whose family owns the Wells Scallop Co. in Seaford, Va., predicted the conservative allocation would put the supply and price on a yo-yo and threaten stable distribution systems.

The smaller catch will drive up prices and then shrink demand. When more scallops become available later, "who will be there to buy them?" he wanted to know.

'A ghost town'

"New Bedford would be made a ghost town without the additional allocation." said state Rep. John Quinn, D-Dartmouth.

Congressman Rep. Barney Frank, who organized a coalition of congressional colleagues from up and down the coast on behalf of the higher allocation, was denounced along with the press at times during the debate for questioning the integrity of the council process.

"This positive step was initiated by thousands in the scallop industry, who advocated passionately on their own behalf," Frank said.

"The plan they have chosen puts the limit on scallop harvests at a level that the council's own planned development team and science and statistical committee said is sustainable," Frank added. "This decision will save jobs, help the local economy, and preserve scallops as an important sustainable fishery."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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