NMFS chief seeks changes to 'common' pool limits

New England's top federal fishing regulator has proposed new controls to prevent a commercial fishing "derby," targeting the side of the industry that next year will continue to work independently without catch shares or membership in new fishing cooperatives known as sectors.

The deadline for securing a place in one of the sectors passed at midnight on Tuesday.

Well more than half the active permits have been signed on to join in a cooperative, with the majority of them based here at the offices of the Northeast Seafood Coalition.

"At first glance," said a spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, "it appears that the lions share of the catch history that is associated with permits is enrolled in a sector."

But the June meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council also left fishermen with the option to not join a sector, and instead work in an independent common pool.

Under the council's current rules, permit holders can opt out of sectors after Tuesday's deadline, but those in the "common pool" can no longer opt in to the sector system.

While New England's most radical commercial fishery re-engineering was codified in the so-called Amendment 16, it was not necessarily completed. The draft could be unwound and redone Sept. 22-24 at the next meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council in Plymouth.

And in a letter to the New England council last week, Patricia Kurkul, the Gloucester-based regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said "members of the fishing industry" recently contacted her about perceived flaws in the regulatory scheme written in June to govern the activities of the boats that eschew sectors with their catch shares.

The gist of the complaint is that the sectors scheduled to begin operating under catch shares next May have been awarded too little pollock, while the common poolers, under the continued effort controls based on limiting locations and days at sea, have been invited to catch pollock without the newer system's hard catch limits.

To a lesser extent, a similar imbalance in the regulation of cod was also cited.

Kurkul's spokeswoman Maggie Mooney-Seus yesterday declined to identify the industry members who contacted Kurkul to protest that as currently written, the different regulatory schemes work against the success of sectors and catch shares — the No. 1 innovative priority of the Obama administration fisheries policies.

However, Vito Giacalone of the Gloucester based Northeast Seafood Coalition has been outspoken in condemning the proposed, diminutive pollock catch share allocation as a potential hair trigger that could shut down the sectors and doom the experiment in catch shares before it gets a fair chance.

Announced in August, the proposed catch share for pollock by sectors represents a 67 percent cut from the total pounds landed last year in the region. Catch share decisions also are on the Plymouth agenda.

A fish with a pedestrian purpose — used mostly in processed frozen products — pollock was entirely unregulated until this year, but its catch share in a linked system has the potential to halt all sector fishing including in the iconic and higher margin species — cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder.

The New England fishing industry's most influential visionary and innovator, Giacalone anticipated the push for catch shares and sectors organizing 13 of the 17 that were incorporated with papers filed with NMFS by the midnight deadline on Tuesday.

Giacalone said he believed between two-thirds and three-quarters of the multispecies permits took places in sectors.

"We did what we were supposed to do," he said in an interview Wednesday, hours after more than 500 pages of legal materials were filed with NMFS for each of the 13 sectors formed by the coalition. "Now they (NMFS) have to fix this. It's in their hands. We're doing out part to be rational and businesslike.

"The science and the common pool measures don't add up," Giacalone said.

Noting that the extremely low catch share on pollack was written to protect a stock deemed overfished for the first time, he questioned why no limits were put on pollock catches by common pool boats.

The request by sector interests to reopen the regulatory terms for sectors and common poolers, however, is sure to be controversial.

Maggie Raymond, executive director of the Associated Fisheries of Maine, an industry group that has organized a sector, said she found the belated request for re-engineering Amendment 16 "disconcerting" because the subject was vetted in June, and decisions were made by permitholders to remain out of sectors based on a reasonable belief that the rules under which they'd fish in the common pool were voted.

Raymond cited a fact sheet sent out by NMFS that outlined the common pool rules as voted in Portland. The sheet contains a disclaimer that the rules are tentative, until approved by NMFS.

"I thought Amendment 16 was a done deal," said Raymond, who has been a skeptic about the curative power of catch shares.

She also said she worried that reopening the draft of Amendment 16 could be akin to playing with Pandora's Box, and could bring on yet another chapter of unplanned, unscheduled changes in business model.

"It seems very unfair even to have this discussion," she said.

Dated Aug. 24, Kurkul's letter was written to Paul Howard, executive director of the New England council.

Patricia Fiorelli, spokeswoman for the council, said there would be no immediate response.

At the June meeting of the New England Fishery council — which writes policy for NMFS, the executive authority — the predominant opinion was that the sectors and catch shares were receiving superior considerations. David Goethel, a New Hampshire fisherman and council member, equated the common pool with a "cesspool."

But Goethel yesterday said no one should be surprised that the rushed writing of Amendment 16 was flawed. He wrote a formal dissent and argued other decisions made the document fundamentally biased — in favor of recreational fishermen and a pod of Chatham and Cape Cod boats that initiated the sector experiment under subsidy by the Pew Environmental Group.

Giacalone said neither he nor any coalition representative had urged Kurkul to reopen the arrangements for the common pool and the sectors in what is known as Amendment 16, which, in its draft form, awaits final approval by Kurkul's office.

But he did not hide the fact that efforts have been made to reopen Amendment 16 deliberations.

"Members have asked us" to talk to NMFS officials about the perceived inequities of the dual regulatory system. "People have probably gone up there as individuals."

Promoted by national oceans and atmospheric chief Jane Lubchenco and environmental lobby giants Pew and the Environmental Defense Fund, catch shares have been viewed as a panacea to end overfishing, restore prosperity to the fishing industry, and open the door to outside investment opportunities, converting the commonly held harvestable resources of the sea into tradeable rights.

EDL said little about the investment opportunities during the deliberations in Portland that produced the dual sets of rules last June, but in April, an EDL executive was promoting catch shares to investors on the West Coast, claiming the potential for windfall profits.

"On the one hand," Giacalone said, "Lubchenco's message is that we've got to be businesslike.

"On the other hand," he said, "they're creating the most unfavorable business conditions — it's all manmade."

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com

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Kurkul asks fishery council to revise 'common' pool limits

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