PORTLAND, Maine - A point system devised by Gloucester fishing advocates that they say would help preserve crucial species in New England waters was put on a back burner yesterday by a regional regulatory committee.
The New England Fishery Management Council voted to continue business as usual under Framework 42, the plan that took effect last November. Framework 42 limits the amount of time fishermen may spend at sea, double-counts days spent in certain inshore areas off Gloucester and caps the allowable amount of fish landed.
Proponents of changing the management system were a little frustrated that consideration of the proposals is being delayed after the council had asked for ideas from the public and the fishing industry.
"Our biggest concern is that the council asked for these new ideas to solve the problems in the groundfish industry and we, and a number of others, spent the last year working on our program," said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition. "I'm disappointed that our point system is put on the back burner because we believe that it solves a lot of problems" with allocating and distributing the burden of catch restrictions.
Many in the fishing industry, and many on the council, think the restriction on days allowed at sea does not reduce the amount of fish caught enough to keep the rebuilding of fish stocks on schedule, while it squeezes fishermen out of business. Framework 42 counts each day a fisherman spends in an area that stretches about 30 miles off Gloucester and runs from Cape Cod to just north of Portland, Maine, as two days at sea.
The council late last year began soliciting ideas for changes to the way fishing is managed for an amendment to the groundfish management plan scheduled to go into effect May 1, 2009. Several proposals, including the point system from the Northeast Seafood Coalition, were submitted in December, but council members said yesterday they will focus on changes to restrictions based on a major species assessment due to be released next summer.
"It gets to the heart of what we need to focus on in this amendment," said Patricia Kurkul, a member of the council and a regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the fishing industry.
That report, which is expected to be available in August 2008 and will be reviewed by the council, will assess how certain fragile and regulated stocks, such as cod, flounder and haddock, are rebounding and whether they are still being overfished. It will serve as the basis for the council's decisions on whether to tighten restrictions to meet federal rebuilding timelines.
Vito Giacalone, chairman of government affairs for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, helped create and push for a new system based on a given number of points assigned to a species.
In it, fishermen would be allotted a certain number of points based on a formula that takes into account vessel length, the size of gear used and the days spent at sea in the eight years before the current counting system went into effect in 2003.
Each regulated species would be assigned a point value based on how much conservation is necessary to keep it rebuilding at the required pace. The theory, Giacalone has said, is to make species that should not be heavily harvested more expensive and encourage fishermen to target species with lower point values.
The council is planning to take that idea, along with other ideas proposed from around New England, and put them off until the next time it makes an amendment to the groundfish management plan, meaning it is unlikely any of the proposals could be put into effect before 2010.
Vito Calomo, executive director of the Massachusetts Fisheries Recovery Commission and a former Gloucester fisherman, said he hopes that political pressure from both state and federal legislators will make sure the council does not ignore the proposals altogether.
"There are a lot of people getting involved, political people, who are saying that the system needs to be fixed," he said.
