It is informed that fishermen will see a change from their 400-pound-per-day limit as general category scallopers to an individual fishing quota based on their catch from 2000-2004. Provincetown-based scalloper Mary Beth DePoutiloff isn’t eagerly awaiting the date. She was in Washington on Wednesday for the “United We Fish” rally to reform the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, under which fisheries are managed, and to request a moratorium on the catch shares program.
She added that from now onwards general category boats will be fishing under catch shares for the first time – individual tradable quotas – meaning we can have 1,600 pounds. That’s equal to four days of fishing (under the old system), so one can fish for four days a year. Scallopers share of the total allowable catch will be cut from 10 percent to 5 percent (2,257,534 pounds) by Amendment 11 on March 1. Last year they could catch 4,590,024 pounds.
Tom Dempsey of Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, opined that years back there were hundreds of boats on Cape Cod that maintained the right to go small boat (general) category opportunistic fishing. He added that because the individual fishing quotas were set by taking the best year’s scallop catch during 2000-2004, reducing it if effort slacked off and partitioning it proportionally into 5 percent of the total catch, the allotments may not be enough.
Implementation of the quotas program was delayed until this March to give fishermen time to get their paperwork in order and appeal their allotments. In November, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to adopt a rule chopping the trip boats days at sea from 37 to 29 and limiting the total catch to 41.7 million pounds.
