The fishermen expect the lifting of bycatch cap that would slash the allocation for local ground fishermen. The New England Fisheries Management Council met Tuesday (and continued meeting through Thursday) and agreed to ask for looser rules by a 14-0 vote. Ben Martens, policy analyst for Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, said that haddock (or scrod when it’s small) is the number one codfish.
He said that the fishermen catch all of their allotment but it is a critically important species. Haddock kept ground fishermen alive the past 10 years. Haddock stocks on Georges Bank were way down before spawning areas were closed to fishing in 1994. Stocks rebounded from 11,000 metric tons of spawning fish in 1993 to an estimated 120,000 metric tons in 2003 (the greatest numbers since 1967).
Eighty-six metric tons of haddock can be landed by the herring fleet before a huge area of ocean is closed down to us, said Dave Ellenton, owner of Cape Seafoods in Gloucester, told the council Tuesday. Those customers include lobstermen who use herring as bait. The Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, which includes Ellenton and other trawler owners and processors, requested emergency action and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission agreed.
Ellenton, who added that if the cap was exceeded, that excess amount would be deducted from their 2012 quota – so the managers (and local fishermen) would get it back. But the hook fishermen wanted to see the bycatch cap stick. The council was discussing Framework 46, which will regulate fisheries in coming years, and any change to that wouldn’t take effect until 2012. After much discussion a new Framework 47 was proposed, which would deal with haddock/herring issues and hopefully be ready by May of 2011, when herring and haddock will be together in the same fishing grounds.
