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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 32 Number 7
March 2005
It’s happening:
VMS for general category scallop boats
by Janice M. Plante
PORTSMOUTH, NH – Fishermen who hold general category scallop permits and want to land and/or possess more than 40 pounds of scallop meats per trip will almost certainly be required to carry a vessel monitoring system (VMS) in the near future.
However, impacted fishermen will be allowed to “power down” their VMS units while in port as long as they’re not required to maintain a steady VMS signal for another regulated fishery.
The new VMS provision is part of Framework Adjustment 17 to the scallop plan, which was approved by the New England Fishery Management Council during its Feb. 1-3 meeting here. The framework also contains language eliminating the poundage and days-at-sea penalty associated with “broken trips”.
At the moment, general category permits are still open access. They allow vessels to possess and land up to 400 pounds of scallop meats per trip. Besides fishermen who direct on this relatively small amount of scallops, many people in other fisheries obtain general category permits to legally land and sell their scallop bycatch.
Permit holders will have several months to gear up for the new requirement. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must first review and approve the framework, so a final rule won’t be published until sometime this summer – at the earliest.
General category fisherman Chad Maguire said he wasn’t opposed to buying a VMS.
“I do believe it’s an investment in our future. Scientists will have a grasp on what’s landed,” he said.
But Maguire expressed concern about timing.
“Give us a grace period so we can get our money together and pay for it,” he said.
Numbers of boats
According to scallop plan coordinator Andy Applegate, 2,544 vessels held general category scallop permits as of the fall of 2004.
However, only 276 of those vessels reported landing more than 40 pounds of scallops during the 2003 fishing year, which ended Feb. 29, 2004. They accounted for 99.9% of the “reported” general category landings for that year.
Applegate said 53 of those 276 boats held permits that already required them to have VMS for other fisheries.
Council member Tom Hill of Massachusetts, who chairs the scallop committee, said the committee was swayed by those figures.
“By doing a 40-pound threshold, we will capture almost all of the scallop landings and only affect an extra 223 vessels,” he said.
Reluctance from Maine
The full council, however, didn’t readily accept the 40-pound threshold. In fact, Maine council member Lew Flagg made a motion to stick with status quo and drop the general category VMS requirement altogether.
“There have been a lot of questions raised, and I’m very concerned they haven’t been fleshed out,” he said.
Dana Rice, also from Maine, seconded the motion.
“To place this burden on everyone is not necessary at this time,” he said. “There is a problem in certain areas and it’s basically below the Cape. The problem is not throughout the range of scallops.”
But outside of the Maine delegation, the move to scrap the requirement received no support, and the motion was defeated in a 4-to-10 vote with three abstentions.
“I think we’ve been hearing from industry for a long time now that we’re having a noncompliance problem with this sector of the fishery,” said NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul.
“Knowing what we know, I don’t think we can do nothing. There is a fairly high return in this fishery even at 400 pounds per trip. I think the cost can be justified.”
Whole fleet?
Kurkul then moved to require all general category scallop permit holders to carry VMSs. However, her motion, which ultimately failed, also allowed vessels to possess and land – but not sell – up to 40 pounds of shucked scallops without holding a general category permit at all.
Agency officials supported the move.
Andy Cohen, special agent in charge for the NMFS Northeast Office of Law Enforcement, said, “Now we have a tool to solve a problem that many, many people have identified. If you think this is an issue that needs to be solved, then I urge you to put VMS on those vessels.”
But the proposal was too much for Lew Flagg, who argued strongly against it. Citing economic information from the framework document indicating that the overall cost of imposing VMS fleet-wide would run around $8.4 million, he said, “It’s way out of line to put this heavy of a burden on vessels that catch so little of the resource.”
How about 300 pounds?
Rhode Island council member Phil Ruhle took the next crack at a compromise. He moved to adopt an alternative that set the threshold for requiring a VMS at 300 pounds.
“When you look at the numbers, this makes sense to me,” he said. “You have incidental and bycatch fisheries like fluke, squid. To me, we’re losing that perspective. I tow a 10” mesh net and I can get 20 pounds of scallops. You have scallops that hang onto the ropes.”
According to Applegate, the 300-pound cut-off would result in 144 general category permit holders needing to carry VMS, with 12 of those vessels already being required to have them for other fisheries.
Several council members fought against the higher poundage threshold.
“This (general category) fishery is significant,” said Hill. “It’s much more significant than it is on the books. To adopt a program that excludes (so many) of the participants, then why are we doing this?”
Connecticut council member Sally McGee acknowledged that the 300-pound cut-off was supposed to capture close to 95% of all general category landings, but she said, “That’s 95% of the reported landings. There’s less certainty of addressing the problem of illegal landings with this alternative.”
Massachusetts council member Rodney Avila agreed.
“The people who are on the dock see (the illegal landings) every day,” he said. “All we’re doing here is arguing about where to put the cheating bar. Anyone who’s going to cheat is going to cheat at 40 pounds or 100 pounds or 300 pounds. We need to monitor everyone.”
Representatives of the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) weighed in once it was clear that the council was torn about which way to go.
“The problem does need to be addressed,” said FSF attorney David Frulla. “This issue of general category landings has been raised again and again and again. At some point the whistle blows and we have to get on with this.”
According to FSF biologist Trevor Kenchington, many of the most egregious violators probably aren’t reporting their landings at all.
“There’s no reason to suppose that the guy who’s bringing in 2,000 pounds is reporting 399 pounds,” he said. “We’re attempting to get VMS on people who are bringing in significantly more than 400 pounds.”
And the best way to do that, he said, is to require VMS on most of the general category boats.
FSF gear specialist Ron Smolowitz expressed serious concern over the burgeoning general category landings in southern ports like Chincoteague, VA.
“While we’ve been fiddling for the last three years, a whole new fishery has developed down south,” he said. “We all know there’s an enforcement issue. To ignore that, we have our heads in the sand.”
Decision reached
After ruling out practically all the other options, the council was back at proposing VMS for all general category permit holders landing and/or possessing more than 40 pounds of scallop meats per trip. After agreeing that landings of 40 pounds or less could be sold – and not just used for personal consumption – the council passed the motion in a 9-to-4 vote with four abstentions.
New Hampshire council member David Goethel, who had expressed reservations throughout the debate, concluded, “My feeling about enforcement is that we need boots on the ground. The violators are going to continue to break the law whether they have VMS or not.
“Will it help? Yes,” he said. “Is it going to catch all the violators? Absolutely not. VMS is just one tool.”
Powering down
Associated Fisheries of Maine (AFM) argued against the VMS requirement. While some AFM boats already carry VMSs due to groundfish regulations – say, to fish in the US/Canada area – many of the group’s smaller boats do not. And the requirement to purchase a VMS solely to retain a general category scallop permit would further burden an already stressed fleet.
“It is our belief that such a requirement is impractical and unnecessary,” AFM spokesman Maggie Raymond told the council’s scallop committee.
But sensing the committee’s conviction, Raymond said any eventual VMS requirement should include a power-down provision, modeled after the one in place for the herring fishery.
The full council supported this approach and voted that general category permit holders could power down while in port. However, VMSs had to be “re-powered and logged in before leaving on any fishing trip from a fixed dock or mooring – and getting underway – and whenever outside the VMS demarcation line.”
That means vessels will be able to move around in port to take on fuel, ice, and groceries, or move to a repair dock, with their VMSs turned off.
This allowance was critical for smaller vessels that don’t have shore power at moorings.
Opting out of VMS
But it wasn’t enough for John Williamson, a council member from Maine. He wanted vessels to be able to log out of the VMS program for a minimum three-month period in any given year. That way, vessels wouldn’t face polling charges while not participating in the fishery.
“If we can keep the costs down and the hassle factor down, and not clog the screen at the enforcement office with a bunch of vessels that are lobster fishing, we’ll be better off,” he said.
“We want to have a class of vessels that fishes seasonally for scallops. What we want to see is that they are using the VMS during the time they are involved in the 400-pound fishery,” he said.
Andy Cohen, however, expressed grave reservations about the prospect.
“To turn the VMS off for three months weakens the entire VMS program,” he said. “If we don’t know what the vessel is doing when it’s moving, our hands are tied.”
Nonetheless, Williamson worried that many of Maine’s seasonal scallopers would be hit too hard by a VMS requirement.
“The cost of the VMS will eat significantly into their revenue stream, and some will opt out. They just won’t go scalloping anymore,” he said. “On the coast of Maine, that will just force more dependency on the lobster fishery. From a management perspective, it’s not good policy.”
Williamson’s proposal was ruled “out of order” since the council had already voted to let vessels “power down” only while in port.
But he later gained council support for a directive to the scallop committee to develop a mechanism for allowing general category boats to opt out of VMS usage on a seasonal basis.
Control date
One other means for opting out of the VMS requirement was raised at this meeting. Several people suggested that general category permit holders who didn’t plan to land more than 40 pounds of scallop meats per trip for an extended period of time could cancel their permit. That way, they could use the permit when they needed to land between 41 and 400 pounds of scallops, but turn in the permit and shut off their VMSs when not landing any appreciable amount.
Because the permits are open access, fishermen should be able to “get them back” when needed.
But Pat Kurkul said, “There is a lag time in both canceling and getting your permit back.”
Furthermore, several audience members who listened to the discussion thought the practice was far too risky. NMFS, at the council’s request, recently imposed a control date of Nov. 1, 2004 on general category scallop permits. Who would take the chance of giving up their permit?
Paul Howard, the council’s executive director, was straightforward in saying the council couldn’t make any promises about future actions regarding permits.
“The only thing we can say is that landings and effort before 2004 may be treated differently from after 2004. We’re not going to make that decision here,” he said.
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