COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 3
November 2010
NE council shoots down scallop leasing option
NEWPORT, RI – With permit stacking off the table for the scallop fishery, the New England Fishery Management Council then took up the difficult issue of permit leasing on Sept. 29 during an extremely intense meeting.
Leasing, which essentially would have allowed limited-access scallopers to buy and sell days-at-sea and access-area trips, was the second and only other proposal in Amendment 15 intended to address overcapacity in the scallop fishery.
Compared to the more definitive vote against stacking, the leasing vote was closer. But the council still shot down the proposal 7-to-9 with one abstention, even though its own scallop committee had recommended that leasing be allowed.
As he did with the stacking issue, Council Chairman John Pappalardo of Massachusetts allowed audience members to present their positions first.
Jim Lovgren of Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant, NJ said the biggest concern among the 12 owner-operated boats at his dock was that limited-access scallopers would lease their days and then go fishing for other species.
Small-boat fishermen in the Mid-Atlantic have few remaining fishing options, said Lovgren.
“Through a step-by-step process, this council has stripped us of our ability to prosecute a lot of fisheries. We’ve been kicked out of everything because we just don’t happen to fit into the timeframe you use,” he said, referring to qualifying periods for limited-access permits.
Continuing to build his case, Lovgren said, “In one or two trips, a scallop days-at-sea vessel makes more than I stock all year, yet they want more. A vessel that leases is not going to stay tied to the dock. He’s going to put his scallop allocation on another boat, and then his vessel will now be in my fishery that has a trip limit or quota. They’re having the best of both worlds at my expense. But I can’t get into their fishery because you took it away from me.”
Jeff Kaelin, representing Lund’s Fisheries of Cape May, NJ, also had concerns about effort shifts. He, too, opposed leasing.
“Stacking was cleaner in that those other limited-access permits would have been frozen in concept,” he said. “Leasing won’t reduce capacity. It will just shift capacity into other fisheries, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic. This is a major, major issue for where we are in New Jersey.”
Leasing supporter Peter Hughes of Atlantic Capes Fisheries Inc., also of Cape May, recognized people had this concern about effort shifts.
“But you know,” he said, “boats that have squid permits and fluke permits already have that ability. We have the opportunity without leasing to go out and utilize those other permits up to the tune of 285 days per year,” which is the number of days left – give or take – after a boat uses up its scallop allocation.
Amendment 15 goal
Jeff Pike spoke on behalf of the Scallop Capacity Reduction Coalition. Made up of vessel owners from Maine to New Jersey who collectively own 100 limited-access permits, the coalition was formed in 2007 to address only one issue – capacity reduction.
“The council appropriately identified capacity reduction as a goal of Amendment 15 because there is unquestionably overcapacity,” said Pike. “When a full-time vessel fishes approximately 80 days a year and remains tied to the dock for 285 days, that’s ample evidence of an overcapitalized fishery.”
According to Pike, leasing would not eliminate jobs in the fishery.
“Virtually every member in our group has told you they run one crew for two boats, and they don’t intend to eliminate jobs. To the contrary, our goal is to eliminate steel,” he said.
Noting that the council had just voted to reject stacking, Pike said, “Leasing now is the only option left on the table in Amendment 15 for capacity reduction, and if the council does not approve leasing, we’ll have failed collectively to meet a major goal of the amendment.”
New Bedford vessel owner Ray Starvish said the federal government has spent millions and millions of dollars on groundfish permit buybacks, yet it could achieve capacity reduction in the scallop fishery for free through leasing.
“It would come at no cost to the taxpayer,” he said. “In these tough economic times, to me this is very important.”
Starvish also said the scallop committee had developed extremely high fishing power and mortality adjustments for people who lease allocations.
“For me to reduce six permits to three boats, I would have to render 28 days using the 11% efficiency tax, assuming we get 38 days next year,” he said. “So this leasing to me comes at a very, very high price.”
Starvish also emphasized that leasing was voluntary and, he said, “If we find something wrong, we can fix it because we’ve made everything frameworkable.”
New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang took a different approach and asked the council to take a step back and rethink the whole issue of capacity reduction.
“My feeling on many of these proposals is they have not had the careful consideration of the social and economic impacts on the individual ports,” he said.
“Hold off on this. There’s no emergency regarding the stock. There is time to sit down and come up with a system that may be equitable and fair. Put a committee together. Let’s figure out how it could work. To simply think that capitalistic forces are going to take care of this at no cost to the government is completely naïve,” Lang said.
What if biomass drops?
Bill Wells of Seaford, VA manages a dock used by 14 full-time limited-access scallop vessels owned by three families that have generations of history in the fishery.
“In the state of Virginia, we have about 75 scallop boats. Scallops is our most valuable fishery by far,” he said.
Wells said the vessels at his dock supported leasing and, based on testimony at the Virginia public hearing for Amendment 15, he believed scallopers throughout the state supported leasing as well.
Noting that leasing would become particularly important if the fishery took a downturn, Wells said, “We have become comfortable with 55 million pounds a year, and that’s great. But when this management plan was passed, we as an industry were landing 12 million pounds a year. I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to 12 million, but my experience tells me we’re not going to always be at 55 million pounds.”
As for people who “are on the fence today about leasing,” Wells said, “There’s some number out there that will change a lot people’s minds. Maybe it’s not 55 million pounds, maybe it’s 45 million. Maybe it’s not 38 days but it’s 28 days. But there’s a number below which we’re going to want to lease. And the issues won’t be, ‘Who’s going to pay for it?’ and all these other things. It’s going to be, ‘How in the world can we get this fast enough so we don’t go broke while waiting for the solution to our problem?’”
As a final point, Wells said leasing could provide a safety net when people unexpectedly suffered from mechanical breakdowns or tragedy.
“At our dock, we’ve had two boats in the last four years that have had breakdowns right at the end of the year,” he said. “It could not be predicted and it had nothing to do with the quality of the boat or the quality of the maintenance or the quality of the captain or crew. Things happen. Leasing allows someone to at least recover some of the money to get back on their feet.”
Council split
After hearing these arguments, council members debated the issue among themselves.
Sally McGee of Connecticut, who had opposed stacking, this time urged the council to support leasing, saying it was “economically accessible to a wider range of the fishery than stacking would have been.”
“If the fishery goes over the line of overfishing, days-at-sea will be cut to eliminate overfishing,” McGee said. “Without leasing, if there is a cut in days-at-sea, there would be no options for an individual to increase the days that they can go fishing. Then boats are going to be sitting at the dock even longer.”
Massachusetts council member Rip Cunningham agreed.
“To me, this will give the industry a level of flexibility that I think it’s going to need,” he said.
New Hampshire council member David Goethel, on the other hand, remained strongly opposed, saying he was convinced that leasing would lead to effort shifts.
“I’ll give you an example of that right now,” he said. “There’s a reason the dogfish fishery is closed. It’s because people who had relatively little amounts of groundfish leased out their quota and then turned their attention full-bore seven-days-a-week on dogfish until it was closed. That was an effort shift.”
Goethel also didn’t view leasing as being more economically feasible for single-boat owners than stacking.
“Unfortunately in this world, there is not equal access to capital. As such, people who are better financed will have a chance to outbid their neighbors. Just like groundfish, small people will get forced out because they don’t have the access to capital,” he said.
Connecticut council member Mark Alexander was of the same mind.
“I don’t think this is an equal opportunity alternative as much as it’s made out to be,” he said. “Multiboat owners can lease to themselves at no or nominal costs. Even if they do lease-in from outside of their personal business, they have deeper pockets to do so.”
Rick Robins, chairman of the Mid-Atlantic council, supported leasing. Serving as the Mid-Atlantic liaison during the New England council meeting, Robins could not vote on the motion, but he was able to do so on Sept. 23 as a member of the scallop committee. In fact, Robins himself made the committee motion to have leasing be the preferred alternative in Amendment 15 to address capacity reduction.
Robins said the scallop committee and plan development team worked hard “from the very beginning” to ensure that leasing would be conservation neutral.
“And that’s really critical,” he said. “That’s what ensures that there won’t be impacts to those who don’t lease.”
Robins also said that “allowing fishermen to improve their capital efficiency within their current allocations” was fully consistent with National Standard 5, which promotes efficiency.
“This would provide for incremental growth in businesses,” he said.
Finally, Robins said, “Having sat through the hearing that we had in Virginia, many of the supporters of leasing were people who had been in the business since the 1970s and 1980s. This is not an outside run on the fishery by any means. These are folks who have been in the fishery for a very long time.”
Following this debate, the council cast its 7-to-9 vote, which killed the leasing proposal. Maine council member Terry Stockwell abstained due to lingering concerns about program details.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we could fundamentally change the fishery,” he said. “And I wish there was some way I could better understand the complete package instead of just the concept.”
Janice M. Plante
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
