The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) – which oversees some of the most lucrative fisheries in the United States – is about to have a busy week.
Starting on 23 September, the council will be meeting in Gloucester, Massachusetts to discuss everything from ecosystem-based fishery management to setting the total allowable catch for multiple species. The agenda was so packed, in fact, that the normally three-day schedule was expanded to four days in order to give the council enough time.
“We have a very full agenda for this meeting,” Janice Plante, public affairs officer for the NEFMC, told SeafoodSource.
During the meetings, the council will discuss setting the specifications for three different fisheries: Monkfish, skates, and deep sea red crab. Those specification will include fishing limits, which for red crab will last until 2023.
The council will also get a look at a draft report that contains an exampe of a fishery ecosystem plan for Georges Bank.
“Then the council will be talking about next steps,” Plante said. The report is still in draft stages, and will likely take quite some time before the council takes any action, Plante explained.
Another agenda item tackles the region’s scallop fishery, which represents one of the most valuable fisheries in the U.S.
“We’re going to get our big overview of how the 2019 surveys went, and we’ll get kind of a snapshot of where these surveys showed we had good healthy concentrations of scallops,” Plante said.
The meeting will also address the Georges Bank yellowtail flounder bycatch. The Georges Bank yellowtail stock is in “poor condition,” according to draft discussion documents, and the council is working to mitigate the impacts that the scallop fishery has on the struggling fishery.
One thing that won’t be finalized is the approval of a draft environmental impact statement for Amendment 23, which covers changes to groundfish monitoring in the region. The amendment, which has already had years of work put into it, could change how sector reporting requirements work, implement new monitoring programs, and more depending on the eventual direction the council moves in.
Initially the council was set to approve the draft environmental impact statement, which is the first step before alternatives are sent out and public comment is collected.
“We are not going to do that now. Even though everyone has been working very hard on this amendment,” Plante said. “It’s a really big action, =and some of the analysis that need to be conducted just couldn’t be completed in time for this meeting.” Instead, the council will use teh time at the meeting to gain a detailed understanding of the alternatives and analyses in order to facilitate future decsion making, Plante added.
The total allowable catch for Eastern Georges Bank haddock and cod, as well as Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, will also be a part of the discussions. All three fisheries have a total allowable catch that is shared with Canada, which is advised by joint committees with Canada: the Transboundary Resources Assessment Committee (TRAC) and the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee (TMGC).
“The TMGC looks at what the TRAC said in the assessments and makes recommendations for what the catch limits should be,” Plante said. “We’ll actually be approving the 2020 TAC limits for those three stocks that we share with Canada on Georges Banks based on recommendations from the TMGC."
The council will also discuss the ongoing work to make electronic vessel trip reporting mandatory for NEFMC -managed species, something that was brought about by the Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
The council has posted a full agenda, which includes several more items, on its website.
Photo by Chris Chase/SeafoodSource
