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| News Letter Hello All, By now I am sure you all have heard the news that Stacking/Leasing failed to pass the Council. There was a lot of support from industry to keep the status quo, I am very sure there are some disappointed fleet owners right now! Fortunately, we also managed to sidestep some potential negative effects from that as well from potential loss of quota thru their increased efficiencies pushing them closer to or over the OF definition. I will be willing to bet money that the next action will be a huge conversion to ITQ fishery for the LA fleet. We will see! I will try to give you a brief summary of the other actions that passed in what became a TWO DAY scallop segment, some of which threatened to completely shut down all of SNE for undetermined amounts of time starting March 1.Gary Hatch and I were there the entire time watching for our groups best interests. I should also let you know that there were some council members who went out of their way to help us, particularly Dave Preble, Jim Fair, Rodney Avila. Also NEMFC Council Staff did put in a lot of extra crunch time at night to try to find solutions as well once they understood how critical some issues were to us. * Council voted for the new "flow chart" ACL (annual catch limit) structure. This pulls the LA .5% gencat allowance to our side of the sub-acl and does not remove the 500k lbs for scientific uncertainty. We are working to see a one way "lease down only"/ no sale" option added here to increase opportunity for us and not allow upward movement from us. There is a fair amount of quota locked up in that .5% held by LA boats that will not use it and want to free it up. *Management Scientific Uncertainty Buffers: 25% for LA fleet/ 0% for LAGC (this ensures our keeping that 500K poundage, so I expect to see our quotas increase according to your CF). *AM's (accountability measures): LA fleet, loss of DAS + disclaimer (i will get to this), LaGC fleet, adjust personal IFQ for overage. *Disclaimer for LA overages: We all know our quota is set at the beginning of the year from the ACL, as is the LA fleet, but this is really a buffer from the OF (overfishing def), thus with open access DAS, they manage to push right up to that limit (usually 10 mil lbs over the target, and they are on track for that again this year), whereas we do not have the same income increasing opportunity due to hard TAC/ IFQ. This disclaimer gives us 5.5% of that overage added to our next years quota, coming from theirs. Thus you may expect another increase of up to approx. 500K to be distributed according to your CF after next year. ***Yellowtail Accountability measure: Passed with SNE closure BUT with added language exempting LAGC trips from this measure. In other words we are in the clear, but this was going to shut us down nearly indefinitely from Cape Cod to Shinnecock! *Allow 15% rollover of IFQ each year. This cannot accumulate, but if you have a little unused quota of had a breakdown in late season, this allows 15% of your original quota to follow to the next year (not leased quota). *LAGC Possession limit: INCREASED to 600 lbs. (also something to watch, some large company reps want the limit unlimited and they made the possession limits frameworkable, which I spoke against, which means we will see much more fighting for our quota and it possibly ending up on very large boats in the future). Gary spoke against the increase and in favor of 400 lbs. I held back only because they saved the yellowtail discussion for the next day. My reasoning was that we were leveraged here. If we failed to get exempted from the YT AM and had to fish elsewhere we would want the extra 200 lbs to make the trip worth it, whereas if we succeeded, the 400lbs was fine. It came down to timing and trying to keep us in a healthy position either way. Another POTENTIAL silver lining MAY be that those in NGOM could have footing to fight for an increase in their 200lb daily limit...... * Allow LAGC permit splitting....approved. *Modify Max quota one vessel can own UP TO 2.5%.....approved. Please feel free to ask any questions. Also, I will add that if you appreciate our efforts on your behalf, please remember to send us a membership dues check or donation of $100. Thank you. Good Luck, Good Fishing!! Michael L. Marchetti Pres. Eastern New England Scallop Assoc. (401) 742-7028 fvcaptainrobert@aol.com |
News And Other Important
Information Last updated 10/30/2010
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