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Fishermen snag managers on salmon, halibut
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif SIZE=]By Andrew Jensen [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif SIZE=]Alaska Journal of Commerce [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]HOMER — Glenn Merrill had nowhere to hide.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]By the end of a two-hour meeting Aug. 12 at Homer's Land's End Resort with more than 150 angry fishermen mostly opposed to a proposed plan to divide the halibut harvest between the commercial and charter sectors, a dive into Kachemak Bay was probably looking pretty good.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Merrill, assistant regional supervisor of the Sustainable Fisheries Division for National Marine Fisheries Service, was in Homer to explain the draft rule for the halibut catch sharing plan, or CSP, scheduled to take effect in 2012.[/FONT]
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[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]NMFS released the draft rule July 22, nearly three years after the North Pacific Fishery Management Council approved it in October 2008. The agency is taking written comments through Sept. 6.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Like a battle plan discarded after the first shot is fired, Merrill's agenda for the meeting didn't make it much past the third slide of his Power Point presentation.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Merrill and fellow NMFS fisheries specialist Rachel Baker planned to lay out how the catch sharing plan would work, but found a hostile audience already well aware of the ramifications.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Under the proposed CSP, charter operators in Southcentral could see 1 million pounds or more of halibut reallocated to the commercial sector next year and will have the daily bag limit cut from two fish to one. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The Southcentral charter allocation has been 3.65 million pounds since 2000, and the sector has stayed within that amount every year since 2004 while having a two-fish of any size bag limit. However, the council adopted a percentage spilt between commercial and charter sectors to reflect the declining amount of legal-sized halibut 32 inches or longer.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]While the charter guideline harvest level, or GHL, has remained unchanged for more than a decade, the commercial harvest in Southcentral has declined from about 26 million pounds in 2005 to 14.3 million pounds in 2011. Thus, the charter allocation amounted to about 20 percent of the combined harvest in 2011 compared to about 13 percent in 2005.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]By going to what the North Pacific council determined was a historical split for the charter sector of between 14 percent and 15 percent, the charter allocation for 2011 would have been cut by 31 percent to 2.52 million pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The council also adopted a tier system tying bag limits to levels of abundance. At the 2011 combined harvest of 18.1 million pounds, a one fish of any size bag limit applies to the Southcentral charter anglers. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]At levels of 20 million pounds to 27 million pounds, the two-fish bag limit returns with one required to be 32 inches or less.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Southcentral would not return to its current two fish of any size limit until the combined harvest is more than 27 million pounds, a level seen in the five seasons between 2004 and 2008.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]A particular point of anger directed toward the plan requires charter operators to lease pounds from the commercial sector if clients wish to catch two fish instead of one or exceed potential size limits. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Under the plan, if the charter sector is projected to go over its allocation by more than 3.5 percent, the International Pacific Halibut Commission may impose a size limit in addition to the default bag limits chosen by the North Pacific council.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The IPHC already took that step in Southeast this year (because the CSP was not yet in place), setting a maximum size of 37 inches for charter halibut, in addition to the one-fish limit put in place in 2009. Both the size and bag limit were put in place because the Southeast charter sector has exceeded its allocation every year since 2004.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]While many in attendance thanked them for coming and acknowledged that neither Merrill nor Baker had voted on the plan nor devised its components, the pair endured plenty of catcalls, groans and shouts.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]"We knew this was going to be hot," Merrill said.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Merrill did his best to express his understanding for the anger in the room, but he was poorly equipped to ease concerns and repeatedly reminded the audience he was just the messenger. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Because he didn't vote on it, he couldn't defend it; he's not a lawyer for the NMFS, so he couldn't address questions of whether the plan met national standards under the Magnuson-Stevens Act that require allocations be "fair and equitable."[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Nor is he a decision-maker. That role ultimately falls to the Secretary of Commerce, which is currently being filled with interim head Rebecca Blank. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Beyond general concerns, charter stakeholders also raised a number of substantive technical questions Merrill couldn't answer.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Projections[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Several stakeholders questioned how the Alaska Department of Fish and Game would be able to project the 2012 charter harvest without knowing how angler behavior would change under the plan. ADFG submits a charter harvest projection to the IPHC in November before the quotas are set in January.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The buffer around the charter allocation is only 3.5 percent, yet a discussion paper prepared for the North Pacific council's Scientific and Statistical Committee noted that ADFG charter harvest projections have margin for error far greater, regardless of the proposed rule.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Projections have ranged from 23 percent under the actual harvest to 18 percent over in Southeast; and from 15 percent under to 8 percent over in Southcentral.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Projections are a crucial part of the allocation process under the CSP, as the charter sector will face tighter restrictions if it is projected to go more than 3.5 percent over its allocation. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]In the discussion paper written by Scott Meyer of ADFG Sport Fish Division in 2009, he concluded that, "projection errors are likely to be considerably larger under the CSP."[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Limits can be liberalized if the charter harvest is projected to be 3.5 percent under its allocation, but if ADFG misses and the harvest goes over that can lead to tighter restrictions the following season.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]There is also no in-season management of the charter sector, which means even under the CSP there is no way to keep the fleet within its allocation.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The size limit in Southeast in 2011 figures to throw a piece of outlier data into the projection mix as well. Under the size limit, the average halibut taken has averaged 9 pounds compared to 27 pounds in 2010, and the charter sector might fall as much as 500,000 pounds under its allocation of 788,000 pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]"The department will use all the information they have," was the best Baker could offer. Nobody from ADFG was present to take questions.[/FONT]
Continued - - -
Fishermen snag managers on salmon, halibut
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif SIZE=]By Andrew Jensen [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif SIZE=]Alaska Journal of Commerce [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]
[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Glenn Merrill of the National Marine Fisheries Service faces a tough crowd in Homer at Land's End Resort Aug. 12. Merrill was in town to explain a proposed halibut catch sharing plan that threatens to reduce the allocation to the charter sector and is likely to cut the daily bag limit from two fish to one for Southcentral anglers in 2012. Photo/Andrew Jensen/AJOC [/FONT]
[/FONT][FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Glenn Merrill of the National Marine Fisheries Service faces a tough crowd in Homer at Land's End Resort Aug. 12. Merrill was in town to explain a proposed halibut catch sharing plan that threatens to reduce the allocation to the charter sector and is likely to cut the daily bag limit from two fish to one for Southcentral anglers in 2012. Photo/Andrew Jensen/AJOC [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]HOMER — Glenn Merrill had nowhere to hide.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]By the end of a two-hour meeting Aug. 12 at Homer's Land's End Resort with more than 150 angry fishermen mostly opposed to a proposed plan to divide the halibut harvest between the commercial and charter sectors, a dive into Kachemak Bay was probably looking pretty good.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Merrill, assistant regional supervisor of the Sustainable Fisheries Division for National Marine Fisheries Service, was in Homer to explain the draft rule for the halibut catch sharing plan, or CSP, scheduled to take effect in 2012.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Advertisement [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]NMFS released the draft rule July 22, nearly three years after the North Pacific Fishery Management Council approved it in October 2008. The agency is taking written comments through Sept. 6.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Like a battle plan discarded after the first shot is fired, Merrill's agenda for the meeting didn't make it much past the third slide of his Power Point presentation.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Merrill and fellow NMFS fisheries specialist Rachel Baker planned to lay out how the catch sharing plan would work, but found a hostile audience already well aware of the ramifications.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Under the proposed CSP, charter operators in Southcentral could see 1 million pounds or more of halibut reallocated to the commercial sector next year and will have the daily bag limit cut from two fish to one. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The Southcentral charter allocation has been 3.65 million pounds since 2000, and the sector has stayed within that amount every year since 2004 while having a two-fish of any size bag limit. However, the council adopted a percentage spilt between commercial and charter sectors to reflect the declining amount of legal-sized halibut 32 inches or longer.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]While the charter guideline harvest level, or GHL, has remained unchanged for more than a decade, the commercial harvest in Southcentral has declined from about 26 million pounds in 2005 to 14.3 million pounds in 2011. Thus, the charter allocation amounted to about 20 percent of the combined harvest in 2011 compared to about 13 percent in 2005.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]By going to what the North Pacific council determined was a historical split for the charter sector of between 14 percent and 15 percent, the charter allocation for 2011 would have been cut by 31 percent to 2.52 million pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The council also adopted a tier system tying bag limits to levels of abundance. At the 2011 combined harvest of 18.1 million pounds, a one fish of any size bag limit applies to the Southcentral charter anglers. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]At levels of 20 million pounds to 27 million pounds, the two-fish bag limit returns with one required to be 32 inches or less.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Southcentral would not return to its current two fish of any size limit until the combined harvest is more than 27 million pounds, a level seen in the five seasons between 2004 and 2008.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]A particular point of anger directed toward the plan requires charter operators to lease pounds from the commercial sector if clients wish to catch two fish instead of one or exceed potential size limits. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Under the plan, if the charter sector is projected to go over its allocation by more than 3.5 percent, the International Pacific Halibut Commission may impose a size limit in addition to the default bag limits chosen by the North Pacific council.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The IPHC already took that step in Southeast this year (because the CSP was not yet in place), setting a maximum size of 37 inches for charter halibut, in addition to the one-fish limit put in place in 2009. Both the size and bag limit were put in place because the Southeast charter sector has exceeded its allocation every year since 2004.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]While many in attendance thanked them for coming and acknowledged that neither Merrill nor Baker had voted on the plan nor devised its components, the pair endured plenty of catcalls, groans and shouts.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]"We knew this was going to be hot," Merrill said.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Merrill did his best to express his understanding for the anger in the room, but he was poorly equipped to ease concerns and repeatedly reminded the audience he was just the messenger. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Because he didn't vote on it, he couldn't defend it; he's not a lawyer for the NMFS, so he couldn't address questions of whether the plan met national standards under the Magnuson-Stevens Act that require allocations be "fair and equitable."[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Nor is he a decision-maker. That role ultimately falls to the Secretary of Commerce, which is currently being filled with interim head Rebecca Blank. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Beyond general concerns, charter stakeholders also raised a number of substantive technical questions Merrill couldn't answer.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Projections[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Several stakeholders questioned how the Alaska Department of Fish and Game would be able to project the 2012 charter harvest without knowing how angler behavior would change under the plan. ADFG submits a charter harvest projection to the IPHC in November before the quotas are set in January.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The buffer around the charter allocation is only 3.5 percent, yet a discussion paper prepared for the North Pacific council's Scientific and Statistical Committee noted that ADFG charter harvest projections have margin for error far greater, regardless of the proposed rule.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Projections have ranged from 23 percent under the actual harvest to 18 percent over in Southeast; and from 15 percent under to 8 percent over in Southcentral.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Projections are a crucial part of the allocation process under the CSP, as the charter sector will face tighter restrictions if it is projected to go more than 3.5 percent over its allocation. [/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]In the discussion paper written by Scott Meyer of ADFG Sport Fish Division in 2009, he concluded that, "projection errors are likely to be considerably larger under the CSP."[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]Limits can be liberalized if the charter harvest is projected to be 3.5 percent under its allocation, but if ADFG misses and the harvest goes over that can lead to tighter restrictions the following season.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]There is also no in-season management of the charter sector, which means even under the CSP there is no way to keep the fleet within its allocation.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]The size limit in Southeast in 2011 figures to throw a piece of outlier data into the projection mix as well. Under the size limit, the average halibut taken has averaged 9 pounds compared to 27 pounds in 2010, and the charter sector might fall as much as 500,000 pounds under its allocation of 788,000 pounds.[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana, sans-serif]"The department will use all the information they have," was the best Baker could offer. Nobody from ADFG was present to take questions.[/FONT]
Continued - - -
