Last US sardine cans being packed in Maine

[flatts1]

Originally Posted by meherring

The total quota was reduced becuase of scientific uncertainty and the inshore quota that Stinson's relied heavily on was drastically reduced because of a political campaign that Basicpatirck has been participating in for a number of years - along with Earth Justice, CHOIR and Pew - all friends of fishermen everywhere!

I always find it amusing when the midwater lobby tries to paint those of us interested in seeing our forage fisheries managed sustainably as some of out of touch environmentalists.

Originally Posted by meherring

...it is insulting to Maine fishermen"

You're kidding right?

The Maine fishermen have been some of the strongest folks leading the charge to bring some sanity to the sea herring fishery since the Midwater boats came.

Are you sure that you have attended all meetings on this issue as you mentioned, MEherring? When did you start? You know it doesn't help to attend these meetings if you don't pay attention.

Poor chum. Here, let me help you. Take a listen to the following audio clip from a September 2006 NEFMC meeting. It is only 5 minutes. Pay attention, now, and realize just how out of touch you really are.

http://www.fishtalk.org/rc/nefmc/ful...0928/t3/s3.m3u

MEherring in case you missed it Steve Weiner, the chairman of Choir, is the commercial tuna fisherman who spoke in that above audio clip. He is a Maine fisherman. Also note that the Maine Lobstermen's Association supported CHOIR's positions as well. Might I suggest you try expanding your circle of friends in the Maine fishing community.

I could introduce you to some at the next NEFMC meeting if you like.

Hope this helps.

Mike Flaherty
Wareham, MA

[flatts1]

Originally Posted by meherring

And as I said before, Patrick, you and your like, should look in the mirror.

You're funny, MEherring.

Lessons Learned From Herring Amendment 1
By Mike Flaherty

Commercial Fisheries News
February 2006


As someone who has been deeply interested and involved in the New England Fishery Management Council’s management of Atlantic herring, I appreciate the depth of coverage, analysis, and opinions that Commercial Fisheries News has devoted to this issue.

While I’m not a commercial fisherman or a processor or a paid lobbyist, at this time I would like to share with you some of my thoughts and observations as someone who has learned a lot during the Amendment 1 process. My hope is that folks will take some lessons learned here and apply them toward future management measures by working together not only on sea herring, but other species as well.

Here are the words New England council Chairman Frank Blount used at the Council’s November 2005 meeting in Hyannis, MA to describe his frustration at council members who could not agree on what to do with Amendment 1 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan.

“I think it’s a pretty sad state of affairs when we can work on an amendment for three-and-a-half years and come up with seven alternatives, with input from everybody over years and years and years, and then come up and say at the final meeting that nobody supported any of them.”

By the end of that meeting, the council was persuaded by an overwhelming “tidal wave” of public support for Preferred Alternative 7, which proposed to establish a “buffer zone” to protect herring from the ultra-high efficiency of pair and single midwater trawlers.

As a result, the midwater herring trawl fleet found itself prohibited from the inshore Gulf of Maine—Area 1A—for four months of the year. Of course, midwater trawlers do have the option of switching over to purse seine gear, but that can be an investment upwards of $500,000.

A matter of scale

The premise behind the need to limit midwater trawl activity in Area 1A was based on reports that the gear employed by midwater trawlers, notably pair trawlers, is of a scale so large that its dead discard rate dwarfed that of the traditional purse seine gear, which at one time was the dominant gear type in the herring fishery.

Indeed, during the Amendment 1 process, many folks testified how they saw localized depletion of herring in the inshore Gulf of Maine as pair trawling increased while purse seining decreased. As a result, total mortality on herring from those midwater trawlers working in that area could actually be much higher than the 60,000 metric tons (mt) of total allowable catch (TAC) set for that area - a figure already described as being “of concern and may be excessive” by the Council’s own Scientific and Statistical Committee back in June of 2003.

Why it happened

The reason why the Amendment 1 process took so long and ended up as it did was due to many things. However, unquestionably the overriding factor was that a few powerful factions within the herring industry were unwilling to budge, even a little bit, when it came to working with many of the other valid stakeholders who rely so much on a healthy and abundant inshore herring resource.

I think lobbyist Jeff Kaelin summed up the position and attitude for the majority of the midwater fleet well on July 2004 when he testified, “We are very much opposed to any restrictions in Area 1A at all.”

The herring fishery is a public resource. The sooner the midwater lobby realizes this and opens up to the notion of cooperation and compromise, then the better for all.

Reduced TAC desired

During the herring specification process, which preceded the amendment process, it was the hope of commercial groundfishermen, tuna fishermen, environmentalists, recreational fishermen, whale watch groups, and a growing number of others to reduce the Area 1A TAC by 15,000 mt, equivalent to 25 percent.

This seemed reasonable since the long-term goal of the herring management plan was to develop the relatively untapped TACs in the offshore areas. In turn, this would also help spread fishing effort out.

When that motion failed, a very modest reduction of 5,000 metric tons (eight percent) was proposed.

At the time, the executive director of the Massachusetts Fisheries Recovery Commission, Vito Calomo, helped to derail the motion by imploring, “The 5,000 mt in the scope of the whole herring plan really isn't a lot, but the 5,000 mt taken out of 1A is a tremendous amount.”

When that motion also failed, the focus for many then turned toward limiting the impact of massive midwater trawlers inshore for the above stated reasons.

Too late

Now fast forward to November 2005 when the New England council was debating the merits of Alternative 7. When push came to shove and it was near certainty that the council was going to prohibit late entrants to the Area 1A herring fishery, suddenly Calomo saw the light.

“Reduce the TAC. Not reduce the people who fish for the TAC,” he insisted. “If we are concerned so much about Area 1A, reduce the TAC,” Calomo repeated. The fact of the matter is that this whole mess could have been avoided long ago if Calomo and others were just a wee bit more flexible and open to compromise and cooperation on reducing the Area 1A TAC over a year ago.

Unfortunately, since he and others shot that option down earlier on in the process, an Area 1A reduction wasn’t even on the table as part of any of the Amendment 1 alternatives. So by that point, the council couldn't have reduced the TAC even if it wanted to.

The missed opportunities for the herring lobby to work together with everyone else are endless. One can go as far back as four years ago to when representatives of the Coalition for the Atlantic Herring Fishery’s Orderly, Informed, and Responsible Long-Term Development (CHOIR) approached the East Coast Pelagic Association (ECPA) and others to hammer out a small, voluntary, five-square-mile area as an experimental buffer zone.

As CHOIR’s Rich Ruais testified at a May 2005 meeting of the herring oversight committee, “They walked away from us on that. Absolutely no help whatsoever. We repeatedly had meetings whether it was in Rockland, ME or Gloucester, MA. Absolutely nothing came from any effort to work with ECPA on this issue.”

Joe Jancewicz of the East Coast Tuna Association added, “I was at those meetings up in Rockland in the O'Hara building when we tried for the compromise. I was the one who drew out on the chart what would be nice to compromise with. We pretty much got laughed out of the building.”

Now ECPA and all other midwater trawlers are banned from all of Area 1A for four months of the year. I wonder if they now wish they gave more consideration to the much smaller area when they had the chance?

APA effort commended

Out of all of this, there was one very notable example of cooperation. In the hope of hammering out a “compromise alternative,” the herring boats based out of New Bedford and represented by Peter Moore of the American Pelagic Association (APA) did reach out to CHOIR. Tremendous credit needs to be given here to Moore as his actions were at APA’s peril of being perceived as breaking ranks with the remaining midwater lobby, which continued to cling to its hard-line positions.

As Moore described at the June 2005 New England council meeting in Portland, ME, “We’re really sticking our necks out here in trying to move this compromise ahead.”

The purpose of this “Alternative 8” was to allow midwater trawlers to fish in Area 1A, but only allow two trips per month during the peak season. Alternative 8 had very good support. Unfortunately, because of its late timing, it did not gain enough support from the full council to be included in Amendment 1, as it would have probably further delayed the amendment. However, it remains a shining example of what can be done if folks work together.

As we move forward, whether the topic is herring, groundfish, marine protected areas, or any of the other issues where so many different stakeholders are impacted, I hope that more folks take a moment to reach out to the other side to work on real and reasonable solutions.

[meherring]

Gee Mike - now you've made it easy.

Your letter and Steve's testimony clearly advocate for the reduction in the inshore TAC. Steve talks of a crashed stock and suggests that there may even be a need to close the fishery, but we can't do that because of lobstermen. He chastises Dr. Pierce for considering the economic impact to the herring industry and states the economic impact to him and others is more important. Real nice - we should all be more concerned for Steve in his ocean front home in Kennebunk and a fancy tuna boat than we should be for those 140 people in Prospect.

Steve claims to speak for many, but I doubt the numbers are what he portrays. The MLA is not a supporter of CHOIR and in fact asked to be removed from the CHOIR web site when they found they were listed. The few commercial Maine fishermen that jumped on this bandwagon feeld quite burned and the few that remain are mostly underwritten by PEW-Earth Justice - not hardly a ground swell.

And for all of your denigrating midwater trawls, that's not even the issue here. This is about the summer purse seine fishery and the cannery. The seine boats have gone from approx. 80 landing days in 2006 to approx 28 landing days (during the PS only period June-Sept 31) in 2009. All this under the recommended TAC reductions by you and others. All this with no clear science or assessment for the GOM herring population. Your goal was clear - you hate the big boats, but you also didn't care about who else got thrown under the bus.

As for your article, its all heresay, you weren't even there. I could do the same and offer the opposite opinion, but I won't.

The work of you and your friends as devastated the Maine herring fishery - midwater trawlers, purse seiners, cannery workers and not very helpful to lobstermen either. It also may prove to be a very bad ecosystem choice for us all as the lobster industry tries to replace about 30,000 mt of bait with products from the West Coast, Europe, ect - where ever they can get it.

As for going to meetings, I've been to quite a few - but I didn't see you. No, your at home listening to your tapes - really clued in. Have you ever been herring fishing? Ever been to Prosepct Harbor?

"For options that reduce landings, there would be revenue losses to herring processors and impacts on processing plant employees. The cannery in Maine is particularly vulnerable to options that significantly reduce the Area 1A TAC since the cannery has traditionally been dependant on that area in the summer. Reductions in available
herring, highly variable landings, and increased cost of herring will make it difficult for the cannery to continue to produce canned herring at a profit and keep employees working"
NEFMC - A Herring Specs 2010-2012

Try looking in the mirror Mike and think about the 140 people that lost their jobs in eastern rural Maine. It impacts the whole community; the corner store, gas station, the tax base and the local school. All now being shored up by unemploment payments. You really should visit!

To say nothing of the last US cannery closing and an industry lost.

Sleep well Mike

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by meherring

...

The difference between your posts and the people you disagree with is that they present a point and you basically just say, "no you're wrong, look in the mirror. I don't know how you sleep at night" and then spin into some other topic.

You harp that the decrease of quotas (that's what this is all about, right?) is what caused the cannery to go under, yet don't provide any proof for it other than hearsay from meetings. On the other hand, there have been numerous references to people *from the sardine industry* that have stated that demand for sardines is in the toilet.

Also, you continue to ignore my point that according to the State of Maine, the historical commercial landings have been consistently and significantly below what the new quota has been set to. Again, isn't that what this is all about, the decreased quota in Maine???

This is my favorite of your comments:

Originally Posted by meherring

The work of you and your friends as devastated the Maine herring fishery - midwater trawlers, purse seiners, cannery workers and not very helpful to lobstermen either. It also may prove to be a very bad ecosystem choice for us all as the lobster industry tries to replace about 30,000 mt of bait with products from the West Coast, Europe, ect - where ever they can get it.

So you're telling us that the decreased quota which was never met has "devastated the Maine herring fishery". And on top of that, all the extra bait that could potentially be off the coast of Maine (which wasn't being caught any way) "may prove to be a very bad ecosystem choice for us" as lobstermen get bait for other, potentially more sustainable areas? How exactly?