The Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) in Portland, Maine, has been awarded two grants totaling just over $2.4 million for projects that will help the northeast groundfishery transition to a new way of managing fish harvests based on allocating catch rather than time spent fishing.
The projects announced today are funded by the federal agency responsible for stewarding the nation's marine fisheries, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service, through the new Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR), of which GMRI is a member.
"We are pleased to be able to provide support to the fishing industry and to help cover these initial costs," said Pat Kurkul, northeast region administrator, NOAA Fisheries Service. "We are grateful to GMRI for stepping into this role and making it possible to keep administrative costs low to provide this service to the industry, and to assist us with developing the infrastructure we need to manage under this new system."
GMRI is ideally positioned to conduct the work due to its knowledge of the new management system, relationships within the fishing community and ability to create a fair and equitable method for distribution of funds.
In one project, GMRI will distribute $1.5 million directly to the groundfish industry to offset organizational development and monitoring costs for managing fishing sectors. A sector is a group of vessel permit holders who voluntarily agree to fishing restrictions and procedures in exchange for a share of the total catch allocated to the industry as a whole. A total of 17 sectors are proposed for the upcoming fishing year.
The majority of funds distributed to the industry will be used to cover development of dockside monitoring programs and finalize contracts with third-party vendors. Smaller awards, approximately $15,000 per sector, will be available for needs such as hiring sector managers, setting up offices, purchasing equipment and establishing systems and procedures to facilitate the exchange of data between NOAA and the sectors.
GMRI will also use approximately $300,000 to administer the funding program and to assess the overall effectiveness and efficiency of dockside monitoring in the upcoming fishing year. Under the newly proposed management system, fish removals - both retained and discarded - count against a sectors allocation. When sectors begin operating in May 2010, 50 percent of their landings are to be monitored at the dock by a certified third party. In 2011, monitoring coverage is expected to be reduced to 20 percent.
In a second project, costing just over $600,000, GMRI will deploy and test several electronic systems for reporting the commercial fishing trip data now recorded and submitted on paper. About two dozen groundfish vessels will be involved in the pilot program, which starts in October and will run for about a year. Study managers are recruiting a variety of boats in an effort to reflect the fleet in fishing power, gear type and areas fished.
Electronic reporting is a promising way to streamline the way data flows from the fishery to regulators and scientists and back to the industry, especially important for the success of sectors in which near real-time reporting is required. For each sector, multiple catch allowances will be monitored, as well as other data about vessel activity. The information is important for those managing the sectors, those managing the fishery and the scientists who must monitor the condition of the fish stocks.
Both the dockside monitoring and electronic trip reporting projects will help to smooth the transition to sector management and defray some of the initial costs that the industry will bear.
