62 Single Geographic Location and Inshore/Offshore Language Changes
Purpose and Need
Single geographic location restriction originated in Amendment 18/23, the initial inshore/offshore allocation. The restriction applied to floating processors processing targeted pollock and GOA Pacific cod. A processing vessel could leave specified inshore location to process other species of groundfish, but if they processed pollock or GOA Pacific cod, the processing vessel would have to return to its original location where it processed these species at the beginning of the season. In October of 1998, the American Fisheries Act was signed into law. The Act, among other things, established specific allocations of the BSAI pollock quota to onshore, offshore and motherships and established the authority and mechanisms by which the pollock fleet could form fishery cooperatives. As a result of these allocations and allowance for cooperatives, some in the industry approached the Council to revise the single geographic restriction from one year to one week. In October 2001, the Council requested staff to provide an analysis of the single geographic location restriction revision. Revising the single geographic location restriction would provide greater flexibility for AFA-qualified inshore floating processors during a fishing year allowing these floaters to process targeted BSAI pollock in more than one geographic location. The inshore/offshore portion of this amendment would remove obsolete and inconsistent language in the Groundfish FMP. With the passage of AFA, inshore/ offshore language in the FMP was superseded. As a result, inshore/offshore language currently contained in the FMP is obsolete or no longer consistent with AFA.
Analysis
61-page EA was prepared for this amendment. The analysis included options for single geographic location and inshore/ offshore revisions. Two options, including status quo, were considered for single geographic location revisions. Five options, including status quo, were considered for the inshore/offshore revisions. Two of these option addressed issues in the Gulf of Alaska Groundfish FMP.
Regulation Summary
The regulation allows AFA inshore floating processors to relocate in state waters in the Bering Sea directed pollock fishery between reporting weeks for a maximum of four times per calendar year. In addition, AFA inshore floating processors would be required to process all GOA pollock and Pacific cod in the same location at which they processed these species in 2002. The Council selected preferred alternatives for inshore/offshore revisions in June 2002. The regulations also: 1) updated the CVOA to accommodate AFA-related changes, 2) removed references to BSAI inshore/ offshore from the GOA FMP, and 3) removed the December 31, 2004, sunset date for GOA inshore/offshore allocations from the GOA FMP. Regulations removing obsolete inshore/ offshore language from the BSAI FMP were implemented via Amendment 83.
Results
Originally, the single geographic location restriction was implemented in the inshore/ offshore regulations to prevent floating processors, which have limited mobility and which operate in the inshore processing sector, from having an unfair economic advantage over operators of onshore processing plants. It was also intended to prevent offshore catcher/processors and motherships, which have greater mobility, from entering the inshore sector. With the passage of the AFA in 1998, and the associated cooperative agreements, these concerns diminished in the BSAI pollock target fishery. The most obvious potential benefit of change to the single geographic location is the increased efficiency that accrues to the stationary floating processor sector. These efficiency gains would be realized by both the floating processing plant and those catcher vessels delivering to it, by reducing delivery costs and improving pollock production quality.