79 Groundfish Retention Standard Program for the Non -American Fisheries Act Trawl Catcher Processing Sector
Purpose and Need
In 1996, Congress passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act (SFA) as an amendment to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. As part of the amendment package three new national standards were implemented, which included the bycatch- and discardreducing National Standard 9 (NS9). The SFA reflected a nationwide movement towards the development of bycatch reduction measures. In December 1994, the Council unanimously adopting a motion to develop a set of regulatory options for implementing an Increased Retention/Increased Utilization (IR/IU) program for BSAI groundfish fisheries. To bring the FMPs into compliance with the SFA and NS9, and to accomplish the goals of their December 1994 motion, the Council initiated an examination of existing bycatch reduction measures. The Council’s wholesale reexamination of retention standards in the BSAI groundfish FMP resulted in the development of retention programs such as the Groundfish Retention Standard (GRS) and IR/IU programs. Originally, the development of the GRS was packaged with the flatfish Increased IR/IU program in Amendment 75. However, the Council felt that more analysis was necessary to understand the scope of a GRS program and made it a separate amendment altogether. In June 2003, the Council adopted a problem statement addressing excessively high groundfish discards in the BSAI trawl fishery. In an earlier analysis of retention rates done by the Council, vessels in nonAFA catcher/processor (CP) sector had the lowest retained catch rates of any trawl fishery in the BSAI with 75.1%, accounting for 67 percent of all discards in the BSAI. The newly implemented NS9 program and the excessive discard rates of the non-AFA trawl CPs prompted the Council to initiate an amendment to the BSAI FMP to address the issue.
Analysis
A 25-page EA and 56-page RIR were prepared that analyzed three action alternatives along with several components, options and suboptions. All the action alternatives involved implementing a GRS program, but to varying degrees. The Council’s preferred alternative involved phasing-in a GRS calculated as the roundweight equivalent of retained groundfish as a percent to total groundfish weight. The Council felt that the preferred approach was the best way to address the multiple requirements of the SFA, fulfill the purpose and need statement put forward by the Council, and promote the management objectives of the IR/IU program, while still providing economic opportunity in the fishery.
Regulation Summary
Amendment 79 established a GRS program for BSAI trawl CPs greater than or equal to 125 feet length overall (LOA). The GRS is calculated as a ratio of the round-weight equivalent of total retained groundfish to total retained catch. All BSAI trawl CPs must meet a 15 percent utilization standard for all retained groundfish species. The total weight of the retained product must equal or exceed 15 percent of the round-weight catch of each species during a fishing trip. The amendment is enforced at the vessel level instead of the sector level so that noncompliant vessels do not affect the fishing activity of other non-AFA trawl CPs in the fishery
Results
On December 15, 2010 (75 FR 78172), an Emergency Rule to Amendment 79 was published in the Federal Register after NMFS discovered that the regulatory methodology used to calculate the GRS percentages established for 2010 and 2011 effectively require the sector to meet GRS well above that considered by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council or that implemented by NMFS. As a result, the retention requirements were expected to impose significantly higher costs due to the increased level of retention and to generate an unanticipated level of noncompliance in the Amendment 80 fleet. An emergency action extension exempting AFA and Amendment 80 vessels from the GRS program in the BSAI was published in the Federal Register on June 2, 2011 (76 FR 31881).