What is a Fisheries Management Plan? Part 1

First published in Landings, July, 2015. 

This summer lobstermen will once again haul in Maine’s signature crustacean by the millions. Boats will roar out to sea each morning and return laden with lobsters, putting money in the hands of lobstermen and the many small coastal communities that depend on them. Also this summer the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) will be working with the Lobster Advisory Council in developing a draft fishery management plan for lobster to put Maine in charge of the future of its most valuable fishery.

The question in the mind of many is why put the effort into doing a management plan for a fishery that seems to be doing so well? Because in a changing world, even a lobster fishery as well-managed as Maine’s could shift dramatically in a matter of years. Perhaps the water warms up too fast. Perhaps shell disease takes its toll on the population. Perhaps the lobsters continue their northerly movement into Canadian waters, leaving Maine in a dire situation similar to that of southern New England.

Currently, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) management plan for lobster dictates that, should landings drop to 35 million pounds, the ASMFC must take action. No one thinks that Maine landings, currently more than 120 million pounds, will drop to that level any time soon. However, the issue before Maine lobstermen is whether they would want to wait until that figure is reached before instituting changes to the fishery. The ASFMC did not take action in southern New England until lobster populations there were almost gone. By creating a state management plan for lobster with the input and knowledge of lobstermen right now, Maine can take charge of its future fishery in a way that no other lobster fishing state has done.

The public trust doctrine

The basis of any fishery management plan is to ensure that the public resource, in this case lobster, is sustained for the good of the general public, a concept drawn from the public trust doctrine.

The public trust doctrine dictates that certain elements, like the air or the ocean, are too vast to be owned by any one person or entity and thus are held as the common property of a nation’s citizens. In the U.S. the concept was specifically expressed in the Massachusetts Colonial Ordinance of 1647 which stated that intertidal waters are a public resource owned by and available to all citizens equally for the purposes of navigation, conducting commerce and fishing, among other uses.

Over the centuries, U.S. court cases clarified that the public trust extended to other natural resources. The federal government manages these resources for the good of its citizens in a number of different ways: for example, by leasing pasture land on federal property to cattle ranchers; by leasing drilling rights on submerged lands to oil and gas companies; or by licensing fishermen to harvest marine species in U.S. waters.

The federal government exercises its authority over marine species through federal law. One such law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, passed in 1976, created the fisheries management council system and gave those councils the authority to set up fisheries management plans. A previous law, passed in 1950, which governs the management of fish species that cross state borders, set up the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which also has authority to create fisheries management plans for states which share marine resources. The goal of these laws once again was to manage public trust resources for existing and future generations’ use.

The states themselves have the legal authority to manage the fisheries that occur in state waters for the good of their citizens. That authority does not, however, allow a state to contravene federal law. Every citizen in Maine thus has the same right as another to fish, provided he or she meets all the standards established by state law.

Lobster

With passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the management of American lobster fell to the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC). The first lobster management plan was adopted by the council in 1983.

In the early 1990s, Maine lobstermen began to feel uncomfortable under the council’s management mandates. “We felt strongly we were in the wrong arena,” recalled Pat White, who served as the Maine Lobstermen’s Association executive director at the time. According to White, a federal process seemed ill-equipped to manage a species that primarily occurred in state waters. And the NEFMC process was heavily influenced by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and by the interests of groundfishermen, most of whom operated in federal waters.

White and other lobstermen petitioned for lobster management to move to the ASMFC. “The ASMFC dealt with species in state waters,” White explained. “Eighty percent of Maine lobstering takes place in state waters.” The ASMFC provides states a process to collectively manage species that cross state boundaries. Through persistent lobbying by lobstermen throughout New England and pressure from the Maine Congressional delegation, management of American lobster finally moved from the Council to the ASMFC.

The ASMFC has managed lobster since 1996. The commission’s lobster management plan established seven distinct regional areas, known as Lobster Conservation Management Areas (LCMA), each with its own Lobster Conservation Management Team (LCMT). Maine, New Hampshire and part of Massachusetts comprise Area 1. While the plan has core management requirements that all areas must comply with, each area can achieve the plan’s overall management objectives in different ways. Just as each state is required to implement the ASMFC plan, the ASMFC also recommends complementary actions to be taken by NMFS to implement the lobster management plan in federal waters.

What this means

While the ASMFC’s lobster management plan allows the different LCMAs to meet overall management goals in different ways, the plan does have core requirements for all areas and strong enforcement provisions if those goals are not met or if changes in the fishery should occur. The Secretary of Commerce can shut down an ASMFC-managed fishery in state waters upon a finding by ASMFC, and Secretarial concurrence, of non-compliance with a required measure.

There are also specific thresholds built into the plan requiring the ASMFC to take action. These are called reference points. In 2010, the Commission revised the reference points for the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and southern New England lobster stocks. Based on those reference points, ASMFC determined that the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank stocks were in “favorable” condition but that the southern New England stock was in poor condition and depleted. As a consequence, rebuilding provisions were instituted in the southern New England states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. Lobstermen in those states have had to reduce the number of traps they fish, cease fishing altogether in the fall, and take other steps to boost the number of egg-bearing females in the population.

Situation in Maine

Although Maine has always been the leading producer of lobsters, its share of total U.S. landings has fluctuated over time. Throughout the 1970s Maine accounted for between 52% and 61% of total lobsters landed from Maine to New Jersey. Expansion of lobster landings during the 1980s, particularly in Massachusetts, reduced the Maine share of lobster to less than 50% from 1983 through 1992. However, since 1993 the contribution of the Maine lobster fishery to total landings increased steadily. The growing proportion of Maine landings was due to a combination of increased landings in Maine and declining landings in just about every other state.

The trend took a sharp jump upward around 2008, when Maine lobstermen landed slightly less than 70 million pounds. In 2012 and 2013, Maine lobstermen landed more than 127 million pounds in each year. In 2014, Maine landed nearly 124 million pounds of lobster. The majority of growth in landings has come predominately in the Downeast area of Maine, although all counties of the coast have seen an increase.

The jump in landings has come during a time when water temperatures throughout New England also have increased. Fisheries biologists attribute part of the decline in lobster abundance in southern New England to the number of days each year in which water temperatures hit 68o F. or higher, stressing the cold-water-loving crustaceans. Ironically, the warmer water temperatures along the coast of Maine are credited with the increased number of juvenile lobsters on the bottom as well as the greater number of legal-sized lobsters harvested in Downeast Maine during the past six years.

However, there is another side to the coin. Warmer water may be good for the population now but, if the water continues to increase in temperature, it may have a negative effect on lobster in future years. The sheer abundance and shift in the landings pulse in Maine, from the mid-coast to the eastern counties, combined with a commensurate increase in landings in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, makes one wonder when this resource will hit its peak, and if lobster abundance along the Maine coast could someday take a sharp dip.

A Maine state fisheries management plan for lobster

If the Gulf of Maine lobster stock hits one of several reference points set forth in the ASMFC plan, then the ASFMC is required to do something. The reference point now in place, 35 million pounds, was set after the last stock assessment, which reviewed landings for the past twenty years. An updated stock assessment of lobster will be completed this year and that reference point may be revised.

Whatever the final figure, the ASFMC would only take measures to reduce effort in the lobster fishery after that figure is reached. Maine is developing a lobster management plan to think about when management changes should be implemented prior to reaching the ASMFC reference point of 35 million pounds in order to preserve our communities and the long-term well-being of the fishery. Being proactive would both forestall ASFMC action and perhaps limit the negative economic effect such a decline would produce.

Next month: what will be in the Maine lobster FMP?