GULF OF MEXICO FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL
SUSTAINABLE FISHERIES/ECOSYSTEM COMMITTEE MEETING
The Quorum Hotel Tampa, Florida
June 17, 2009
VOTING MEMBERS
Robert Gill Florida
Roy Crabtree NMFS, SERO, St. Petersburg, Florida
Julie Morris Florida
Michael Ray Texas
Bob Shipp Alabama
Brian Sullivan USCG
NON-VOTING MEMBERS
Kevin Anson (designee for Vernon Minton) Alabama
Myron Fischer (designee for Randy Pausina) Louisiana
Joe Hendrix Texas
Harlon Pearce Louisiana
William Perret (designee for William Walker) Mississippi
Ed Sapp Florida
Larry Simpson GSMFC
Robin Riechers (designee for Larry McKinney) Texas
William Teehan (designee for Ken Haddad) Florida
Bobbi Walker Alabama
Susan Villere Louisiana
Kay Williams Mississippi
STAFF
Steven Atran Population Dynamics Statistician
Assane Diagne Economist
Karen Hoak Secretary
Trish Kennedy Administrative Assistant
Shepherd Grimes NOAA General Counsel
Phyllis Miranda Secretary
Charlene Ponce Public Information Officer
Carrie Simmons Fishery Biologist
Amanda Thomas Court Reporter
OTHER PARTICIPANTS
Dave Allison Oceana, Washington, D.C.
Gary Appelson Caribbean Conservation Corp., Gainesville, FL
David Bayes Seminole, FL
Karen Bell Cortez, FL
Craig Berman St. Petersburg, FL
David Bernhart NMFS
Raymond Bourque St. Petersburg, FL
Steve Branstetter NMFS
Glen Brooks GFA, Bradenton, FL
David Butts New Port Richey, FL
Scott Childress Odessa, FL
Jim Clements Carrabelle, FL
Gerry Cummings Tampa, FL
David Cupka SAFMC
David Dale NMFS
LCDR Carmen DeGeorge USCG
Dale Diaz Mississippi DNR
Mark Dicks Tampa, FL
Brian Dinning Tampa, FL
Marydele Donnelly Ellicott City, MD
Tracy Dunn NOAA OLE
Libby Fetherston St. Petersburg, FL
Abigail Franklin NOAA
Claudia Friess Ocean Conservancy
Sue Gerhart NMFS
Jason Golden Valrico, FL
Chris Grauer St. Petersburg, FL
Elizabeth Griffin Washington, D.C.
Keith Guindon Galveston, TX
Tom Haugen St. Marks, FL
Jack Hexter New Port Richey, FL
Stephen Holiman NMFS
Mark Hubbard Madeira Beach, FL
Mike Jackson Clearwater, FL
Matt Joswig Seminole, FL
Jack Kemerer USCG, Washington, D.C.
Brad Kenyon Tarpon Springs, FL
Erika Lauser Largo, FL
Randy Lauser Largo, FL
Jennifer Lee NMFS
Ron Lukens Omega Protein, High Springs, FL
Randall Keys Madeira Beach, FL
Jessica Koelsch St. Petersburg, FL
Beth Maisano Seminole, FL
Joe Maisano Largo, FL
Sam Maisano Seminole, FL
Alex Malagon Tierra Verde, FL
Rich Malinowski NMFS SERO
Greg McKinney Riverview, FL
Dave McKinney Environmental Defense, Austin, TX
Sylvester Mullen St. Petersburg, FL
Malena Nelson St. Petersburg, FL
Russell Nelson CCA, FL
Bart Niquet Lynn Haven, FL
Ray Odor Lutz, FL
Dennis O’Hern FRA, St. Petersburg, FL
Bill Palaski Land O’Lakes, FL
Bonnie Ponwith NOAA SEFSC
Ed Rice FL
Hal Robbins NOAA OLE
Beverly Sauls St. Petersburg, FL
Tom Scancarelli FL
Jeff Sharnowski Safety Harbor, FL
John Skinner FL
Jim Smarr RFA, Fulton, Texas
Bob Spaeth SOFA, FL
Phil Steele NMFS
Jason Stock Madeira Beach, FL
Andy Strelcheck NMFS
Brian Sullivan USCG
Robert Tevlin St. Petersburg, FL
Stephen Tevlin Seminole, FL
Dennis Tonge New Port Richey, FL
Bill Tucker Dunedin, FL
Will Ward GFA, Tampa, FL
Larry Yarborough USCG, Miami, FL
Bob Zales, II Panama City Boatmen’s Association, Panama City, FL
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The Sustainable Fisheries/Ecosystem Committee of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council convened in the Royal Palm Ballroom of the Quorum Hotel, Tampa, Florida, Wednesday morning, June 17, 2009, and was called to order at 8:30 a.m. by Chairman Bob Gill.
CHAIRMAN BOB GILL: I would like to call the Sustainable Fisheries/Ecosystem Committee to order. For those following along, we’re using Tab I, I-1 being the agenda. I see all members present with the exception of a Fish and Wildlife Service representative.
ADOPTION OF AGENDA AND APPROVAL OF MINUTES
The first item on the agenda is the Adoption of the Agenda. Following Steve’s comment yesterday, I would like to add under Other Business the SSC comments which pertain to this committee and I believe there’s three, if there’s no objection from the committee. Are there any other changes or additions or deletions to the agenda? Are there any objections to adoption of the agenda? The agenda is adopted.
The next item is Tab I, Number 2, Approval of the Minutes. Are there any changes to the minutes? Any objection to the adoption of the minutes? Without objection, the minutes are approved. The third item on the agenda is Tab I, Number 3, Review of the Generic ACL/AM Scoping Document and Steve Atran.
REVIEW OF GENERIC ACL/AM SCOPING DOCUMENT
MR. STEVEN ATRAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ve put together a draft scoping document. Hopefully, if we can get this approved, we could go out to scoping between now and the next council meeting and then begin working on some details and start putting together an options paper.
There’s also a timeline in your briefing book, and it’s Tab I-3(b), as to what our current expectations are as far as getting this thing completed and approved. There is a little slack of maybe a couple of council meetings and so if we need to slow down any where we can, but with a pretty busy schedule on other events, the faster we can get this going, the better we can.
I’ve put together also a draft PowerPoint presentation to go along with this and so if we could just perhaps go with the PowerPoint presentation, that might be the easiest way to go through this, if we could get that up on the screen.
While Karen is getting that up, on the inside of the cover sheet I listed a preliminary schedule of scoping meetings. This was altered somewhat in I believe it was the Mackerel Committee on Monday. I don’t have the exact list with me right now, but our intent when we go to scoping is to simultaneously scope this document, the mackerel scoping document, and the spiny lobster scoping document.
What I did, in order to put together this document, was I looked at what some of the other councils had done on their scoping documents and I also looked through the National Standard 1 Guidelines to find out what issues we would need to address in the process of putting together a generic ACL/AM amendment.
You folk already know this, but I’m intending this to be, in large part, informational for the public, since a lot of folks are going to be finding out about this for the first time. Obviously under the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act we have new requirements to end and prevent overfishing involving the establishment of annual catch limits and accountability measures.
In 2010, we need to have our ACLs and accountability measures in place for stocks subject to overfishing and in 2011, we need to have them for all other stocks with the exception that stocks that are considered to be annual stocks and not subject to overfishing do not need to have ACLs and AMs and for us, that’s most of our shrimp stocks, possibly with the exception of royal red shrimp.
I’ve got just a brief overview of the new reference points that we’ll be dealing with. We’re required to define an overfishing limit, acceptable biological catch, or ABC, annual catch limit and annual catch target. The overfishing limit corresponds to MSY except where MSY is a long-term average level. The overfishing limit is the MSY on an annual basis and so the overfishing limit will fluctuate from year-to-year.
ABC is the overfishing limit as reduced by scientific uncertainty and that’s a level that we should never exceed. Annual catch limit is then further reduced by management uncertainty and the annual catch limit corresponds to the upper level that we want to allow under management.
Annual catch targets are optional, but if we use them, they generally correspond to our OY, optimum yield, levels and that will generally be the level at which we will be managing. Since we’re already managing at the OY level for many of our stocks, this really more or less maintains that conservation level, but it redefines some of the limits above that that we can go through.
As I went through the National Standard 1 Guidelines, I found several areas where we have issues that we will need to address and so I’ve addressed them in the scoping document by having a section in which I have a discussion and then a few questions for thought.
There are no alternatives. We generally don’t try to put alternatives into a scoping document, but I wanted to try to put some questions in that could get people thinking about how we should address some of these issues. There’s one item in here that’s not in there. First of all, defining overfishing, the National Standard Guidelines actually authorize us to use two different methods for defining overfishing.
OFL control rules I don’t currently have in the scoping document, because those are addressed through the framework procedure for setting ACL, at least for those stocks where we can do a stock assessment. It’s been suggested to me that I add a section on OFL control rules so that we can address stocks for which we can’t do a stock assessment, where we still need to start out with some estimate of OFL.
For ABC, we discuss what types of control rules we want to set up and then for annual catch limits, a different set of control rules. For ACLs, we could have either a single ACL for the entire stock or we could divide it up. We can divide it up by sector, say commercial versus recreational. There’s also an allowance for dividing it up between state and federal ACLs and I’ll get into that a little bit later.
We need to decide where or if we want to divide up those ACLs where we don’t already have allocations set. For annual catch targets, if we’re going to use them, there’s control rules we need to think about and then accountability measures, which is the other big item, is we need to think about what types of accountability measures to associate with each of our stocks.
We need to think about whether or not we want to combine some of our stocks into stock complexes, rather than do an ACL and AM for each individual stock. We have some stocks that we may want to consider either delegating to Florida FWC or the South Atlantic Council because we only have a small portion of the stock in our jurisdiction or possibly removing them from the FMPs entirely, which would allow one of the other agencies to assume control of those.
We’re allowed to designate ecosystem component stocks. We don’t have to, but that’s an option and so we need to consider whether or not we want to include that in our ACL/AM amendment and finally, we have a couple of framework procedures for setting ACL and also a supplemental framework procedure for modifying management measures for other purposes, which I’ll get into.
For the first item, defining overfishing, the National Standard Guidelines allow two methods of defining overfishing, either defining it when the fishing mortality rate exceeds what we call MFMT, the maximum fishing mortality threshold, which is the way we’ve generally been doing it, or when the catch in any year exceeds the catch associated with the OFL yield.
The advantages of these is using the maximum fishing mortality threshold, we’re actually comparing fishing mortality rate to the fishing mortality limit, which is what we’re supposed to do in the first place. However, fishing mortality rate can’t be measured directly. It’s calculated as part of a stock assessment and so it may be three to five years, however long until we get a stock assessment, until we know whether or not we’re undergoing overfishing.
The overfishing limit method, we can identify a maximum yield or a yield associated with OFL on each individual year and then if in that particular year our catches exceeded that OFL, the stock could be declared to be undergoing overfishing.
The advantage is that we know on a year-to-year basis if we’re undergoing overfishing and have to take action. The disadvantage is that in a fluctuating stock that yield that we projected to correspond to OFL may not actually be the correct yield corresponding to it and so it could be that, for example, if we get a strong year class entering the fishery that catches might spike because of that strong year class, but the fishing mortality itself hasn’t spiked. In that case, we would be incorrectly determining that overfishing has occurred. There are pros and cons for either of these. We could choose which we wanted to do or we could do both of them, in an either/or situation.
Then what I called questions for thought, just some questions to try to think about this, should the maximum fishing mortality method be used for stocks for which estimates of F can be made and the overfishing limit method used for those stocks where we don’t have stock assessments? That’s one way to decide which method to use or should we just go and use the overfishing method for all of our stocks and stock complexes, so that we have an annual determination on every stock?
The third question is should the OFL method be used for those stocks where we don’t have stock assessments and then if we have a stock assessment that has highly variable recruitment, we could run into that problem of getting an incorrect determination with OFL and in those cases, use the maximum fishing mortality method, along with those stocks where we have stock assessments and get estimates of F or is there some other method that we should use for determining when to use the maximum fishing mortality method and when to use the overfishing limit method?