Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council
GULF OF MEXICO FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL
REEF FISH MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
The Embassy Suites Hotel Baton Rouge, Louisiana
APRIL 8, 2008
VOTING MEMBERS
Kay Williams Mississippi
Roy Crabtree NMFS, SERO, St. Petersburg, Florida
Robert Gill Florida
Stephens Heath (designee for Vernon Minton) Alabama
Julie Morris Florida
Robin Riechers (designee for Larry McKinney) Texas
William Teehan (designee for Ken Haddad) Florida
Bobbi Walker Alabama
NON-VOTING MEMBERS
Bill Daughdrill Florida
Karen Foote (designee for John Roussel) Louisiana
Joe Hendrix Texas
Elizabeth Keister (designee for RADM Whitehead)
8th Coast Guard District, New Orleans, LA
Doug Fruge Fish and Wildlife Service
Tom McIlwain Mississippi
Harlon Pearce Louisiana
William Perret (designee for William Walker) Mississippi
Michael Ray Texas
Larry Simpson GSMFC
Bob Shipp Alabama
STAFF
Steven Atran Fisheries Biologist
Assane Diagne Economist
Trish Kennedy Administrative Assistant
Rick Leard Deputy Executive Director
Shepherd Grimes NOAA General Counsel
Phyllis Miranda Secretary
Charlene Ponce Public Information Officer
Cathy Readinger Administrative Officer
Wayne Swingle Executive Director
Amanda Thomas Court Reporter
OTHER PARTICIPANTS
Jim Clements Carrabelle, FL
John Cole LGL, LA
David Cupka SAFMC
Tracy Dunn NOAA OLE, St. Petersburg, FL
Chris Dorsett Ocean Conservancy, Austin, TX
Julie Falgout Baton Rouge, LA
Ted Forsgren CCA, FL
Benny Gallaway LGL, Texas
Dennis Heinemann Ocean Conservancy
Peter Hood NMFS SERO
Trevor Kenchington Nova Scotia, Canada
Glenn Martin Port Aransas, TX
Christopher Moran Golden Meadow, LA
Bart Niquet Panama City, FL
Mike Nugent Port Aransas Boatmen Association, Aransas Pass, TX
Dennis O’Hern FRA, St. Petersburg, FL
Bonnie Ponwith SEFSC, Miami, FL
Darden Rice Oceana, St. Petersburg, FL
Hal Robbins NOAA OLE, St. Petersburg, FL
Jim Smarr RFA, Fulton, TX
Charlie Smith Baton Rouge, LA
Bob Spaeth Southern Offshore Fishing Association, FL
Phil Steele NOAA Fisheries, St. Petersburg, FL
Bill Tucker Dunedin, FL
Donald Waters Pensacola, FL
Wayne Werner Alachua, FL
Tom Wheatley MFCN
Bob Zales, II, Panama City Boatmen’s Assoc., Panama City, FL
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The Reef Fish Management Committee of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council convened in the Assembly/Caucus Room of the Embassy Suites Hotel, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Tuesday morning, April 8, 2008, and was called to order at 8:00 o’clock a.m. by Chairman Kay Williams.
CHAIRMAN KAY WILLIAMS: Good morning. The Reef Fish Management Committee is called to order. All of the members are present, for the exception of Ms. Villere and Mr. Heath is taking Mr. Minton’s place, as I will also be chairing for Mr. Minton. I would like to recognize Chairman Tom McIlwain.
CHAIRMAN TOM MCILWAIN: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I would like to extend the thanks of the council to Corky and Harlon for putting together the dinner last night. I think they did a marvelous job with that and the food was just out of sight.
I would also like to thank the council staff for all the work they did in putting that program together last night as well. I think they did a marvelous job and so let’s give them a hand, please.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Thank you, Tom. We have a lot of work to cover today and if we have to stay here until ten o’clock tonight, we will cover it. We may want to limit some of the discussion, if the point has already been made.
ADOPTION OF AGENDA AND APPROVAL OF MINUTES
In saying that, that brings us to the Adoption of the Agenda. Are there any additions to the agenda that anyone would like to make? Hearing none, the adoption of the agenda is as written. That now brings us to Tab B-2, Approval of Minutes. Are there any changes to the minutes?
MR. SHEPHERD GRIMES: On page 21, line 44, it’s “Mr. Grimes” and not “Mr. Shepherd” and on page 100, lines 11 and 17, it’s “Sam Rauch”. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Are there any other changes? Hearing none, those changes are noted and will be taken care of. That now brings us to Tab B, Number 3, Draft Amendment 29. The only thing that I see where we have actual chosen a preferred is on page 12. If you will, let’s start with the management alternatives.
APPROVAL OF PUBLIC HEARING DRAFT AMENDMENT 29 (GROUPER/TILEFISH IFQ)
DR. ASSANE DIAGNE: Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning. We will try to cover the management actions in the amendment, Reef Fish 29. As we discussed previously, this amendment is organized in sections.
Section A deals with the effort management approach to be selected and the council has already selected a preferred over there and the preferred would be to use an IFQ system. Section B would look at the management action relative to the endorsement and the final section, C, will present the design elements referring to the IFQ.
The first couple of slides just basically list all of the actions, but we will go through them one-by-one. The page number for the start of each action is indicated in the title slide, to help those of us who want to follow in their own document.
For the first action, effort management approach, that would be on page 12 in the document and like I said, we have three alternatives, the no action one, which would be maintaining our current management approach, establishing grouper and tilefish endorsements, and we’ll look at those in a minute, and last, the preferred alternative selected, which is to implement an individual IFQ program.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: What I would like us to do as we go through this is I would like for us to go ahead and make the motions of our preferred, so that we don’t go through the document twice. Are there any changes to Action 1, to the Preferred Alternative 3?
MR. STEVEN ATRAN: Assane, is that a typo? Should that be Preferred Alternative 3?
DR. DIAGNE: Yes, I’ve got to check the way I count. Definitely that should be 3.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Hearing no objection to keeping Preferred Alternative 3, that will now take us to page 16.
DR. DIAGNE: Yes, the second one, the permit stacking action on page 16, we have here two alternatives, basically a yes or a no. The no action would be just to leave the current system, do not allow commercial permits to be consolidated.
Alternative 2 would allow an owner of multiple permits to consolidate those permits into one permit. The new permit would have a catch history that would equal to the sum of the individual permits.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: The floor is open for a motion.
MR. BOB GILL: I would move that Alternative 2 be our preferred alternative.
MR. ROBIN RIECHERS: Second.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Seconded by Robin. Any opposition? Hearing no opposition, Alternative 2 is our preferred. That now takes us to page 18.
DR. DIAGNE: For the third action, it was to change the classification for two species that are currently in the deepwater grouper unit. Those will be speckled hind and warsaw grouper.
Alternative 1, no action, would just maintain our current management units, the shallow and the deepwater, as we know them. Alternative 2 would maintain the current composition of the deepwater grouper unit, but still add speckled hind to the shallow water. Basically, speckled hind will have a dual classification and be counted as shallow and deepwater and Alternative 3 would do the same thing for warsaw grouper.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Is there a motion?
MR. GILL: It seems to me that it might be helpful, for public hearing purposes, to have an alternative that includes both speckled hind and warsaw and so I move that we add an Alternative 4 that has just that, speckled hind and warsaw, that were included.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Is there a second? Robin, are you seconding?
MR. RIECHERS: No, but I have a point of discussion that may change Mr. Gill’s mind.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: There’s a second, for discussion, by Mr. Teehan.
MR. RIECHERS: In the past, Bob, sometimes we can go ahead and select two preferreds, which basically would be doing what -- If you wanted just to have Alternative 2 and 3 and you select them both as a preferred -- We’ve done that in the past and it would get away from having to now rewrite an alternative at this point.
MR. GILL: Thank you for that comment, Robin. My problem is that I’m not sure that the public will understand that and that’s my point of this motion, to make it clear that there is an alternative for both, so that they don’t get confused and just think one or the other is the only option we’re giving them.
DR. ROY CRABTREE: Assane, what we would do here is speckled hind or warsaw, if we selected Alternative 2 or 3, or both of them, would remain in the deepwater grouper fishery, but would also be in the shallow-water grouper fishery?
DR. DIAGNE: Yes, that’s correct.
DR. CRABTREE: When we close deepwater, they would continue harvesting them in the shallow-water fishery, correct?
DR. DIAGNE: Yes, those that they will catch when the deepwater grouper season is closed, they will be able to land those, but if we were to move to an IFQ, then they could use either one of their allocations to land those fish.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: The motion is on the board to add an Alternative 4, which included speckled hind and warsaw grouper. Is there any opposition? Seeing no opposition, we have an Alternative 4. Is there anyone who would like to make a motion for a preferred?
MR. GILL: I move that Alternative 4 be our preferred alternative.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Is there a second?
MR. RIECHERS: I’ll second it.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Robin seconded it.
DR. CRABTREE: Assane, on page 20, there’s a statement that says switching warsaw grouper and speckled hind to shallow-water grouper after the deepwater grouper closes, or after a fisher no longer has deepwater grouper allocation, is not expected to warrant a change in the amount of deepwater quota versus shallow-water grouper.
The analysis is basically, as I understand it, based on that no one is targeting either one of these species and I think that all of the discards of either of these species are dead discards and so whether they’re allowed to bring them in or whether they discard them has no effect to the overall mortality experienced by warsaw grouper and speckled hind and is that correct?
DR. DIAGNE: Yes, that’s absolutely correct.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Is there any more discussion? Hearing none, is there any opposition to Alternative 4 being your approved preferred alternative? Hearing no opposition, that will be the preferred, Alternative 4. That now brings us to page 21.
DR. DIAGNE: That brings us to Action B-1, which looks at the minimum harvest threshold for endorsements. There is a no action alternative, which would not set minimum. Alternative 2 would look at the harvest threshold for all participants in the fishery. The third alternative would separate longliners from other gears, mainly vertical line fishermen.
The thresholds in Alternative 2 would be, under Option i, one pound, which essentially would allow everybody to participate, or 1,000 pounds or 4,000 pounds. Alternative 3 would, as I mentioned, separate the longliners and grant a longline endorsement and also another gear endorsement, which would be mainly vertical liners.
The options for now are under Alternative 3, sub-options for longliners would be one pound, 10,000, and 50,000 and for other gears, one pound, 500, and 1,000 pounds.
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Is there a motion?
MS. JULIE MORRIS: I’m not going to make a motion, but I have a question. If the endorsements are not our preferred alternatives, should we then be doing no action for these C alternatives or should we be choosing how to design an endorsement program, even though it’s not our preferred alternative?
CHAIRMAN WILLIAMS: Shep or --
MS. MORRIS: There’s two paths in 29. One is the endorsement path and one is the IFQ path. Since we have a preferred alternative for the IFQ, does it make sense to have the no action for the details of the endorsement plan?
MR. GRIMES: I think you can remove that if you’ve decided that’s not the route you’re going to go.
DR. CRABTREE: My concern with removing it is -- Maybe it’s okay, but then what if the referendum fails and this wasn’t in there? It seems to me this needs to be in there for the public to properly judge how to vote, to see that if this isn’t done that we would go back to one of these others.
The other question I would ask is even if we did go with the IFQ program, do you still want to have a situation where any of the shareholders at that point could decide they want to become longliners? Even under an IFQ program, there’s nothing that would prevent people from switching back between longline gear and other types of gear and so you need to think about that.
To me, I don’t think I would take this out of the document, although if you believe you’re going the IFQ route and if you believe in the IFQ fishery that you have no need to control which gear folks use, then you might not choose a preferred or you might choose Alternative 1 as the preferred.