The ASMFC: Northern Shrimp Section Met December 12th, 2024
Update from Evan Balzano from the ASMFC Shrimp Section:
Amendment 4
The Northern Shrimp Section passed by unanimous consent to maintain the commercial harvest moratorium in 2025 and develop an RSA pilot winter sampling program to be implemented in 2025, with a RSA quota set at 26.5 mt (58,422 lbs). As a secondary priority, the section and technical committee (TC) are exploring the possibility of a summer sampling program.
How is the Northern Shrimp stock faring?
Regrettably, according to the best available science, the shrimp biomass in the Gulf of Maine is at an all-time low (Listen to our DOCK TALK podcast on the shrimp survey). Managers are still using the latest summer survey data as well as the ME-NH survey data completed this year. Both surveys show very poor recruitment and very low populations. The stock assessment presentation included the two graphs shown below to illustrate shrimp biomass data from the two surveys.
What does a sampling program look like?
The TC recommended to the section that the same sampling regions be used as before with 1 to 2 trawlers per region. These regions are:
Western Maine: Kittery to Phippsburg
Midcoast Maine: Phippsburg to Monhegan Island
Eastern Maine: East of Monhegan Island
The TC has also recommended that the sampling program include 1 to 4 trappers. The location is TBD. These are just recommendations for a sampling program and have not been approved.
A note from Ben
If we look to previous research set aside programs that existed for the shrimp fishery we can anticipate that there will be a trip limit for both trawlers and pot fishermen and that those limits will be different for the different gear type. As there are only 58,000lbs of allowable catch, there may also be limits on the number of days a week that a boat is allowed to fish along with those trip limits.
While this is an exciting opportunity for fishermen to show scientists and managers that there is shrimp in the Gulf of Maine, we also need to stress that there is no money for this research so boats that are interested in participating will only get paid if they catch shrimp.
In the past, there were requirements for boats applying for the shrimp research set aside such as having experience in the fishery, having VMS tracking or other types of vessel tracking software, and potentially having done other research project in partnership with DMR. I would anticipate those also being priorities in this RSA project. There will also be reporting requirements associated with trawl time, soak time, and landings. Of particular interest in the last RSA was the aging of shrimp, but it is still unclear if that will be able to be done by DMR, self-reported by fishermen, or even done at all.
I would not anticipate having this research fishery take place until February. As ASMFC only just made this decision on Dec 12, it will take some time to ramp up this program.
Once the DMR puts out its requests for proposals, MCFA is happy to help fishermen put together applications.
We will share all the details once they become available.
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