Groundfish FMP Amendment 20: Trawl rationalization (IFQs and co-ops)

Trawl rationalization

The Council initiated development of an IFQ program for groundfish trawl fisheries at its September 2003 meeting. IFQs were initially considered as an alternative under the 1991 Amendment 6 groundfish license limitation program. In late 2003, once the Council had committed to program development, and through 2004, various committees began initial work on program development. Publication of a notice of intent (NOI) to prepare an EIS on May 24, 2004, (69 Federal Register [FR] 29482) initiated an extensive public scoping effort.  A funding shortfall at the end of 2004 prevented much work being done until funding was secured in the summer of 2005. Consultants organized a workshop in April 2006 to bring together the various Council committees and members of the public to seek further input on program development and the structure of the alternatives. A detailed outline and analytical framework was presented to the Council in September 2006. In the latter part of 2006, the Trawl Individual Quota Committee (TIQC) and Groundfish Allocation Committee (GAC) developed recommendations for a major restructuring of the alternatives to simplify them and an alternative for whiting sector cooperatives was added. Because of this broadening of the range of alternatives, what had been referred to as the trawl individual quota program was henceforth called the trawl rationalization program. These restructured alternatives were adopted by the Council in March 2007, further refined by the committees, and adopted in detailed form for analysis by the Council in November 2007.  

 In the process of developing the alternatives, the Council focused on many detailed aspects of the IFQ and co-op programs, working from an outline organization of program features. Generally, Council decision making proceeded along the lines of considering no action, IFQs for all the trawl sectors, and a combination of IFQs for the nonwhiting trawl sector and co-ops for the whiting sectors, with variations in many specific program components. Preliminary drafts of the environmental analysis produced in 2008 presented “analytical scenarios” that allowed programmatic comparison of these various features, consistent with the general Council approach of considering IFQs and co-ops for different trawl sectors. The Council chose a preliminary preferred alternative for trawl sector rationalization in June 2008. Council decision making on the trawl rationalization program culminated in November 2008 when it took final action by choosing a preferred alternative. However, several issues relating to the detailed specification of the preferred alternative still had to be resolved. These issues were addressed in the first half of 2009, with the Council taking final action on these program details at its March, April, and June 2009 meetings.  

The Council submitted its final recommendations on Amendments 20 and 21 to the Secretary of Commerce on May 7, 2010. NMFS subsequently approved the bulk of Amendments 20 and 21. The final regulations were published in the Federal Register on October 1, 2010 (the initial allocation rule). A proposed rule for a separate set of regulations required for implementation (the components rule) was finalized in December 2010.  The catch share system went into effect on January 11, 2011.  The following are key components of the catch share package (Amendment 20).