Maine’s bluefin tuna fishermen are expected to show up in force to protest new federal quotas on the fishery at a public hearing in Portland April 25.

The hearing, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Holiday Inn by the Bay at 88 Spring St., is seeking comments on the most stringent catch limits the National Marine Fisheries Service has ever proposed for the large fish. The season opens June 1.

“It’s outrageous,” said Stephen Weiner, an Ogunquit fisherman who catches bluefin by harpoon off Perkins Cove.

New England fishermen are protesting new rules they say are unfair to those who use sustainable fishing methods, such as rod and reel and harpoons, and favor the fishermen who use 30- to 40-mile longlines, which result in the discarding of tens of metric tons of dead bluefin tuna annually.

Richard Ruais, director of the American Bluefin Tuna Association in Salem, N.H., said most of the bluefin fishermen, who target only one fish at a time, are having to pay the price for the damage caused by the longline fleet, estimated at only 70 to 100 boats.

The New England fishermen have been joined by the Pew Environment Group in their protest.

Globally, bluefin tuna have been heavily overfished. Spawning stocks of Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna dropped from 305,135 tons in 1955 to 78,724 tons in 2007.

U.S. fishermen say they have been abiding by an international agreement for managing the bluefin fishery and are not to blame.

Bluefin tuna are a highly prized food, especially for sashimi. Japan accounts for 90 percent of the market. One fish can fetch tens of thousands of dollars. Last year, Maine fishermen were getting $7 to $15 a pound for the fish.

About 550 Mainers are licensed to fish for tuna commercially. Some 8,260 people are licensed to fish for it along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico. Most Maine fishermen supplement their income from lobstering or groundfishing with bluefin tuna, which also fuels a growing recreational industry in the state.

A proposed quota is divided among five categories based on fishing methods, including recreational fishermen or commercial fishermen using harpoons or hand lines, purse seines and longlines. Longline fishermen operate mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, where bluefin tuna spawn, and the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

Federal regulators are proposing to lower the quota from last year’s 1,168 metric tons to 858 metric tons this year. Also reduced is the amount of dead discards — to 160 metric tons — most of which are caused by the longline fishery. Maine bluefin tuna fishermen and other opponents say that unfairly lowers their quotas, since they are not responsible for that by-catch.

Opponents of the new quota system say longliners can do a lot more to limit their bluefin tuna by-catch.

Lee Crockett, director of federal fish policies for Pew, said longliners know where the bluefin are and could do a better job of avoiding them, but there is no incentive for them to do that in the current regulatory process.

“Our standpoint is, why aren’t we doing everything we can to protect the sustainable fishermen? Why would you penalize them to allow a less sustainable, less selective fishery to continue?” said Crockett.

National Marine Fisheries Service spokeswoman Monica Allen said regulators are aware of concerns and have received a lot of feedback about the new rules.

She said part of the problem is that international management rules have reduced the amount of unharvested fish the United States may roll over into the following fishing year from 50 to 10 percent. So this year regulators subtracted the by-catch from the overall quota to limit the risk of exceeding the international quota. Placing the burden only on longline fishermen would severely compromise that fishery, Allens said.

She said it is not true that other fisheries do not contribute to the by-catch, but the only scientific data, on which the 160 tons are based, has come from the longline fishery.

Allen said regulators are working with the longline fishery to find ways to reduce the bluefin discards. Next month, longliners will be required to fish with new hooks, called weak hooks, which are designed to release large fish like bluefin tuna.

 

Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at: bquimby@pressherald.com