MANAGEMENT OF THE ATLANTIC SURF CLAM FISHERY UNDER THE MAGNUSON ACT, 1977 TO 1982

by

Bruce Nicholls
Surf Clam Management Coordinator
National Marine Fisheries Service
Northeast Region
Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA

Introduction

The Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Surf Clams (Spisula solidissima) and Ocean Quahogs (Arctica islandica) was one of the first management programmes to be implemented under the authority of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (now known as the Magnuson Act), which established a 200 nautical mile fishery management zone off the United States coast. The plan, implemented on 17 November 1977, regulates what has always been an entirely domestic fishery. Conservation measures established under the plan have been influential in increasing allowable harvests over 30 percent.

The primary management measure applied to the fishery is an annual harvest quota. The quota is supported by a host of other measures, which were designed to mitigate potential adverse economic impacts of the planned reduction in catch during the stock-rebuilding phase of management. Some of the measures were originally intended to be short-term attempts to stabilize the social and economic aspects of the fishery while the restrictive conservation programme was carried out. Now, managers face the difficult task of replacing short-term measures with appropriate long-term objectives for management. National policy concerning potentially controversial economic issues, such as long-term or permanent limited entry for marine commercial fisheries, has yet to be firmly established. Managers contemplating the fishery and its problems must now consider untested alternatives in their attempt to develop a practical and workable scheme for long-term management for optimum biological, social and economic yield from the fishery.

The management programme described in this paper applies to both the surf clam and the ocean quahog fisheries of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean under the jurisdiction of the United States. The ocean quahog fishery during the period discussed has been managed under provisions of the management plan, but harvests of this resource have not yet reached the point where restrictive measures such as those now imposed for surf clams need to be imposed on ocean quahog fishermen. Therefore, most of the management experience discussed in this paper concerns only the surf clam fishery.

Description of the Surf Clam

The surf clam, Spisula solidissima, is a predominantly oceanic bivalve mollusc commonly occurring from the beach zone to depths as great as 60 metres. The greatest concentrations occur along the Atlantic coast of the United States from the Gulf of Maine south to Cape Hatteras (Figure 1), although surf clams have been described as ranging from the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence to the northern Gulf of Mexico (Ropes, 1980).

Surf clams burrow in the substrate to a depth about equal to their shell length. They reach maturity during their second year of life and reach the generally accepted commercial harvest size after six to seven years. Commercial size is about 130 mm shell length.

Surf clams, when shucked, yield about 7.7 kg of meat and viscera per bushel. The surf clam bushel is a unique unit of measurement measuring 0.052 cubic metres in volume. Edible meat yield per bushel varies according to season and location of harvest but averages 5.9 kg.

Source: Ropes, 1980.

Figure 1 Distribution of Surf Clams in the mid-Atlantic Bight

Surf clams have been harvested with a variety of gear, including hand tongs, dry dredges and the more recent hydraulic jet dredge (Parker, 1971). The latter gear, now responsible for virtually all harvests, washes the surf clam clear of the substrate with a high pressure jet of water. Hydraulic dredges have reached a considerable degree of sophistication, with some dredges now in use measuring over 5 metres in knife width.

History of the Surf Clam Fishery

The surf clam fishery, off the Atlantic coast of the United States, has a history dating back to the 1870s, when surf clams were harvested off Cape Cod for use as bait and food. Major commercial development of the fishery occurred on Long Island before, during and after World War II, with development of the hydraulic clam dredge and processing equipment to wash sand from clam meats. In 1949, industry exploration yielded new beds off the New Jersey coast. The fishery off New Jersey expanded greatly, reaching major proportions off the ports of Point Pleasant, Barnegat, Atlantic City and Cape May, New Jersey, through the 1950s and 1960s (Ropes, 1982).

By the early 1960s, the industry suspected that the known resource was being depleted. A joint research programme, supported financially by industry and the Federal Government, was initiated to determine the overall extent of the resource available for future exploitation. Exploratory surveys in 1965 discovered significant new beds in the offshore regions off the Delmarva Penninsula (Delaware, Maryland and Virginia) and the fishery expanded offshore and to the south. During a 1969 survey, new beds were identified off Cape Charles, Virginia. These beds were quickly exploited, providing the highest landings ever recorded from the fishery in the period from 1972 through 1975. The history of the fishery has thus been one of significant and rapid expansion southward along the coast, following the discovery of new beds, and in many respects resembled a pulse fishery during this period of development. By the mid-1970s, the fishery had reached the furthest limit of the southern extension of the resource near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

History of Management of the Fishery

United States Public Law 88–308, enacted in 1964, prohibited foreign harvest of the creatures of the continental shelf off the United States. Continental shelf resources were defined by the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea Convention on the Continental Shelf in 1958. In 1971, surf clams were listed by the United States as a protected species under that authority (Ropes, 1980).

Direct management of the surf clam resource for conservation was initiated in the early 1970s. In 1971, the State of New Jersey, concerned about the rate of development of the fishery, which was clearly able to deplete the resource if left uncontrolled, asked the federal government to initiate a cooperative State-Federal management programme. That effort began in 1973 and provided an open forum for wide ranging discussions of management needs and alternatives between State, Federal and industry participants. The sincere and continuing concern of industry participants concerning the future of their fishery, and the limited number of participants in the industry, contributed to frank and open discussion. Recommendations for stringent management measures were developed with industry approval. However, implementation of management measures was hampered by the complexity of jurisdiction, since the resource occurred in the waters of several States and offshore where no institutional management authority then existed. In 1975, New Jersey independently enacted regulations to control the harvest of surf clams in New Jersey territorial waters, extending to 3 nautical miles from the shoreline.

In 1976, the passage of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act (now the Magnuson Act) provided a new vehicle for implementation of comprehensive marine fishery management programmes. The mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, one of eight established under the Act to develop management policies and strategies, quickly took the task of developing a fishery management plan for the surf clam fishery. The scope of management was broadened to include the ocean quahog fishery, which occurs further offshore, with the recognition that that fishery could rapidly develop. With development, the fishery could serve as an alternative source of clam meat for consumers and a vast resource base to support the vessels, processors and fishermen which might be displaced from the depleted surf clam fishery.

The Council used the recommendations developed under the previously mentioned State-Federal programme as the basis for its own efforts, and a Council plan was written, submitted for public review, revised, approved and implemented by the Federal Government on 17 November 1977. Since that time, the Council has prepared and adopted three amendments to the plan, all of which have been implemented. The first was a minor action to extend the plan for a few months in 1979, while the second amendment was being prepared. The second refined a number of management measures and extended the plan through 1981. The third amendment, implemented in late 1981, is a permanent plan with no date of expiration. That amendment established a procedure for setting fishery quotas annually and imposed a minimum size limit of 140 mm for surf clams.

Measures included in the Management Plan

The original plan contained a number of management measures. The primary conservation measure was an annual quota. A procedure to close certain areas where significant numbers of small surf clams were concentrated served to protect juvenile clam beds, when identified, from exploitation and the damage inflicted by dredging and culling.

The remainder of the measures in the plan were included to stabilize the social and economic aspects of the fishery. These measures included a moratorium on the issuance of new fishing permits. This was the first use of any form of limited entry in a Federal Fishery Management Plan. The plan authorized permits only for those vessels that were active in the fishery during the year prior to implementation and for those vessels that were being built or re-rigged to enter the fishery on the day the plan went into effect. Eventually, 184 vessels applied for and received surf clam permits.

Other stabilizing measures included a provision to administer the annual quota as a series of quarterly quotas. The annual quota was divided in unequal quarterly quotas reflecting the expectation that greater fishing activity and harvest would occur from the late spring through early fall. Also, fishing time for all vessels could be restricted to whatever number of hours per week the Regional Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, who was charged with implementing and enforcing the plan, determined would be needed for the entire fleet to harvest the quarterly allocation. Progress toward harvest of the quotas was monitored on a weekly basis, and allowable fishing time during each quarter was increased or reduced to ensure that the quota would be taken, but not exceeded, and that the quota would last through the entire quarter. Closure of the fishery was always judged as a serious problem to be avoided because of the significant economic impact it would have on employees of processing plants, who receive low wages and are only paid when work is available.

A mandatory log-book reporting programme, which required weekly reports of catch, value, effort and marketing of catch from both harvestors and processors, was used to monitor fishery progress and gain additional information about the distribution of fishing pressure on the resource and about the economic character of the fishery.

Most other Fishery Management Plans developed under the Magnuson Act have sought to attain their conservation objectives with fewer control measures. A simple annual harvest quota, properly calculated and firmly administered, could probably have attained the same conservation results as did all the various management measures in the surf clam plan taken together. However, no such simple quota would have been acceptable to the entire fishing community because of its economic impacts. The Council recognized that, with the limited quota they proposed, they would have to offer present and future security and stability to the existing industry as compensation for the immediate reduction of fishing opportunity.

In retrospect, the use of limited entry in this plan to prevent further growth in the number of vessels and workers dependent on the fishery, and the use of restrictive effort-controls to spread harvests over the entire course of each fishing year, ensured the success of quota management in the fishery. The small number of vessels and processors involved at the time (about 150 vessels and 20 processors) ensured that controls could be imposed on a direct and personal level. Discussions of management problems and alternatives as they occurred could be considered in a forum where all participants had already achieved some understanding of the complexity of the issues and the consequences of actions taken.

Operation of the Quota

Quota management of the surf clam fishery has been basically successful. A large part of the credit must go to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council for its wisdom in specifying a coherent and balanced management programme and for its determination to stand by the programme throughout its early implementation until long-term results were apparent. The Council directly addressed, using the best information available at the time, the issues of economic survival and equitable allocation to the fishermen and processing workers who depended on the resource for a livelihood. This allowed the government to enforce strictly the quota which was the primary conservation measure.

The actual quota as initially established was essentially a compromise between the minimum needs of the industry, estimated at the time to be 15,900 tons of shucked meats, and the advice of scientific advisors, who were concerned that the resource was in such danger that the fishery should be limited to 4,500 tons, to provide for immediate re-building of the resource (Rinaldo, 1977).

The Council selected a 13,600 ton quota and applied it on an annual basis for the two years following plan implementation. When established, the quota level represented a significant risk. The prospects for recruitment in 1976 and 1977 were unknown. Only in retrospect do we know that two significant year-classes were spawned in those years. The Council's action in selecting a quota closer to the needs of the industry than the estimates of the scientific advisors would have had serious consequences for the resource if recruitment had not occurred. However, a reduction of harvests to 4,500 tons might well have destroyed the surf clam industry. If the stock were protected but the industry destroyed, the management programme might not later have been judged a success.

Surf clam landings are measured by the industry in bushels. The appropriate conversion from tonnes to bushels yielded an annual allowable harvest of 1.8 × 10⁶ bushels. Since the plan was implemented mid-way through the fourth calendar quarter of 1977, the quota for the remainder of 1977 was set at a fraction of the annual and quarterly quotas which would have applied. Annual quotas for 1978 and 1979 were set at 1.8 × 10⁶ bushels. A subsequent amendment to the plan extended that quota level through 1980 and 1981 (Table 1).

Table 1
Surf clam and ocean quahog landings from the Fishery Conservation Zone, 1971–1981 (in tons of meat)

Source:
Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1982. Revised to metric equivalents.

Before the end of 1977, it was apparent that the fishery could not be conducted for more than 48 hours per week per vessel without exceeding the quota. Fishing time was reduced, initially to 48 hours per week and finally to 24 hours per week. With a 24-hour fishing week, most vessels operated for two 12-hour fishing trips per week. Despite these restrictions, two brief periods of closure were imposed, one for three weeks in March of 1978 and one for one week at the end of 1978. The quota was still exceeded by about 3 percent, requiring subtraction of the overage from the 1979 quota.

During 1979 the market for surf clams was poor and closures were not required to avoid exceeding the quota levels. Despite the poor markets, however, fishing time was still restricted to an average of only 28 hours per week during the year (Table 2). In 1980, the quota was exceeded by about 10 percent, due to the discovery of dense beds of juvenile clams which boosted catch rates significantly. In 1981, the quota was reduced by about 10 percent to account for the 1980 overage. This action, in combination with later events, set the stage for the biggest crisis in management under the plan.

Table 2
Allowable surf clam fishing time - 17 November 1977 to 31 December 1982

Source:
Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1982

By May of 1981, landing statistics from the fishery showed clearly that the annual quota would be exceeded as soon as September of that year. Fishing time was already restricted to only 24 hours per week and a further reduction of hours was considered impractical, since it would leave the fishermen with only one fishing trip per week. When the industry recognized that closure for a substantial part of the year might occur, catch rates actually increased in order to provide a cushion of inventory during any possible closed period. This only aggravated the situation. Part of the reason landings had increased was because recruitment from the abundant 1976 year-class occurred in dense beds which supported high catch rates. This allowed fishermen to sell their clams at a lower price, making clams more attractive to buyers, without sacrificing income, since restrictions on individual vessels apply to fishing time rather than total landings. Eventually, of course, fishing time for all vessels would have to be reduced, but an individual fisherman had little incentive to reduce his fishing effort when he knew that another fisherman could and probably would land more to compensate for his own sacrifice (Table 3).

Table 3
Surf clam vessel performance, 1979–1982

Note: Data for 1982 cover year through 30 June

Source: Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1982

After considerable deliberation, scientists and managers agreed that incoming recruitment would support a 30-percent increase in the 1981 annual quota without endangering the re-building process. To spread out that increased catch over the remainder of the year and avoid closure of the fishery, fishing was restricted to 12 hours per week and, for the first time, a new restriction was added in the form of a minimum landing size of 140 mm.¹ Both of these measures were included in Amendment 3 to the management plan, which was in the final stages of public review. Together, these measures achieved the desired control of harvest and the adjusted 1981 quota was not exceeded.

¹ The 140 mm minimum landing size was promoted on the grounds that it would optimize yield per recruit. Maximum yield per recruit for surf clams occurs at a smaller size but the highest commercial value is obtained from meat strips derived from surf clams greater than 140 mm in length. The practical effect of implementing the size limit was to sharply reduce the portion of the resource that could be harvested. The fishermen thus experienced reduced harvest rates and so the new quota was sufficient to last through the remainder of the year.

Refining the Quota Process

In 1980, the Council began to consider a management programme for maintaining the resource over the long term, recognizing that recovery of the resource had begun and could be expected to continue. Recognition had also developed at the national level that the management planning process was lengthy, involving significant lead times for Council deliberation, industry review and comment and Federal approval. The time required to develop, review and implement a management plan or a formal amendment to a plan was at least 270 days, under the most optimistic projection that the Council, industry and government had no critical objections to the recommendations contained in a plan or amendment.

Resource-assessment surveys for the most economically important fishery resources were now generally conducted annually by fishery biologists operating from the Northeast Fisheries Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The results of the assessments could theoretically and, in fact, often did show that the quotas established by a management plan developed two years in the past and implemented one year in the past were no longer entirely valid.

Because of this time lag, a more flexible system was accepted as necessary and able to offer important advantages. Flexibility would not be broad or directed at major changes in management philosophy but would be used to adjust and refine measures, within defined bounds, which had already been studied for their social and economic ramifications. The concept was advanced as a matter of national policy by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The Council was encouraged to develop a flexible mechanism for setting quotas and making other management adjustments. This concept was termed a framework plan.

Each fishery management plan must, by law, define the optimum yield of the managed fishery for the life of that plan. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council recognized that optimum yield for the surf clam fishery could be established as a range of harvests, with a lower limit as the minimum needs of the industry to sustain itself and satisfy existing markets and an upper limit as the level which the Council hoped to achieve through re-building of the stock and continued wise management. In the original plan, the Council had stated that the long-term yield from the fishery was expected to equal the average harvest over the years 1970 through 1976, or 22,700 tonnes. After several years of management experience, the industry had accommodated itself to marketing a minimum of 13,600 tonnes of surf clam meat annually. Thus, the new amendment, Amendment 3, established a range for optimum yield for the surf clam fishery of 13,600 to 22,700 tonnes. During the life of the amendment, quotas could be specified annually as any value within that range, thus providing the flexibility needed to respond to changing resource conditions.

A deliberative process, incorporating the best scientific information and reasoned judgement on the part of managers, is essential under the framework-plan concept, to prevent wide fluctuations between resource recovery and depletion. A formal procedure gives due consideration to the scientific information available, appropriate consideration to the needs of the consumer, recognition of the current economic status of the industry and a longer-term view of the cyclical trends in availability and abundance. In the case of the surf clam plan, the Council specified a set of criteria to be used by the Regional Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service to set annual quotas for the fishery. The final authority to establish the quotas was vested with the Regional Director, to isolate the decision to the extent possible from the kind of short-term pressures which could be generated in a forum dominated by industry. The Regional Director's objectivity is assumed because of his broad responsibilities to carry out the intent of the management programme and the constraints of administrative process and procedure which prevent him from taking actions which exceed his authority. If the criteria and facts to be considered are clearly and completely specified as a matter of policy by the Council, implementation by the Regional Director should constitute a ministerial function.

The procedure required the Regional Director to prepare a report each year, based on the latest available stock assessment prepared by scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northeast Fisheries Center, required landing data reported by harvestors and processors and any other relevant information. The report must include consideration of the following key fishery indicators:

1. Exploitable biomass and spawning biomass relative to optimum yield

2. Fishing mortality rates relative to optimum yield

3. Magnitude of incoming recruitment

4. Projected effort and corresponding catches

5. Status of areas previously closed to fishing to protect small clams, that are to be opened during the year and areas likely to be closed during the year

The Regional Director's report is provided to the Council and, after consultation between the Regional Director and the Council, the Regional Director publishes proposed quotas for public review and comment. The public has 30 days to comment, after which all comments are considered and a final quota is established and published for public notice. The entire process normally takes about 60 days, if unforseen delays are not encountered.

This procedure was used to establish a quota for surf clams for 1982 and 1983. The procedure appears to have been effective. The harvest of surf clams in 1982 fell short of the quota by about 10 percent.

Economic Consequences of the Quota

In 1977, processors and harvestors of surf clam products were well aware of the impending implementation of the plan and of the basic measures it would include. In addition, the fishery was experiencing a rapid decline in landings as the last of the large beds of clams off Southern Virginia were depleted. Inventories of surf clam products were accumulated by the processors at practically any cost through 1976 and 1977, in anticipation of scarcity in the period ahead. As a consequence, the price of surf clams advanced significantly at the vessel, wholesale and consumer levels.

From 1965 through 1974, clam meat prices were stable, between 18 and 22 cents per kg in deflated dollars (adjusted to remove the effects of inflation, based on prices in 1967 as the base level). In 1976, prices rose from 18 cents to 57 cents per kg in deflated dollars, an increase of over 200 percent in one year. Since that dramatic increase, prices have showed no distinct trend in current dollars, but inflation has reduced those current dollars to a deflated price of 37 cents per kg in 1981. Further inflation and any reduction in prices which may occur as the quota rises and meat becomes more available will probably result in deflated prices comparable to the levels prevailing through the 1960s and early 1970s (Table 4).

Vessel operators experienced a very definite change in their status with respect to processors and in their gross income as a result of both the natural decline of the resource and the quota-imposed reduction of harvests. Processors have traditionally held the upper hand in dealing with clam boats, since clams are caught and supplied through long-term direct arrangements between vessel and processor rather than through an open market. Excess capacity and some vertical integration allowed processors to keep the price to the vessel very low. All this changed abruptly when clams became scarce. Fishery landings declined from 1975 to 1976 by less than 45 percent but ex-vessel prices more than tripled. Since that increase in price, the fisherman's price has remained generally unchanged in current dollars, with some signs of weakening in 1979 and 1982. The deflated value to the fisherman has thus declined as a result of persistent inflation over the last six years.

Table 4
Surf clam prices per kg, 1960–1981

Source:
Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1982 Revised to metric equivalents.

Deflated prices calculated using producer prices, all commodities, 1967 = 100 (US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Business Conditions Digest, Series 330).

The principal reason for the failure of deflated prices to remain stable or increase during the last several years is the significant development of the ocean quahog fishery which occurred concurrent with imposition of the management programme. The ocean quahog fishery grew from nominal landings in 1975 to approximately equal the meat yield of surf clams in 1981. Ocean quahogs can thus far only be substituted for certain surf clam products, including chowders, minced clams and juices. This substitution factor is readily evident in the compound growth rate for prices of those products. While prices for surf clam based breaded clams have risen at a compound deflated rate of 15 percent, products which can be made with ocean quahogs have risen at a compound deflated rate of only 1 or 2 percent. The growth of the ocean quahog fishery can be counted as a major success of the management programme, since it has significantly expanded the amount of clam products available to the consumer, keeping prices for those products well below the levels which might otherwise have occurred (Table 5). The ocean quahog fishery also served as an important source of alternative employment for many of the larger vessels in the surf clam fleet. As they moved out of the surf clam fishery, more of the surf clam resources was available for harvest by the vessels which remained in the fishery, reducing the impact of the reduction in total allowable surf clam harvests.

Table 5
Compound growth rates of production value of clam based products, 1970–1979

Source:
Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1982

Enforcement and Administration of the Management Plan

Very shortly after the first management plans were implemented under the authority of the Magnuson Act, it was apparent that enforcement of management provisions was much more effective and had a higher probability of success if conducted at the dock rather than at sea. Monitoring fishery activity at sea requires observation, through enforcement or compliance inspectors on board the fishing vessel, or through vessel or aerial inspection of the fishing activity. When jurisdictions over fishing activities are split, as is the case when State and Federal regulations are not complementary, surveillance may have to stretch over the duration of the fishing trip to ensure compliance and provide enforcement officials the evidence they need to result in successful prosecutions.

At the simplest level, enforcement of the surf clam plan could theoretically be handled through dockside inspection. Once the quota had been landed, the fishery could be closed. Since surf clam vessels working at sea are readily identified by their location, vessel and gear configuration, any vessel operating after a closure could be cited for a violation.

In practice, the provisions of the management plan which were intended to spread harvests out over the course of the year complicated this enforcement effort, since they required that vessels be continuously monitored at sea to determine if they were fishing on their designated fishing days. Monitoring the time of departure and arrival at the dock is not effective, since some vessels must leave the dock many hours before they will fish, both to allow for steaming time to distant and diverse fishing grounds and to allow the larger vessels to clear shoal waters and navigational impediments at high water or with favourable tides. The plan attempted to facilitate enforcement by providing for long-term advanced scheduling of fishing activity, so that enforcement agents and the Coast Guard could be aware of when a vessel was allowed to fish. Fishing times commonly began and ended in daylight hours, so that over-flights at dawn or dusk could determine that the dredge and other fishing gear was out of the water and the vessel was heading for port. The cost of such surveillance is high, so only a portion of the fishery could be monitored regularly. The flexibility of the vessel operator was constrained by the need to maintain uniform procedures.

Use of the 140 mm minimum size limit to control harvest of small surf clams has resulted in a significant increase in the amount of enforcement which can be done at the dock. Figures for enforcement show the marked increase in dockside enforcement actions after the minimum size measure was imposed in mid-1981 (Table 6).

Table 6
Enforcement caseload under the Surf Clam Management Programme, 1978–1982, by violation type

Source:
National Marine Fisheries Service Computer Case Tracking System

The present situation

This management programme has been in operation for over five years and appears to have served effectively to conserve the resource, and to have protected the significant recruitment represented by the 1976 and 1977 year classes of surf clams. Survey indices for the northern component of the resource off the New Jersey coast show that the resource there will reach, over the next two years, levels of relative abundance not seen since the initial exploitation of the fishery (Murawski, 1981). This abundance can be attributed primarily to the recruitment from the 1976 year class which settled in an area which had been extensively depleted of both surf clams and their predators by an anoxic condition ² that occurred throughout the New York Bight area in the late summer of 1976. The southern component of the resource, from Ocean City, Maryland southward to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, benefitted from significant recruitment of the 1977 year class. An examination of the progression of the year classes through various size categories can be seen clearly in the size distribution figures produced using research survey vessel cruise information from the Northeast Fisheries Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts (Figures 2 and 3). Significant quantities of these surf clams can be expected to reach commercial and legal size minimums between 1984 and 1985. In this southern division, the young clams cover an extensive geographical area.

All this expected recruitment could become an embarrassment of riches. Developing the initial conservation programme in the face of a crisis, to provide equitable access to a limited resource, was a difficult job. That job was made easier because the industry and the Council could both agree on the severity of the problem and on the need for immediate action. Converting the programme to one that can husband the resource at optimum levels on a permanent basis opens up a wide range of policy issues which are not easily resolved. Managers face a wider range of possible management options and the choice among the options must resolve competing philosophical and practical considerations.

² The 1976 anoxic condition was a significant reduction in the amount of dissolved oxygen present in the water due to weather, hydrographic conditions, organic loading of the coastal waters and a bloom and die off of a dinoflagellate. The loss of surf clams was estimated at 147,000 tons of meat over a kill zone of 6,750 km², about 62 percent of the New Jersey resource (Ropes, 1980).

Source: Murawski, 1981.

Figure 2

Size distribution of surf clams off Northern New Jersey Stratified mean numbers of surf clams per standardized tow, at length, in NMFS Shellfish Surveys, 1976–1981

Source: Murawski, 1981.

Figure 3

Size distribution of surf clams off Delmarva Peninsula Stratified mean numbers of surf clams per standardized tow, at length, in NMFS Shellfish Surveys, 1976–1981

Surf clams on the ocean bottom are essentially the same as funds on deposit in a bank. Natural mortality is relatively low, yield per recruit improves up to a size slightly below the minimum legal size and does not thereafter fall off dramatically. Heavy recruitment is sporadic and is not directly related to the abundance of adult surf clams. Long-term management at equilibrium levels requires the stock will not run out before the next episode of recruitment occurs. At times, fishermen will be aware that great stocks of clams are on the bottom but be forced to constrain their harvest to ensure that future catches will be available.

One of the most difficult problems currently faced is that the increasing abundance of the resource does not mitigate the problem of excess harvesting capacity in the fishery. The quota can only be increased if abundance increases but, as abundance increases, so does the catch per unit of effort. In a relative sense, the fisherman never improves his position because his market share never improves and his level of use of potential harvesting capacity remains very low. Projections of allowable fishing time as quotas are increased suggest that fishing time per vessel will remain at the present low level of 24 hours per week. If new recruitment continues to occur in beds where the clams are more densely distributed than in the fishery as a whole, fishing time will actually have to be reduced even as the resource abundance increases.

A long-term management philosophy for the surf clam fishery does not yet exist. Some observers, seeing the present increasing stock level as plentitude, suggest that the management programme has done its job and can be abandoned. This approach may be short-sighted, since all the factors which led to the initial need for management are still present or even exacerbated by a growing population of consumers, greater development of excess and under-utilized fishing capacity throughout the domestic fisheries and the dismal short-term outlook for other regional fisheries, such as Atlantic Sea scallops and groundfish.

The Fishery Management Councils and the National Marine Fisheries Service have not generally chosen to use the Magnuson Act to bring about long-term economic stability in the utilization of fisheries. This reluctance is displayed in explicit statements in several approved plans that economic issues have not been considered in formulating management strategies. This probably stems from the relative lack of experience in treating economic issues, the understandably prevalent view that regulatory action which adversely affects the economic performance of an industry is undesirable and a basic belief that regulation directed at solving specific economic problems usurps the generally superior role of the marketplace. A reasonable argument can be made, however, that any regulation designed to assess conservation needs of a resource will create economic inefficiency unless the regulation establishes property rights and vests the responsibility and ability to maximize efficiency with the individual harvestors.

Several of the management alternatives considered for the surf clam fishery are illustrative. A minimum harvest size for surf clams represents a direct and complete loss of income to the fisherman who would have directed his effort at smaller clams and, to a lesser degree, to the fisherman who must cull out small clams from his catch. The time and effort spent in culling and avoiding concentrations of small clams and the income lost when only small clams are available represent costs or imposed inefficiency.

A restriction on allowable fishing time represents a direct loss of the potential income from the time that cannot be spent fishing. The restriction may also have allocative effects. If all vessels receive by law the same amount of time to fish, vessels designed to have the ability to fish in adverse sea conditions will represent a wasted over-investment, while vessels which might only expect to fish in good weather receive a windfall.

Measures such as these, when used in combination, create a complex management programme designed to prevent the fisherman from taking what he could and would take under uncontrolled conditions. In essence, managers legislate inefficiency to address the fundamental management objective, which is to control harvest. This is the foundation of most fishery management programmes today. The more competent the fisherman, the more advanced the harvesting technique, the greater the impediments managers must design to prevent over-fishing. The problem is more serious when the control mechanisms designed by managers act indirectly. In the surf clam fishery under the present plan, managers determine each year, through the setting of the annual quota, how many surf clams may be taken. Actual regulation of harvest is divorced one step from this quota and is accomplished through the indirect linkage of restrictions on fishing time. The amount of fishing time allocated over the course of the year will result in varying harvests depending on the competence of the vessels, displayed as catch per hour fished, and on the weather and sea conditions during the hours chosen to fish. Fishing time must thus be monitored and adjusted continually, and each adjustment requires and represents a decision to allocate fishing opportunity, which translates into income, among various users.

The fisherman's response to each impediment is to change his operating strategy or invest in additional or re-designed equipment which might enable him to maintain or increase his harvest or market share. In the surf clam fishery, a significant number of vessels have been fitted with a second dredge to increase their hourly harvesting capacity, even though this increased harvesting capacity must in the end result in fewer available hours to fish for the fleet as a whole. Escalating over-capacity is the result. In the present surf clam fishery, capacity exceeds resource potential at maximum forseeable stock levels by perhaps two orders of magnitude. If fishing capacity could be rationalized to the level actually required to harvest available stocks with a normal five-day fishing week, only a dozen or less vessels of the size and configuration predominant in the fishery today would be needed. The difference between this number and the 123 vessels which in 1982 depended on the fishery for most of their income is an approximation of the current wasted capital, and of the economic surplus available to and from the fishery under a more efficient management system.

The current under-utilized manpower resources of the surf clam fleet are of a similar order of magnitude, although such resources do not now appear to be in urgent demand in other sectors of the economy. The effect of all this over-expenditure in harvesting capacity on the price of surf clams to consumers is substantial. Consumers must support, through increased prices for clam products, more than 100 unneeded vessels, with attendant costs for maintenance, labour, fuel and return on investment.

Options and outlook for the future

The following conclusions can be drawn from our five years' experience in management of the surf clam fishery:

1. Quota management can be effective in ensuring a level of removals which will provide for preservation or enhancement of the level of a fishery stock.

2. Quota management by itself will not likely provide for the social or economic stability necessary to maintain an effective resource management programme.

3. As resource abundance increases, quotas become a less acceptable form of resource management, since they are seen to be less important to maintain the health of the resource.

4. The transition in fishery management from a recovery mode to one of maintenance creates complex economic issues which then transcend the issue of resource conservation.

The Council is now in the process of developing a fourth amendment to the management plan to deal with the transition to a maintenance mode. The industry is generally very supportive of the concept of a vessel allocation for each operator expressed as some fraction of the overall quota. Most operators see this as a logical next step to reduce the number of management measures which would otherwise be needed and allow them more latitude to plan their fishing strategies.

The individual vessel allocation could be taken by the operator in any way, on whatever schedule he might chose. Some operators could take advantage of seasonal differences in meat yield of surf clams to maximize the final product yield of a given harvest. The fishing-time restrictions, area-closure procedures and even the minimum size limit, which today represent the greatest burden of management, might be eliminated. The rationale for eliminating the minimum size limit would be the expectation that each operator's desire to maximize his revenue from a given allocation would lead him to harvest large clams which have a higher value and greater yield of meat per bushel. This expectation could be proved wrong if an operator chose not to maximize his gross revenue from a fixed allocation but instead to maximize short-term income by harvesting his entire allocation in the form of very dense small clams over a short period of time.

The greatest advantage would come if allocations could be traded and combined, allowing operators to reach whatever level of operation and efficiency they need to be profitable. Vessels could be diverted to other fisheries after they take their allocation or could be tied up for extended periods, reducing insurance and other fixed costs. Operators might not take advantage of this opportunity and a vessel allocation programme might not result in a reduction in capitalization in the fishery. The programme would, however, create circumstances under which a reduction in capitalization could occur and leave the economic decisions to the individual operators. Operators who chose not to maximize profits would have only themselves to blame for their economic situation.

As with any allocation programme, the determination of initial shares is a most difficult problem. Allocations based on past performance do not satisfy those who feel they could have done better in the past without the restrictions which have been imposed. Operators who have not done well would like to see the initial allocation process used to redistribute income in their favour. Some operators have done very well under the competitive fishery which has developed by virtue of the existing management measures. Those operators want to continue to compete, expecting their market share will increase even further.

From the manager's perspective, a vessel allocation would allow for administration of the programme primarily at the dock, reducing enforcement costs. Management of the resource to attain optimum yield could become simple and direct. The indirect management linkage which now exists, because allowable harvests expressed as quotas are administered through conversion to fishing time, would be eliminated. The government would no longer be the arbiter of economic performance and profitability for the industry.

The industry and the Council have spent so much of their time over the last year studying vessel allocations that other management alternatives have not been seriously considered. The range of alternatives could include complete termination of the programme, use of a quota by itself or in conjunction with a minimum size limit or some form of more complex economic management. A complex scheme might establish a minimum return on investment. If that rate of return were not met for the fleet, then the least profitable vessels would be eliminated from the fishery until the desired level of profitability was reached. A variant of this alternative would set a minimum annual harvest level, and any vessel which failed to reach that level would be eliminated from the fishery.

The final outcome of the Council's deliberations is at the moment very much an open question.

References

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1977 Fishery Management Plan for surf clam and ocean quahog fisheries

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1979 Amendment No.1 for the Surf Clam and Ocean Quahog Fishery Management Plan

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1979a Amendment No.2 for the Surf Clam and Ocean Quahog Fishery Management Plan

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1981 Amendment No.3 for the Fishery Management Plan for the Atlantic Surf Clam and Ocean Quahog Fisheries

Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 1982 Review of the Surf Clam and Ocean Quahog Fishery Management Plan

Murawski, S.A., 1981 Assessment and current status of offshore surf clam, Spisula solidissima, populations off the middle Atlantic coast of the United States. Woods Hole Lab.Ref.Doc., (81–33)

Parker, P.S., 1971 History and development of surf clam harvesting gear. NOAA Tech.Rep.NMFS Circ., (364)

Rinaldo, R.G., 1977 Draft environmental impact statement for the implementation of a fishery management plan for the surf clam and Ocean quahog fisheries

Ropes, J.W., 1980 Biological and fisheries data on surf clam, Spisula solidissima. Woods Hole Lab.Doc. Tech.Ser.Rep., (24)

Ropes, J.W., 1982 The Atlantic coast surf clam fishery, 1965–1974. Mar.Fish.Rev., 44(8):13 p.