quota conundrum

As I wrote earlier, when I first took the boat in March, I was told I had 377,000 lbs of crab I was “allowed’ to take. 377K in 7 weeks, (3 trips when you figure with running time etc), is a bit daunting, but an exciting challenge. We brought in 121,000 & 128,000, for our first two trips which left us 128,000 lbs for the last trip. Then I learned we actually had 138 to catch, but several days into the trip, we received word we actually only had 95K left to catch, because some quota shares did not transfer (it’s a very convoluted & technical system)

Knowing that we had at least 120K in the gear, we knew that would mean we had to rail dump. You are in BIG trouble if you exceed your allowable quota, even by a few pounds.

This is further complicated because we’re fishing as part of a Co-op, so we needed to wait for the only other boat out here fishing brown crab to deliver. Two days ago we reached 95,000. Knowing that we still had at least 20K in the gear, we started dumping crab (ouch!) until we knew for sure that the other boat did not exceed their quota, therefore cutting into ours.

They delivered yesterday and it turns out they did exceed by a small amount. So now we’re faced with deciding whether we put more crab on board to try & reach our 98K, or call it good at 95. The reason being is that we know how many crab we have on board (21,602 to be exact) and we know the weight average is about 4.40lbs, but that’s an approximation. If the average is closer to 4.5 lbs, we’re pretty much at the number.

In the last 36 hours we’ve dumped more than 15,000 lbs!