Atlantic Fisheries Research Document 1996/036

The Arctic clam surf fishing on Banquereau Bank

By D. Roddick

Abstract

The Banquereau Bank fishery for Arctic surfclams has grown from landings of 29 t in 1986, to 11,608 t in 1995. The three vessels participating in this fishery exploit both Banquereau and Grand Bank. The fishery is managed with limited entry and a Total Allowable Catch (TAC) divided into Enterprise Allocations (EA's), but the TAC is based on sparse survey data from the early 1980's. Concerns for the future of this fishery have led Industry to propose supplying three years of vessel time for a stock assessment survey of Banquereau and Grand Banks if the Department of Fisheries and Oceans would design and carry out the biological assessment. The First two years of this study have been completed with the gathering of RoxAnn data on the two banks to be used to stratify a dredge survey to take place during 1996.

Until the information from this survey is available the long term future of this fishery with remain in doubt. Analysis of logbook and observer data show that CPUE has remained high as the vessels are still able to move to exploited areas of the Bank. The ability of the present fleet to keep moving around and leaving fished areas alone for the length of time needed for the area to recover will be dependent on the extent of areas with commercially viable catch rates. This is still unknown and hopefully the survey taking place in 1996 with answer this question. With this information it will then be possible to look at which management tools are appropriate for this fishery.

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