Federal oceans administrator Jane Lubchenco and the two environmental lobbies that were her stepping stones into the Obama administration promote privatizing the wild stocks of the sea into tradeable commodities — or fishermen’s "catch shares" — as a scientifically proven antidote to what ails New England’s and the nation’s fisheries. But the science comes from a narrow circle of fellow travelers in the orbits of the Pew Environment Group and the Environmental Defense Fund — ENGOs or environmental non-government organizations in which Lubchenco held pivotal positions before her appointment to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
And from other quarters — Europe, British Columbia and the New England Fisheries Science Center — the implementation of the catch share regulatory system, set to take effect for Gloucester fishermen and the New England fishery next year, has sparked counter claims and a fierce debate about the effectiveness of the catch share format and their social and environmental impacts.
Just last week, Europe’s top fishery official proposed ending a quarter-century experiment in catch shares.
Research from at least three other sources earlier this summer have also raised serious questions about the economic, environmental and social impact of catch shares or their close relatives, individual fishing quotas, IFQs, or individual transferable quotas or ITQs.
In June, Seth Macinko and William Whitmore of the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island published a report on sectors, the voluntary fishing cooperatives that will begin working under catch shares next May. Commissioned by the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries, the paper warned that converting the common resources into tradeable commodities will not reduce "or solve the bycatch" problem, but will likely accelerate industry consolidation — which seems to be a universal outgrowth of fish stock privatization in almost all forms.
July brought a socio-economic study by Ecotrust Canada that disputed claims of wondrous improvements in the ecosystems and economies of fisheries converted into privatized models. It also brought a bitter exchange between Ecotrust Canada and the EDF, which in public has been pushing catch shares as a conservation panacea and in private as an investment capable of yielding windfall profits.