SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton – Nov 3, 2009 – The protests in New England over NMFS rules have not focused on the true economic facts. The New England groundfish fleet is operating at a financial loss, and must take radical steps to recover. Here is a tale of two fisheries: In New England, there were 789 groundfish vessels fishing under the days at sea program in 2008, including vessels who had leased days. The average gross stock per vessel was $80,354, using the catch value averaged over the past five years.
Out of this $80,000, the typical vessel has to pay fuel costs, dock fees, insurance, a captain’s share – generally about 10% of the gross stock, plus a lay share for the crew, which runs 35% to 40% of gross stock after deductions for fuel, groceries etc.
In a nutshell, the average groundfish vessel is dividing about $40,000 to $50,000 between two men and an owner. How can a crew member support a family on $20,000 per year fishing income. It just doesn’t work.
By contrast, the Scallop fleet has 348 active vessels, and the average gross stock per vessel is over $1 million. With a five or six man crew, a captain’s share, and fuel costs and groceries, the scallop fleet is highly profitable. Actually a couple of weeks ago in New Bedford, a Captain got a $50,000 share for a single ten day trip.
The scallop fleet is financially healthy, and with upcoming rules to allow two permits per vessel, the gross stocks could easily rise to $2 million per active vessel fairly quickly.
Into this mix comes catch shares for the New England Groundfish fleet. The very first requirement for a successful program is to make the fleet doing the actual fishing financially viable. That is going to take a huge reduction in vessels.
New England has approached this problem backwards, due to the fierce resistance to hard TAC’s in the multi-species groundfish fishery. In other areas around the country, when the number of boats could harvest the entire TAC in a four or five day period, it was obvious to all that the only avenue to financial stability was to reduce the number of vessels, and to compensate those owners leaving the fishery. This is what happened through the halibut and crab IFQ programs in Alaska.
Because the solution was so obvious, the prospect of consolidation through issuing of catch shares won widespread support.
But in New England, without the hard TAC’s to graphically illustrate over capacity and the huge number of excess vessels, the pressure has been to make all existing vessels whole. This is impossible when the average value of the groundfish landings are around $63 million per year, total. This has led to antagonism towards NMFS when the scientists say that 11 of 19 groundfish stocks still are classified as being overfished with overfishing continuing to occur. Legally, NMFS must further reduce catches – but when you are a fishermen looking at earning maybe $20,000 to $30,000, when 20 years ago the same job would pay $50,000 to $60,000, your back is against the wall.
Having been involved in these fisheries for 30 years, it is obvious to me that the key question is not tweaking stock estimates or modifying arcane rules, although these are very important in a stable system, but in first achieving financial stability.
The New England fisheries can be compared to a patient having a heart attack on the operating table. First the patient must be stabilized – then we can deal with everything else.
As part of this process, we have agreed to participate and co-sponsor a couple of meetings next week in New Bedford and Gloucester where three key figures in the Alaska fishery plan to talk about the issues that made their fisheries financially stable and viable.
Here is a link to the flyer for the meeting.
Over the next year, the transformation of New England fisheries will continue to be one of the most important issues in the industry – getting a lot of attention in Congress, and from the Obama administration, from outside groups and NGO’s and finally, from within New England itself. We hope to continue to highlight the real issues at stake, and the solutions proposed.
John Sackton, Editor And Publisher
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