July 3, 2014 — Has all of the smoke surrounding the Atlantic herring fishery been generated by an actual crisis or by well-oiled, foundation supported smoke machines in fisheries governance?
Peter Shelley is a lawyer who works for the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). Apparently among his duties is providing entries to the CLF website “Talking Fish.”
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the groundfish debacle in New England, Mr. Shelley and the CLF, utilizing the court system and a whole bunch of money (according to their IRS Form 990 filed in 2011- the last year available on the Guidestar website – total CLF revenue was $5,800,000, up $1,250,000 from the year before), have been playing a pivotal role in the groundfish fishery management program via the management process and the courts since before it was a debacle.
Evidently the groundfish fishery wasn’t enough to fill Mr. Shelley’s plate so he has been involved in Atlantic (sea) herring management as well. Part of that involvement was an opinion piece on the CLF website titled New England’s Fishing Pathology, referring to the participants in and their participation in the Atlantic herring fishery – or at least those people whose participation involves boats bigger than those that Mr. Shelley has decided are too big.
I’m going to start off with a primer on Atlantic herring management. This should make it easier to put Mr. Shelley’s words in their proper context.
The Atlantic herring fishery in U.S. waters is divided into four distinct management areas designated 1A, 1B, 2 and 3. Each year a quota (actually an Area Annual Catch Limit) is determined for each area. Area 1B has by far the lowest quota of all four areas (Area 1A is 33,031 metric tons, Area 1B is 2,878 metric tons, Area 2 is 28,764 metric tons and Area 3 is 39,415 metric tons). Area 1A, adjacent to Area 1B, is primarily populated by the Gulf of Maine herring stock, Area 3 by the Georges Bank herring stock and Area 1B and Area 2 are populated by a mix of herring from both the Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine stocks.
Read the full opinion piece from FishNet USA at FisheryNation.com