This op-ed was written in response to an article in the Gloucester Daily Times.
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton – Jan 13, 2010 – Much as I appreciate the Gloucester Times' passion for the fishing industry, I was appalled at their attack on the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's group for purchasing scallop permits.
The problem is that this article is a classic example of mangling facts to try and paint wrongdoing when in fact, what is happening on Cape Cod is similar to what is happening in Gloucester and Maine with very little differences between them.
First the big picture: All over New England, communities and fishing groups are trying to raise funds for permit banks to help stabilize fishing effort in their communities under the new catch share policy. The biggest single actor is Gloucester, where the community has amassed more than $13 million from payments made by the Suez oil and gas company. Rarely is this fact ever alluded to in the Gloucester Times.
In Maine, the state is discussing with NOAA a plan for a $1 million permit bank, which would require that permits be operated by existing sectors. Also, the Port Clyde fishermen's group is raising money for permits.
On Cape Cod, the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association is raising money for permits as well. The Gloucester Times attacks them because they received $500,000 from the Walton family foundation toward this goal, and are raising money from other environmental groups. So far, the Cape Cod group has raised about $2 million towards their $10 million goal, far behind what Gloucester has.
Second, the article conflates two different scallop fisheries: the IFQ fishery, which is limited to open access vessels that have had a 400 lb. per day trip limit, and the days at sea scallop fishery, which is operated primarily out of New Bedford by the commercial scallop fleet.
The IFQ portion of the scallop fishery represents less than 5% of the total allowable catch and has a TAC for 2010 of about 2.2 million lbs. It only applies to those small boats that are by and large not part of the days at sea fleet. The traditional commercial scallop fleet currently has a TAC of over 43 million lbs, but it may be changed.
To make a statement like 'days after federal scallop permits were devalued by the New England Fishery Management Council on the motion of the representative of the Environmental Defense Fund' is complete nonsense. The federal scallop permits apply to 5% of the catch with a trip limit of 400 lbs. per day, divided among hundreds of vessels. No simple quota adjustment on the order of 20% or so will change the value of those permits.
Secondly, the implication here is that there is a nefarious plot to devalue scallop permits and then have environmental groups grab them. The application for a grant by the CCCHF began months before any decision was ever made on scallops. To imply a connection between CCCHFA permit acquisition and the council scallop vote is the worst kind of yellow journalism. It increases the divisiveness in the industry at a time when collective action is sorely needed.
When the writer actually talked to Paul Parker, head of the CCCHF, he said they had not purchased a new scallop permit in three months – totally contradicting the premise of the article. But this had no effect on the narrative.
The fact is that community ownership and banking of permits is one of the only viable strategies that can help preserve traditional fishing communities like Gloucester, like Port Clyde, and like Chatham. Without it, because there are no ownership caps in the current plan, local fishermen will be at the mercy of large operators who have the money to buy up scarce resources.
In different ports, fishing groups have used different strategies to get funding for these permit banks. If Gloucester had not received its oil money windfall, they would be in the same boat as others – scrambling for whatever financial help was forthcoming.
The Gloucester Times should be supporting community permit banking in all its forms, both in Gloucester and elsewhere. The attack on the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's group was an example of the most dangerous type of 'i've got mine – screw you' attitude that has divided New England ports for generations. I was very disappointed to see such a short sighted and false story, that serves more to damage the industry than to help it.
Disclosure: John Sackton has been involved with the issue of catch shares for scallops since the late 1990's when new seafood company investments were being made in New Bedford. In 2009 Sackton accepted a contract with the Environmental Defense Fund to provide comments and analysis on the National Catch Share Policy paper put out by NOAA. Sackton has also been involved with ITQ programs in Alaska since 2005, as non-binding price arbitrator for the crab rationalization program (hired by both harvesters and processors), and has worked more than ten years on Canadian snow crab, shrimp and lobster pricing. Since 1994 Sackton has worked with hundreds of seafood companies, government agencies, industry associations and environmental groups providing seafood industry market analysis and research, in addition to his founding and editing of Seafood.com News.'