SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Letters] May 7, 2015
To the Editor Seafoodnews.com
Dear John:
So everything is doing fine, all the fishermen are happy, and there’s no need to change the law? Why do I feel like the Wizard of Oz is telling me to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?
Your editorial of May 6th (“House Magnuson Bill is the Destabilization of Our Nation’s Fisheries Act”) moves around all over the place so it is difficult to provide a point by point response, but I will try.
Management successes
Yes, the pollock fishery is well managed, as is the scallop fishery. In fact, both were well-managed before the passage of the 2006 amendments to the MSFCMA. Pollock has gone through two downturns in the last 40 years that I can remember, one of which was before the passage of the 1996 amendments to the MSFCMA, and both times the North Pacific Council responded correctly. It’s what a good Council does.
West Coast groundfish may be a prime example of a sustainable fishery as far as bycatch and discards are concerned, but it’s an economic disaster. Catches are nowhere near the pre-ITQ days, costs are escalating, and neither the Council nor NMFS is doing too much about it. Oh, and those aren’t just my sentiments, they’re the views of some of the strongest proponents of the ITQ system:
“A number of Groundfish Panel and audience members pointed out that from a conservation standpoint, the TIQ program is working great, but from an economic standpoint, the program is a failure. There is still much work to do to make it sustainable from an economic perspective. Promises of flexibility and the elimination of archaic regulations, meant to govern a non-rationalized fishery, have not happened and are stuck in a regulatory purgatory. The TIQ fishery is not realizing the full benefits of rationalization. For example, command and control regulations still constrain the ability of the fishery to fish where it wants, how it wants, when it wants. Expenses have increased dramatically but incomes have not. Fishermen reported actually losing money under TIQ while also losing access to fishing grounds – the polar opposite of what was promised. ” (Statement from the Pacific Council’s Groundfish Advisory Subpanel, September 2014.)
As for salmon, you can thank Mother Nature and BPA for providing spill water during out-migration. At least you can for this year; given the current drought conditions, expect salmon runs to decline precipitously in 2 years.
And lobster is managed by the states; while I’m glad to see landings enjoying historic highs, what does that have to do with the MSFCMA?
Political battlegrounds
Fisheries management has always been rife with politics of the “I’ve got mine, now give me yours” variety. The original FCMA (before the late Senators had their names added to it) was not just about science, conservation and management; it was also about throwing out the foreign fleets. Once we got rid of them, we turned on each other. Does anyone besides me remember the fight against allowing pots in the sablefish fishery in the Gulf of Alaska? Does anyone else find it ironic that the fleet is now looking at allowing pots because of marine mammal depredations?
The political referendum process has been with us for a long time and it is indeed unfortunate when it is turned into a fisheries “management” tool. The Gulf of Mexico is a prime example with the Florida net ban but there are also net bans in place in California (gillnets and trawls). And if your referendum gets defeated – as happened with the gillnet ban on the Columbia River – then you turn to a sympathetic governor who strong-arms the Fish and Wildlife Commission to phase you out. Or even to a Council – ask the California swordfish gillnet fleet how they feel about the Pacific Council these days.
The point is there are always going to be political battles on both the state and federal levels. HR 1335 doesn’t open the door for them, nor does it change the Councils from “being regulatory bodies that applied science to fishery management”; the Councils do have to live with science but beyond that they are pretty much free to make allocation decisions the way they want, as long as they can justify them on the record. And they do.
Redfish
Your primary concern seems to be about the Duncan (R-SC) amendment that got adopted during markup of HR 1335. It requires the Gulf and South Atlantic Councils to review the allocations of all mixed-use fisheries 2 years after date of enactment and every 3 years thereafter and “consider the conservation and socioeconomic benefits of each sector in any allocation decisions for such fisheries. ” In other words, the Councils are going to have to justify any reallocations that they make.
What you forgot to mention is that Councils already have the authority to change allocations whenever they want. IQ plans have to be reviewed every 7 years. NMFS, in its proposed rules governing National Standard #1, is “[r]ecommending the councils re-evaluate the objectives of fishery management plans, to ensure they reflect the changing needs of the fishery, including allocation of fishery resources. [Emphasis added]”. And nothing changes the requirement of section 303(a) (14) of the Act which requires that any harvest restrictions are spread fairly and equitably among all fishing sectors.
Rebuilding
You seem to be in favor of more flexible rebuilding timelines but against flexibility, a dichotomy that baffles me. First, in regard to changing “possible” to “practicable”, this was a change that originated out here on the west coast after the 9th Circuit Court essentially ruled that “possible” equated to “one step above the poverty level” when it comes to the amount of fish allowed to be harvested under a rebuilding plan. It led to such things as NMFS refusing to allow the harvest of canary rockfish at a level where they would be rebuilt in December of the target year, as opposed to January of that same year. The idea is not to avoid rebuilding, just balance the biological and economic needs.
As for the other rebuilding provisions (including the one that is already included in the Act), they are common sense: the stock is outside the jurisdiction of the Council or is affected by natural events and no matter what the Council says or does, the fishery is going to suffer a loss (see salmon example above). That doesn’t mean catch them all; it means less adherence to a rigid time frame that up until now has been arbitrarily established.
Other provisions
And while you were despairing over these two provisions in the Act, you forgot to mention those allowing a Council to terminate a rebuilding plan if they discover it wasn’t needed; allowing the Secretary additional time to keep emergency rules in effect; getting rid of the term “overfished”; adding transparency to the Council process; requiring the Secretary to issue regulations for electronic monitoring; clarifying the data confidentiality provisions; providing funding for data-poor stock assessments; and requiring more cooperative research.
Unlike other reauthorization bills in the past, HR 1335 doesn’t make major changes to the Act but it does change some things that fisheries managers and the commercial and recreational sectors agree needed some tweaks. I’m sure almost everyone involved in this long process that started two years ago has different ideas of what needs to be changed and what doesn’t but on the whole HR 1335 is a good bill and I, for one, am proud to support it.
Sincerely,
Rod Moore
Executive Director
West Coast Seafood Processors Assoc.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.