Susanne Altenburger: May 24, 2015 — You’d figure that this is just another colorful waterfront tale, here of improbable schemes hatched by folks of grand ambitions fiercely pursuing 50 percent visions — to never quite succeed, despite rich claims of “institutional authority,” “legitimate interest-representation,” defining “industrial policies” under whatever fractured grasp of “ecology.” And it would be a fine yarn, indeed — had not our Resource-Ecology and our Fleet-&-Port Economics been damaged to the great cost to businesses, too many families, our communities. Hard realities being hard realities, one can only examine this tragedy layer-by-layer.
Several Basic Facts define the Groundfish Industry, its Resource and its Sustainability
The Commercial Fishing Industry is made up of two co-equally-important elements:
1. The Resource, better known as fish, or seafood, is 50 percent.
2. The Commercial Fishing Fleet — the boats on which folks go to sea to fish — is the other 50 percent, along with its shore-side infrastructure. Without either half, you’d have no industry. And both have to be structured and managed to shared principles of Sustainability, since both depend upon each other:
— If more fish is caught than nature can reproduce, both the resource and the fleet will be ruined.
— If the fleet-structure and -operations do not match the Sustainability-requirements of the resource, both the fleet and the resource will be ruined.
And yet for too many years only 50 percent-policy approaches to 100 percent challenges!
Read the full opinion piece at South Coast Today