August 11, 2012 — Just what are catch shares? The traditional way of managing a fishery sets a total amount of fish that should be caught each year, and then lets fishermen race with one another to catch as much as possible before the quota is reached and the season closes. As fishing boats become bigger, that quota is reached sooner. Moreover, bycatch, the unintended catch of nontarget species, often grows, resulting in more waste. Fishery managers respond with tighter restrictions and shorter seasons.
Early last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration changed the way it manages West Coast trawl fishing. The new way is called catch shares. It's arguably the biggest transformation in managing fishing since foreign fleets were restricted from American waters in the late 1970s. The new rules, more than eight years in the making, are the creation of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the quasi-governmental body that works with NOAA in managing West Coast fishing, with broad industry and environmental support.
This race for fish generated big problems. Fishermen would fish hard, regardless of weather or market conditions, resulting in safety issues and a boom-and-bust supply of fish. The result: shorter seasons, potentially unsafe conditions, high levels of bycatch and sharply limited marketing opportunities, which depressed prices, profits and wages.
Catch shares, by contrast, divides the quota into percentage shares controlled by individual fishermen, groups or communities. The fish represented by those shares can be caught whenever the fisherman wants, more efficiently, in decent weather and at more profitable marketing times. No more race for fish. This gets the government out of telling fishermen when and where they can fish, and it puts fishermen back in control of their fishing times and places.
What does all this mean? We're already seeing major benefits after a single year. Landings have remained strong. Revenues per vessel are up — way up for some vessels — reaching $54 million for the fleet in 2011, compared with an annual average of $38 million over the previous five years.
The bycatch of unwanted species has plummeted. The non-whiting groundfish fleet — the one most likely to be plagued by bycatch — discarded only about 5 percent of its catch last year, compared with 17 percent the year before catch shares went into effect. That remarkable shift in discards means greater fishing efficiency, more money for fishermen and a more environmentally friendly fleet.
We're also seeing measurable benefits to the fish stocks themselves as fishermen have the incentive to avoid stocks fishery managers are trying to rebuild. The harvest of darkblotched rockfish, for example, an important stock targeted for rebuilding, fell by more than two-thirds in one year, from 287 to 90 tons.
And finally, the fishery managers and fleet together benefit because for the first time on the West Coast, an entire fishing fleet has full on-board coverage by trained observers. That means everyone knows what species of fish are being caught, in what quantities and where. The precision and reliability of the fishing data have increased substantially. This precision translates directly into better estimates of overall quotas, resulting in better long-term conservation of the stocks. That's good for everybody.
Read the full story in the Oregonian