January 9, 2013 — It's a system, called catch shares, that the government and environmental groups will tell you is the best thing to happen to fish since catch limits. But fishermen in the halibut and black-cod industry—the first in the country to live with the bizarre realities of these new policies—have weathered its real consequences, outcomes that fly in the face of more official, rosy portrayals. Outcomes like absentee landlords, brokers and bankers, fish quota that costs more than your house, and a new generation of people cluttering their hulls, demanding sandwiches.
Those owners, the ones who were gifted the shares at the outset of the program's launch, own that fish now—or, more specifically, they own the rights to catch a certain amount each year. The program is designed to make them eventually sell that quota as they get older and stop fishing. And it's intended to land those shares in the hands of young fishermen, as no one is supposed to be able to purchase quota unless they can prove 150 days or more of commercial fishing experience. But the sad truth is that few of those initial quota holders let go of their shares. They're too valuable an asset to sell. And for the next generation—who have to buy quota rather than receive it from the government—catch shares are expensive, an investment on par with buying real estate in a volatile market.
The result is that about half the halibut caught in 2011 was dragged out of the sea by guys who leased quota from these owners. Legally, the first generation of quota owners are allowed to hire a skipper, like Painter or Bright, and lease them the right to fish for their shares. That means whenever Painter and Bright go fishing, they not only provide the boat, pay the crew, and take the risk on the sea—they also pay rent to their fishing landlords, who sit at home and collect a check.
The rent used to be about 50 percent of the value of the fish, worth up to $7.14 a pound at the docks in 2011, to the owner. The deal has earned the owners nicknames like "slipper skippers" and "mailbox fishermen." Greedy as the practice can be, it's permissible, the government's way of making the new program look and act like the old one, in which seasoned fishermen traditionally hired skippers to helm their boats as they aged out.
Yet as the quota era of fishing has taken hold, the stealthier and more opportunistic practice of walking on has become a trend that stalks a fine line of legality. Those who bought quota after January 1995 aren't allowed to lease. They are supposed to sell as they retire instead, encouraged to do so by a "boots on deck" rule that says they have to be on the boat while their quota is fished, unless they own the boat, or at least 20 percent of it. The idea was to transition the fishery away from leasing over time. But while the goal of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council—one of eight regional councils the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to implement fish management—was that quota owners actively participate in fishing their quota, they set no requirement that those owners actually lay their hands on fishing gear. That loophole let a leasing culture sink deep hooks into the halibut fishery.
There are a few exceptions. Some walk-ons still fish alongside their skippers and crew. Others are young crewmen who buy quota as a guarantee of finding work, or bought a little but can't afford a boat. And some are fishing widows. But the remainder are visitors, industry retirees, tourists, or investors. They don't fish. They simply walk on the boat, climb below deck, and entertain themselves while others do the work.
"This last fella that I leased, he was in his 80s," says Painter. "He would come on board, read four or five books and watch movies, and that was about it. He doesn't come outside."
Read the full story at Seattle Weekly