January 29, 2013 — Jesus chose fishermen as disciples because of their work ethic, self-education, savvy business skills, patience and strong community presence. Today they are punished for those traits. Reductions in cod quotas of 80-90 percent will lead to one thing: extinction of the inshore groundfish fleet.
As the debate looms over whether Gulf of Maine cod catch limits for 2013 and beyond should be cut by 90 percent or a mere 80 percent, I found myself drawn to a piece of writing that I submitted as part of my college application in 2002. Dramatically enough, it was titled "Extinction" and recapped my naive first 18 years of life as part of a small-boat New England fishing family. The essay started ominously enough by stating that "every year, New England's fleet shrinks and approaches extinction." Typically enough, for a pro-fisherman piece, it bashed government science for using incorrect data and ignoring fishermen's observations, while bemoaning the days of 30-pound trip limits. However, it ended on a cautiously optimistic note highlighting the then-recent increase in cod trip limits to 400 pounds a day.
Looking back at this work, written more than a decade ago, I am dumbfounded to see that New England groundfish management has once again regressed. Today, I am deep into my pursuit of a PhD in fisheries stock assessment, but more naive than ever. I still find myself questioning the same points as 11 years ago, which was long before I even knew what a stock assessment was. Watching the current debates and seeing how simple model assumptions such as the form of a stock-recruit function, the starting year of a model, domed-versus-flat-topped selectivity, or the value of natural mortality rates can drastically alter population trajectories and stock status indicators is disconcerting. Although I strongly trust in the long-established historical basis of stock assessment techniques, one aspect is true for all scientific fields: A model is only as good as the data that it is based on.
At one time, I believed that becoming a fisherman was my calling, but my common sense and love of problem-solving (along with a slight urging from my parents) pushed me into science. That same common sense, though, is having trouble reconciling what I have seen on the ocean over the last 15 summers and what current assessments claim is the status of the stock. As a scientist, it pains me to say, but it seems that no amount of modeling is going to solve the current Gulf of Maine cod crisis. Unreliable historical data, changes in government survey techniques, and unresolved questions regarding discard rates and recreational catch make almost every data source uncertain in the current assessment. The solution will not come from modeling, but from management. What is required is common sense and learning from our past mistakes. Eliminating highly uncertain rebuilding timelines and using past sustainable catches as guides for 2013 and beyond might be one step forward.
With the way sector management is constructed and the wide-scale quota reductions being proposed, such regulations will be the death-knell of a once proud and sustainable fleet. Many people do not believe such cries from New England fishermen because they have been making the same claim for decades. However, it is owing to their extreme resilience and ingenuity that a fleet still exists. In the current regime, fishermen have been robbed of robust fishing portfolios. Where they could once subsume a loss of cod by switching to flounder or secondary fisheries like shrimping, these options no longer exist. It appears certain that, if the government and New England fisheries managers continue to steam-roll in the current direction with no consideration of the past or common sense, what I thought unthinkable in 2002 will soon become a reality. Reductions in cod quotas of 80-90 percent will lead to one thing: extinction of the inshore groundfish fleet.
If small-boat fishermen do disappear, then the world will be losing some of the most culturally and historically rich people who are maintaining a living history dating back to the Old Testament and beyond. Jesus once chose fishermen as his disciples because of their work ethic, self-education, savvy business skills, patience and strong community presence. Today they are punished for those same traits, and being forced out of an occupation handed down for millennia; the only occupation they know. Perhaps we should all step back next time we order out and choose the "sustainable" factory-trawled Alaskan pollock over the hand-caught Gulf of Maine cod. Are 200-foot factory trawlers owned by million-dollar businesses how we want the fishing industry to end up? And is an industry of a few large boats truly more sustainable than a handful of small boats, or does it simply come down to the reliability of science and management? With 90-percent reductions based on highly uncertain data, in five years time the New England groundfish industry will be consolidated into the hands of a few factory trawlers employing tenant-fishermen. I wonder if the sermons of Jesus would carry the same weight today if they had been given from the decks of a factory trawler instead of the rails of a painstakingly handcrafted fishing vessel.
Daniel Goethel is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology
Read the full opinion piece by Daniel Goethel at Seacoast Online