Economic Impact

Despite all the empirical evidence from fishermen and the one place where it counts, the trawl surveys of the government, telling a conservation success story of a Northwest Atlantic teeming with dogfish and skates — the federal government has effectively shut down the closely related fisheries to protect stocks that would no longer seem to need protection.

So the Zeus Packing Co. is no longer packing. And the 70 to 80 people who drew paychecks from Zeus, an eight-year-old company founded in Gloucester by Spanish interests to buy, clean, pack and export to markets in Europe and Asia, are no longer getting those checks.

Kristian Kristensen, the Zeus CEO, said Tuesday he sees it all as such a waste, nearly a farce. And he attempted to document that through a tour of the refrigerated cleaning and packing rooms, about 8,000 to 9,000 leased square feet in the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction complex that thanks to NOAA actions have the ambiance of a morgue.

"Instead of laying off people," said Kristensen, "we should be hiring people."

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

– 39% of vessels are fishing

– Idle ships crowding port

– Supply companies pinched

 

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – August 29, 2010 – The Standard-Times today published a multi-author multi-part investigation into the effect of the catch share form of fisheries management known as "sectors" upon New England fisheries after the first quarter since the implementation of the new system.

Sectors are a form of catch share management under which the catch allocations for the sector boats aren't issued directly to the permit-carrying boats. Rather, they go to the sector, where they are pooled together. This is significant in that the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires a referendum to approve a system of individual quotas, which federal officials avoided through this new hybrid arrangement.

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Many issues arise from new regulations

Four months after the introduction of a new management system for the multi-species New England groundfishery, there is no conclusive evidence yet as to its efficacy. But one fact has become abundantly clear: Since May 1, when the new rules took effect, the majority of New Bedford draggers have yet to put a net in the water.

That represents bad news not just for the fishermen and their families but to the many support businesses along the waterfront whose health depends on a thriving fishing industry.

The workers who paint, weld, provision, fuel, supply and repair the groundfish fleet will inevitably suffer as fewer boats leave for the fishing grounds.

"Guys have sold their allocation and are tied up until at least next May," according to David deOliveira, who manages two fishing sectors in New Bedford. It is a similar story up in Gloucester, according to Vito Giacolone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, which represents groundfishermen there.

"You can buy quota if you're up against it, but it will cost you," he said. "The shame of it is that these quotas are based on catch history and the guys who cut back on effort in the bad years to conserve the stocks are now suffering for that," deOliveira said. "The ones who took the most fish then are being rewarded now."

According to figures compiled last week by UMass Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology, a survey of seven groundfishing sectors around New England revealed that only 39 percent of enrolled vessels were fishing.

"What we feared is happening now," Giacalone said. "With quota made available throughout the network, the sector that bids the highest dictates the market, even in the other sectors. So the protections that were put in to help fishing communities, I don't see them happening now," he said. "Boats that got enough initial allocation to make it under sectors now have the luxury of paying high prices for additional quota because even if they pay up to three-quarters of its value, it still represents profit for them," Giacalone said. "The fuel is the same, the crew is the same, the insurance is the same. They are adding incrementally, but the people that need base quota just to break even can't compete. All of the ills of a poorly conceived system are rearing their heads early."

Many New Bedford boats have tied up because they don't have the horsepower to successfully fish the new separator trawls that can target abundant haddock stocks while allowing codfish to escape. "The smaller boats are tied up," according to Richie Canastra, who runs the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction. "They would have fished skate wings on George's Bank, but they just lowered the limit on skate from 20,000 to 5,000 pounds per trip."

Frank Mirarchi fishes on a 55-foot dragger out of Scituate. Unlike many New Bedford fishermen, Mirarchi supports sectors, but says he is landing the minimum amount of fish he needs to stay in business in an attempt to stretch his quota over the full year. "By the end of August I will have used up half my fish, so I'm going to zero out," he said. The difficulty lies in the fact that the fishery involves so many species with different quotas. "I'm going to run out of blackback flounder long before I run out of cod," he said of his allocation.

Trading or buying quota was intended to remedy such situations but as yet there is no efficient system in his small sector for that, Mirarchi said. Only half of the boats in Scituate are fishing, he added.

Fishermen believe their economic woes are not a result of any particular management system but from catch limits that they believe are set artificially low. Brian Rothschild, a professor of Marine Science and Technology at SMAST agrees. He said that fishermen last year landed less than 20 percent of the total allowable catch because constraints on yellowtail and other fish prevent them from catching more. "Even if a stock is fully rebuilt, regulators are taking 20 percent out for scientific uncertainty. That could be reduced to 10 percent or five percent," he said.

Here, idle fishing vessels crowding the piers are now giving port officials a headache.

"It's definitely complicated the way we manage the port," said Kristin Decas, executive director of the Harbor Development Commission. "We now have a list of boats that will not fish until May and we don't want them to take valuable dock space that the working boats are using. We need to isolate the boats that are not fishing. It's been frustrating. The federal government never answered us when we asked if they had considered the impact of sectors. They have placed an unfair burden on our community."

Read the complete story by Don Cuddy in the Standard-Times

 

Waterfront businesses feel the pinch from new fishing system

Information from the first quarter, released at the mayor's Ocean and Fisheries Council Meeting last Tuesday indicated that of the 99 boats locally that enrolled in "sectors," as the new catch share system is known, only 31 are fishing.

At Reidar's Manufacturing on the Fairhaven waterfront, a family business that makes trawl gear, the slump has been apparent for some time.

"We've lost 50 percent of our business," said Kirsten Bendiksen. 

Her husband, Reidar Bendiksen said that the uncertainty was the hardest thing to deal with. "There needs to be an endgame," he said.

"We would like to have a business plan for the future. We have outgrown this place and we would like to expand, but now we don't know if that is the right decision."

The Bendiksens fear that the new system could result in consolidation, leaving just a few big players with all the fish and reducing the demand for services. It is a view shared by Harriet Didriksen who owns one of the city's oldest businesses, New Bedford Ship Supply.

Didriksen echoes the complaint of many professionals within the industry that the catch limits, set artificially low, rather than catch shares are at the root of the industry's woes.

"My great uncle came here to fish in 1904. My father was a fisherman and I married a fisherman. It's common sense that if we were depleting the fish stocks we wouldn't be talking about fish today because they would all be gone," she said.

Across the water at Crystal Ice, the plant that services the commercial fishing fleet, machinery hummed and trucks came and went. But the activity did not tell the whole story, according to manager Rob Hicks.

"We're still selling about 350 tons of ice a day, but if it wasn't for the scallopers I don't know if we'd still be in business," he said.

Read the complete story by Don Cuddy in the Standard-Times

 

Sector system working for, against fishermen

Now, about four months into the first year of "sector management" and catch share allocations, the results of the experiment are becoming apparent. Many boats are idle and some are being decommissioned. Some people are getting out of the business as the government hoped they would. Those that remain are settling in with the new system, like it or not.

On one level, the basic buying, selling and trading of catch shares, the system is starting to come into focus. At another level, data collection and allocation calculations, it's a mess and a mystery.

Starting this year, the National Marine Fisheries Service began assigning catch limits for each of 20 groundfish species based on the catch history of individual boats. Overall, the catch limits are sharply lower than what they were the year before. Actual landings have so far kept pace with last year, however, which fishermen say is because the old rules made it impossible to come even close to the allowable catch.

At the same time, the federal government encouraged boats to join sectors, which are self-managed collectives that include a number of boats with similar methods and objectives.

Boats that stayed in the common pool were subjected to a nearly punitive limit of days at sea, the objective being to get as many boats into the sectors as possible.

The catch allocations for the sector boats weren't issued directly to the permit-carrying boats. Rather, they went to the sector, where they are pooled together.

(This was significant in that the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires a referendum to approve a system of individual quotas, which federal officials avoided through this new hybrid arrangement.)

To avoid fines, boat owners are encouraged to make deals for allocations with other boats when they are in danger of running short. The price, said deOliveira, is settled between the two parties and usually involves a computation around the current auction price.

But there are two other major reasons for a boat owner to sell allocations.

The first, said deOliveira, is that their allocations are so small that a boat can't cover expenses for fishing, never mind make a profit. So the boat is idled while the allocation is sold to another, usually larger, boat owner.

The second is that owners of fishing permits can take each year's allocation, getting the best deal they can find. "For the guys who are in their mid-60s, this is like a retirement account," said deOliveira. One permit holder sold his entire 2010 allocation for $120,000, which he can repeat every year as the annual catch share allocations are issued, deOliveira said.

This is producing the consolidation of the industry that NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco desired and predicted.

Read the complete story by Steve Urbon in the Standard-Times

 

Catch-22

Frank Mirarchi, who fishes out of Scituate, was pleased to learn last July 14 that U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke had increased the catch limit on pollock sixfold.

However, more than six weeks later, Mirarchi is still waiting to receive some kind of official notification of the change from the National Marine Fisheries Service and is still confined to the 145 pounds of fish he was allowed under the old catch limit.

"If the cops board me and I have 200 pounds on board what am I going to say 'The check is in the mail?'" he said. "I'm trying to run a business. There's supposed to be more coming in than going out."

Read the complete story by Don Cuddy in the Standard-Times

 

RELATED STORIES

Environmental Defense Fund defends new fishing regulations

Landings, revenues show mixed bag for fishery

New NOAA numbers say fishing revenues up 17 percent

New Bedford Mayor to Commerce Sec'y: catch shares implemented "prematurely", without good planning

Mass. Gov. Patrick urges feds to ease fishing rules, provide relief for industry

Commercial fishing captain tells Obama officials their policies make it hard to produce wild caught seafood

Gloucester Mayor invites Obama; says Lubchenco & Locke provided "no satisfaction"

 

 

 

 

 

The Gloucester commercial fisherman who sent an open letter to President Obama through a full-page in the Vineyard Gazette will not be in the flotilla that will rendezvous at noon today outside Vineyard Haven in a nautical informational picket line. "I've got no money left to protest," said Sherman, who is believed to be the only Harvard-educated commercial fisherman on the East Coast.

"I'm buying ice to go out to Georges (Bank) with three fellows," Sherman said in a telephone interview Wednesday Afternoon. "Going to fish for haddock and cod."

As for the letter, professionally crafted for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, which paid for the Vineyard ad, Sherman said, "Sometimes you have to humble yourself, and tell the world you're going under."

At that, Sherman is not alone. Business failings are reported up and down the coast.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Daily Times.

Scott Memhard talks mostly about the past as he walks around his ice plant that once provided up to 300 tons a day to local fishermen. Memhard, who bought Cape Pond Ice with his father in 1983, still has the machinery to make that much ice. But for years now — because of tough fishing regulations and an exodus of fishermen — he sells just a few tons each day to local captains.

In most cities, Memhard’s 1-acre waterfront building and dock would be worth millions. In Gloucester, though, the property is assessed at less than $1 million. Part of that has to do with a limited-use restriction the city and the state placed on property in the inner harbor in 1978.

Enacted to protect the harbor’s existing fishing and marine interests, the Designated Port Area prohibited new residences, condominiums, hotels, and new recreational marinas within the zone. Also, under the DPA, restaurants and retail stores are prohibited from occupying more than 50 percent of a waterfront property.

Read the complete story from the Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commercial landings data for the first three months of the fishing season from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was somewhat confused, leading to the widespread, incorrect conclusion that landings in Portland, Maine, were booming while landings in Gloucester were falling.

The opposite was the case, NOAA reported after a day's analysis of the landings data, which was released last week and widely disseminated by the Associated Press.

Landings in Portland, according to figures provided the Times by the Portland Fish Exchange, were 388 metric tons in the period, down 17 percent from 2009.

The flawed NOAA chart showed Portland up 66.4 percent, but that was because the landings of each boat were associated with the "principal port of the vessel," rather than where the catch was actually landed.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By JAY LINDSAY and  DAN MCDONALD

BOSTON and NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – August 14, 2010 – The catch for fishermen in the Northeast during the first three months following drastic rule changes fell 10 percent compared to last year but revenues rose 17 percent, according to federal statistics released this week.

It's too soon to draw broad conclusions, but the relatively stable first-quarter numbers are cause for cautious optimism about the switch, said Patricia Kurkul, the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast regional administrator.

"It's sort of on track with what we saw last year, so there's nothing catastrophic going on here," Kurkul said.

However, in New Bedford, some locals panned the federal findings, saying such numbers do not tell the whole story.

Richie Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City and Boston Seafood Display Auction, said in New Bedford for the month of July, his operation saw 700,000 fewer pounds of groundfish than it did in July 2009.

Canastra said 65 percent of the boats in New Bedford are tied up and "they're not going to fish for the year."

The boat owners are, however, leasing out their quotas to larger boats at 60 cents to $1 per pound, he said.

"Take that off the top of the price and where are we?" Canastra asked. "Who's profitable here? It's not the pretty picture they're painting. It's costing the fishermen to go fishing."

Canastra said for the first two months, numbers were up because of haddock, which only a small number of boats in New Bedford can catch because of the separator trawl — a special kind of net — that is needed.

"You need to get that net in mid-water and you need a lot of power," Canastra said. "In New Bedford, many of the boats do not have the power, so they can't take advantage."

Jim Kendall, owner of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, chalked NOAA's numbers up to simple supply-and-demand economics.

"If your supply is down 10 percent, your demand is going to be up and that's being borne by the American consumer," said Jim Kendall, owner of New Bedford Seafood Consulting. "It's great that prices are up for fishermen, but if you have less to sell … where's the balancing point?"

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kendall said, is whitewashing the real state of the industry.

"They're trying to put a happy face on it when they can't," he said. "It's like telling someone: 'The earthquake wasn't that bad. Some people lived.'"

Others are outright questioning the accuracy of NOAA's figures.

Robert Vanasse, executive director of The Project to Save Seafood and Ocean Resources, said NOAA had floated out a number of 38 percent revenue increase earlier this week. NOAA later told him that figure was based on old numbers, he said.

Vanasse, however, was not satisfied with the new numbers, either. He said 36 metric tons of flounder, a "no take, no possession" species, were factored into the new figures.

"It calls into question the whole report," he said. "When we get numbers we can trust, we need to establish who are the winners, who are the losers under catch shares."

Read the complete story from the South Coast Today [subscription site]

 

 

 

 

 

The Environmental Defense Fund, the lead advocate for the catch share system and the organization where National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco honed her catch-share stand as board vice president, has advocated using market incentives to strengthen and modernize fisheries.

In that approach, Giacalone and others noted, the federal buyback fund could be used to fuel consolidation of allocation in an ever-smaller number of hands.

Giacalone noted that the buyback approach could be made to work to reinvigorate the industry if structured differently. He explained that many fishermen in recent years purchased additional days at sea permits when effort control was the business model used by the government to control effort.

When the New England Fishery Management Council last year adopted the catch share approach, it chose 10-year catch histories to determine the allocation or share that went to each fisherman. That made days-at-sea permits next to worthless.

Giacalone argued that compensating fishermen for the devaluation of their investment was justified as government compensation for the destruction of the value of the investment.

By offering to buy up the days-at-sea permits, the government would be recapitalizing the industry.

"Keep fishermen in the game, buy days-at-sea permits," Giacalone urged.

Lubchenco has conceded that her catch share plan will see a "significant fraction" of the fleet removed.

Industry analysts counter that, with the total allowable catch now set by regulators, the government has no legitimate interest in culling down the size of the fleet, and that at some point there could be so few boats the support businesses could collapse.

Consolidation into the hub ports of Gloucester and New Bedford from smaller ports is already underway. Landings statistics published this week indicate that the bigger ports are handling a larger percentage of the total catch.

Odell told the City Hall gathering Friday that the West Coast groundfishery, also in the midst of a catch share consolidation, is already showing the signs of hyper consolidation that worries fishermen and industry leaders in New England and the Middle Atlantic states.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The only assistance the fishing industry needs in the Northeast is for Congress to demand, or legislate (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to utilize common sense in interpretation and implementation of the Magnuson Act," Ouellette wrote amid a rolling online debate that has raged since the relief package was floated out on Aug. 5.

Amid pleas for the $100 million relief package, backed by U.S. Sen. John Kerry, are a growing number of hardline arguments by prestigious fishing industry backers — including Gloucester-based attorney Stephen Ouellette and academic scientist Brian Rothschild — that throwing money at the problem would merely allow politicians to escape their own complicity in the growing crisis and undercut efforts to forge policies aimed at the root of the industry's clash with the federal regulatory system.

"Fishermen didn't ask for handouts when stocks were overfished; they certainly don't want them now that stocks are rebuilt," wrote Ouellette, co-author of a suit challenging the constitutionality and legality of the management regimen that brought the catch shares system to New England on May 1.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

BOSTON – August 12, 2010 – Local consumers may soon be able to find Massachusetts cod at seafood counters and grocery freezers next to Alaskan salmon and Maine lobster.

 A bill, filed by Rep. James Cantwell of Marshfield and signed by Gov. Deval Patrick on Monday, would create a commission to consider ways to brand seafood caught in Massachusetts.

The commission would also consider whether a state marketing program for commercial fishing businesses would stabilize the industry.

The 13 commission members will be chosen from among the Legislature, state agencies and industry groups.

Fishermen hope that labeling seafood as a local product could attract more local customers.

Read the complete story from The Patriot Ledger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By JAY LINDSAY Associated Press Writer

BOSTON – August 13, 2010 – The catch for fishermen in the Northeast during the first three months following drastic rule changes fell 10 percent compared to last year but revenues rose 17 percent, according to federal statistics released this week.

It's too soon to draw broad conclusions, but the relatively stable first-quarter numbers are cause for cautious optimism about the switch, said Patricia Kurkul, the National Marine Fisheries Service's Northeast regional administrator.

"It's sort of on track with what we saw last year, so there's nothing catastrophic going on here," Kurkul said.

Industry advocates say the statistics would tell a more complete story if they included how many boats went to sea. Odell said the early catch may have been driven largely by a few fishermen who have bigger catch limits. Brian Rothschild, a marine science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, said the large haddock catch likely went to big vessels, since they're the only ones with the horsepower to tow special nets used to corral haddock.

Rothschild added that federal regulators have got to do better than stay relatively even with last year, when fishermen only caught a fraction of what they were permitted to catch.
"If this year we're catching the same amount as last year, then the present system is no better," he said.

Kurkul said one concern was recorded landings for species that aren't supposed to be caught at all, including southern New England winter flounder, which showed 36 metric tons for the quarter. Kurkul said the number could be the result of wrongdoing, faulty reporting by dealers or compiled from statistics gathered by third-party federal catch observers.
"What we need to do is dig deeply into the numbers to find out exactly what happened," Kurkul said.

The catch got a boost because the new rules allowed fishermen into areas previously closed in May, and unusually high prices helped fishermen at the start of this fishing season, said Jackie Odell of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, a fishing industry group.

But the early numbers are likely masking that a broad section of the fleet hasn't started fishing yet because fishermen are limited to catching so few fish this year, she said.

"I know a lot of fishermen right now that are very, very concerned about their allocation for the whole year and don't think there's anything positive out of what's taken place over the last three months," Odell said Friday.

Though the total catch was relatively even, fishing varied among ports. In Gloucester, the catch dropped about 13 percent in the first quarter, but New Bedford groundfishermen increased their catch by 10 percent.

Portland, Maine, saw a huge jump, with 61 percent more groundfish landings in the first quarter, compared to last year. But Kurkul said Portland may just be absorbing the catch from the state's other ports, whose combined catch dropped 50 percent during the same period. The haul in Rhode Island was 15 percent higher than last year, but it dropped 43 percent in New Hampshire, an area where fisherman have been staying tied up, Kurkul said.

Read the Associated Press story in the Mercury News