Opinion

The NORPEL story is not only a story about how overregulation can make it impossible for a responsible business to operate. It also is a story about unintended consequences and about how much we still do not know about migratory fish and what affects their populations.

NORPEL's trawlers haul herring and mackerel, mid-ocean species that are caught and sold to mostly overseas buyers.

There are two problems.

Mackerel have been hard to find and so the catch has been down dramatically. Whether that is a result of overfishing, climate or migratory change, or normal population fluctuations is unclear and in need of further study.

Meanwhile, the herring haul has been closed down because even though there are plenty of herring, the trawlers hauling that species often catch haddock at the same time.

And when the overly restrictive bycatch limit on haddock, whose stocks also are abundant, is reached, entire stretches of the Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine are shut down.

NORPEL cannot process or sell fish it cannot catch or keep.

The company, the city and advocates for the fishing industry have pushed the New England Fisheries Management Council to loosen the limits on the haddock bycatch, but as is often the case with fisheries regulators, imminent economic disaster in fishing communities is often not enough to move them.

By now, everyone knows that federal fisheries law establishes that the economic impact on fishing communities is as important as environmental impact in the establishment and enforcement of fishing rules and regulations. To date, however, the big environmental lobbies have wielded their influence over policy setters far more successfully than the commercial fishing industry or fishing communities like New Bedford and Gloucester.

That is the primary argument included in a federal lawsuit on the matter, and we are confident that the industry ultimately will prevail in the courts.

In the meantime, however, it would be an act of good faith for the management council to move quickly on a loosening of the senselessly restrictive haddock bycatch limit — and to commission research into what has happened to mackerel stocks.

Read the complete editorial from the Standard Times.

 

 

 

 

 

As the problem of overfishing recedes it is replaced by a new dilemma…regulators must now turn their attention to ensuring restrictions go as far as they possibly can to ensure fishermen are capable of catching the fish the law allows.

Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.
— National Standard (1) of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act 

As the problem of overfishing recedes, however, it is replaced by a new dilemma. Recall the words of National Standard (1) requiring both prevention of overfishing and achievement of the optimum yield. As the first goal is achieved, regulators must now turn their attention to the second by ensuring restrictions go as far as they possibly can to ensure fishermen are capable of catching the fish the law allows them to harvest.

New England groundfishermen caught barely a quarter of the total amount of fish they were legally able to harvest in 2008. A back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the value of fish actually brought to market means catching all the fish to which they were entitled would have equated to roughly an additional $300 million in value. At the same time, in 2009, the United States imported $13.1 billion worth of seafood or 84 percent of the total amount we consume—in nearly all cases from countries with less stringent environmental safeguards.

This year’s early data shows that sector management has made some improvement in this area. But still, as of March 26, with just over a month left in the fishing year that ends on April 30, the only stock even close to its allowable harvest for the year was Gulf of Maine cod. Fishermen in sectors have caught about 80 percent of their allowable amount, according to NMFS’s own data. Meanwhile, they have caught just 17 percent of their Georges Bank haddock—the single stock that accounts for more than half of the total available groundfish catch.

Fishermen have a legitimate beef when they complain that regulations are preventing them from catching fish that scientists say they should be able to catch. The law is clear on this point: Regulators must act as swiftly and decisively now to help fishermen catch more of the fish they are allowed to land as they did to impose restrictions when harvest levels were too high.

Sector management, like many fishery management plans, is a work in progress, and by allowing fishermen to trade their quota among groups, the hope is it will allow harvest of more of the healthier fish populations. As it evolves, it will be critical for regulators, industry members, and other stakeholders to understand that failure to strive for optimum yield from our fisheries is failure to adhere to the law. At a time when our economy is struggling to rebound, and every job is counted, regulators must minimize the waste in our system and stop leaving money at the bottom of the ocean.

Read the complete opinion piece from American Progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It would be difficult to explain to somebody in Egypt, say, who was waiting for the frozen herring to arrive on the ship from New Bedford that it wasn’t coming any more even thought the herring stocks are not depleted.

The fishermen can’t catch them because of haddock? he asks. Is haddock depleted?. Well no, there are tons and tons of haddock out there that won’t even get caught, you explain. Now he’s puzzled. And he is not the only one. This is a strange way to manage fish stocks, he might say. If Norpel closes it not only means a fish plant and the jobs, it is also trade and commerce within the port as these freighters were bringing cargo in and finding another right here, carrying herring and mackerel to countries where people still eat these species and are glad to get them.

See this blog at The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

I was stunned to learn that the administration's FY 2012 budget would eliminate the NIOSH fishing safety program—a cut which would save the federal government at most a few hundred thousand dollars.

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by Gunnar Knapp (Opinion) April 6, 2011- For most Americans, the “Deadliest Catch” is a TV show. For me, the real deadliest catch is an ongoing human tragedy of loss and grief, of hundreds of commercial fishermen who have died across America since I began studying fishing safety twenty-five years ago, and calculated some of the first statistics to show just how deadly the commercial fishing industry is. 

But things are getting better. There are more news stories in Alaska and other fishing states about heroic Coast Guard rescues of fishermen in survival suits and life rafts. There are fewer stories about abandoned searches for boats that disappeared with all hands lost, and the anguish of their families, friends and communities. Annual deaths in Alaskan commercial fishing are down from 35 per year in the early 1990s to about 12 per year from 2007-2009—which still leaves fishing as one of the most dangerous industries in Alaska and the country.

Things are getting better because the fishing industry and the government have been working together to make fishing safer. Many things have made a difference, such as laws requiring boats to fishing to carry immersion suits, life rafts, and EPIRBS; marine safety training; augmentations to the US Coast Guard's search and rescue infrastructure and staffing; and changes in the management regulations for some fisheries.

An important part of what has made a difference is the NIOSH Commercial Fishing Safety Research Program, a small program within the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Over the past twenty years, the NIOSH fishing safety program has worked systematically to understand fishing safety problems—what makes the difference between people dying and surviving—and to find practical ways of making fishing safer. It has funded safety training programs for fishermen. It has developed an emergency stop switch for the hydraulic winch-driven gear that has entangled and killed and injured so many fishermen. It has made the case for cost-effective safety regulations that make sense for different fisheries and different kinds of boats. 

So I was stunned to learn that the administration's FY 2012 budget would eliminate the NIOSH fishing safety program—a cut which would save the federal government at most a few hundred thousand dollars. Unbelievably, the stated rationale was a review of NIOSH programs by a National Academy of Sciences panel which had specifically praised the fishing safety program as an “exemplary” program which had “executed its research according to how an ideal program would operate.” (Members of the panel have since written to Congress protesting the misunderstanding of their review and misuse of its conclusions.)

People who understand what is at stake, like the United Fishermen of Alaska, the Coast Guard's Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Commission, and Alaska's Congressional delegation are doing what they can to argue against cutting this NIOSH fishing safety program. I hope they will be heard. 

I'm an economist. I recognize the importance of getting federal spending in line with revenues. But we're not going to get there by blindly slashing some of the most important things the federal government does—which account for only a tiny fraction of what we're spending—because we're in a rush to cut and we can't face up to the real issues of how much health care and defense we want and how we're going to pay for it.

I know deficits can drag this country down. So the president and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress should start talking seriously about real solutions to the deficit. What will really drag this country down, and a lot faster, is giving up believing we can do better as a country and thoughtlessly cutting programs which work. Like the NIOSH Commercial Fishing Safety Research program.

Gunnar Knapp is a Professor of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research. In the 1980s he estimated fatality rates in Alaska's commercial fishing industry and served on the National Research Council's Committee on Fishing Vessel Safety. He has done some research for and received some funding from the NIOSH fishing safety program.

This opinion piece originally ran in SeafoodNews.com, a subscription service.  It is reproduced with permission.

 

 

 

 

It's essential that any added allocation be funneled to the struggling small, independent boats — not the big-boat business of Maine, or the Cape Cod Hook Fishermen's Association, which have already gotten more than their share through the New England Council's shaky actions in the past.

And it's equally vital that any new research efforts not be run through NOAA or groups tied to its catch share puppeteer, the Environmental Defense Fund. For any research to have credibility, it has to include significant input from the likes of Brian Rothschild's acclaimed UMass-Dartmouth marine science program and representatives of at least the ports of Gloucester and New Bedford.

Kerry's assessment that discussion has come a long way is worth noting, and he deserves immense credibility for taking a greater leadership role on these issues.

But the bottom line is turning these positive discussions into action — the kind of truly independent action fishermen have been owed for a very long time.

Read the complete opinion piece from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A team of economists from the University of Maryland, working with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, has devised an intriguing program to use $3.5 million in federal funds to buy back and retire seldom-used commercial crabbing licenses that have been issued to watermen working the Chesapeake Bay. The state has tried this before, with at best modest success, but this time they may have a better idea.

The objective of the buyback is to reduce pressure on the crab population and to enable DNR officials to get an accurate count of the number of active commercial crabbers working the bay. Although the targets for the buyback program are people who don't use their licenses very often, an unknown number of them will make use of them in any given year, and DNR wants to remove that unpredictability from their calculations on how to manage the crab harvest. Better numbers would result in better policy, or so the theory goes.

When the state tried a buyback two years ago, it asked watermen to name their own price. It didn't work so well; one waterman offered to sell his for $425 million. The state tried again by offering $2,260 for the holders of "limited crab catcher" licenses and did modestly better. This time, the state is going after a higher class of licensees, and it's trying a more sophisticated theory of "crabonomics."

Read the complete opinion piece from The Baltimore Sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all know we are a distressed community, and it's good to know that Washington, D.C. knows it, too.

The U.S. commerce secretary's office in Washington, D.C., contacted me the day before they made the announcement and explained the program. A couple of things jumped right out at me during the discussion.

First, they set specific criteria and ran each community through a formula to determine hardship. Gloucester passed this test with flying colors. We came out as a distressed community, and therefore qualified for the program. We all know we are a distressed community, and it's good to know that Washington, D.C., knows it, too.

Second, they will be taking a wholistic view of our local economy. The assistance is not limited to the fishing industry.

Read the complete opinion piece from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

So the U.S. Department of Commerce, still headed by Secretary Gary Locke, though his name was oddly absent Wednesday's announcement, has finally recognized that economic hardships faced by Gloucester's and New England's small independent fishing businesses, and the communities whose economies they support, have been brought on in large part by our own federal government's fisheries policies.

And to make amends, the fishing ports of Gloucester, New Bedford; Portland, Maine; Seabrook, N.H.; Point Judith, R.I.; and Montauk, Long Island, will now be getting immediate special attention and assistance.

"Economic development assessment teams will deploy next month to conduct a two-day analysis of six Northeast fishing communities," the department said in an announcement posted on the agency's website just after noon. And that, indeed, is good news.

But before anyone follows up our opening hallelujah with glowing hosannas for Locke and his Commerce colleagues, consider that no one has yet attached any dollar figure that might be used to mitigate the department's — and its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's — beatdown of the industry through both its conversion to the catch shares management system and overly tight catch limits.

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fishing leaders are  right in expressing their outrage over hundreds of millions of dollars being steered away from marketing the U.S. seafood industry, as directed by the 1954 Saltonstall-Kennedy Act, and largely plugged into the operations, research and facilities kitties of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Yes, the past mishandling of these millions — raised each year through the tariffs paid by foreign exporters who continue to flood the U.S. seafood market — indeed demands a federal accounting probe, as Jones suggests.

But it should also trigger an immediate NOAA budget freeze — not only on the allocation of any new NOAA funds budgeted for future and bogus catch share programs, as a budget amendment that passed the U.S. House last month would require, but also for the agency's full fiscal 2012 spending plan, with money from the tariffs pulled out and re-directed to fisheries support and marketing as required.

How far afield has the industry's money gone? Consider that, in fiscal 2010, the Department of Commerce should have been mandated under the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act and its amendments to spend $68 million on "fishing industry projects" from some $113.4 million in tariffs paid to U.S. Customs Service on imported seafood.

Read the complete editorial by The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like EDF/NOAA and perhaps a "winner" fisherman or two from the Great State of Maine got to Sen. Snowe, et al, with almost every one of the patently untrue EDF/NOAA talking points.

 "The Days-at-Sea program had plunged our fishing industry into a downward spiral, decimating fish stocks and diminishing prospects at sea from 65 days to as few as 14 in 2010."   Sen. Olympia Snowe

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/empowering-fishermen-to-manage-groundfishery-is-working_2011-03-25.html

Looks like EDF/NOAA and perhaps a "winner" fisherman or two from the Great State of Maine got to Sen. Snowe, et al, with almost every one of the patently untrue EDF/NOAA talking points: namely that the Days-At-Sea system was the culprit all along and catch shares have now saved the day and all the fishermen want to "stay the course" and "…make continued improvements to the management of the new, sector based system"  "…rather than developing a new one". (That statement doesn't make any sense at all, does it? EDF/NOAA just arbitrarily rammed in a new system last May 1).

Of course we don't need another new system; what we need is some honesty and integrity in this debate.  In fact we need a debate; we never had one.

There was no demonstrable scientific need in 2010 for a drastic change in the management regime to the new catch shares or for a further reduction of the catch limits at that time.  The input control or days-at-sea system had seen the majority of fish stocks return to health, some were completely rebuilt, and most were not being overfished and were progressing toward sustainability (see NOAA website linked below).  A fishery will fail under any type of management scheme if there are simply not enough fish in the system that can be landed, whether it’s a days-at-sea, or a hierarchical point system, or a catch shares/sector model.  What effects fish mortality is Total Allowable Catch not who owns what percentage of the TAC.

The problems the industry experienced with the days-at-sea system were largely due to the labyrinth of additional overly constrictive regulations: trip catch limits, daily catch limits, rolling and seasonal closures, and low yearly Total Allowable Catches, —and unprofessionally hostile adversarial enforcement.  The surveys used for the stock assessments which saw the Days-At-Sea diminished to nearly nothing, were shown to be outdated and flawed.

It was flawed data admitted by NOAA to be inaccurate, but used anyway, as the basis for drastic cuts in catch limits and days-at-sea that “…plunged our fishing industry into a downward spiral” not the Days-At Sea program structure itself.  This squeezing off of product flow to our domestic markets has also invited in foreign imports to the tune of 85% of all fish consumed in the U.S.  That is a “downward spiral”.  Flatfish prices in the middle of a stormy winter this year were at a level seen 30 years ago.  That’s not only a “downward spiral”, that’s a “death spiral” for our businesses; and you can’t blame that one on days-at-sea, that’s all NOAA/EDF’s choking an industry. Catch shares certainly cannot cure the hostile stance NOAA exhibits toward the fishing industry.

It’s not the type of management system so much as it is the intention and the goals of management that will determine whether any system fails or succeeds.  It is this intention or posture that will effect how funding will be allocated, how sound the survey methods will be, whether there will be a predisposition, i.e., or if some integrity will be employed in the analyses of the data in order to ensure accurate stock assessment while setting the TAC’s. It is the way a system is used by the managers that can either enhance or obliterate a fishery.

The claim that the days-at-sea system has failed to stop overfishing, and therefore needed to be replaced by catch shares, without delay, is a false argument.  This is an argument which cites outdated stock assessments based on incomplete and inaccurate science that was used to squeeze off catch limits over the years. Blaming the days-at-sea system is a cover for the mismanagement of the entire fishery for the last twenty or more years and a blatantly disingenuous oversimplification of an enormously complex eco-system and its dynamics.  It is used as a selling point to impose this “new” groundfish catch share system, a system which, for an overly risk-adverse NOAA agency, is very risky.

“Underscoring the industry's deterioration, the 2009 Status of U.S. Fisheries report listed 12 of the 20 species as overfished in New England, with the fewest cod caught in New England in more than 60 years.”

NOAA's recent Stock Sustainability Survey shows that out of the 250 monitored stocks 85% are free from overfishing and no new stocks have been added to the overfishing list.  The “Report Text” on the below linked web site also states that from 2000 to 2009 the Fish Stock Sustainability Index increased by 60%. Cleary stock rebuilding needs to continue; but according to NOAA’s own survey the stocks are well into the process of rebuilding and are projected to continue to improve. This progress all happened under the dastardly Days-At-Sea program. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/statusoffisheries/SOSmain.htm

If stocks are free from overfishing, they are on the way to getting off the overfished list, and catch shares had nothing at all to do with these statistics of progress from 2009. Scientists and even Eric Schwabb have declared overfishing has ended—and not because of catch shares—that would be impossible. So why is there this myopic urgent dogmatic push for an unprecedented, radical, controversial, and according to similar programs around the world, dubious management regime change?

If the “fewest cod caught in New England in 60 years” was recorded in 2009, look to the draconian catch restrictions, i.e., not allowing fish to be landed, rather than that statistic being seen as an indication that the fish aren’t there.  The new Director of Scientific Programs and Chief Science Advisor for NOAA Fisheries, Dr. Douglas DeMasters states clearly “…when you’re trying to manage a fishery on catch or landing data alone, you’re in a risky position.  All of the history we have in our experience suggests that catch data alone is very difficult to manage fisheries properly.” He then adds “…if you have assessment scientists who have some sense of the status of the stock: are they depleted or not depleted, are they productive or not productive, are they long lived or not, those are the features that go in, or some of the assumptions that are made, in using these catch only assessments for data poor stocks.” (My emphasis) It appears that using catch and landings data when assessing stock health invites prejudice on the part of the scientist assessor and is therefore not a trustworthy management tool.

It is disingenuous and manipulative to claim—for a catch share system in effect for a mere10 months—that "revenues have increased" and "…that the catch of healthy stocks, including haddock and redfish are up by more than 10%", implying the stocks are rebounding and the catch is up due to the implementation of catch shares?  A more accurate appraisal of the statistics reveals that catch and revenues are up for only 20% of the fleet, while the rest of the boats are tied up and families are starving in the largest New England ports of New Bedford, Gloucester, Point Judith, and Montauk.  The same is true for fishing ports of the Mid-Atlantic and southern states as well.

Revenues have not increased in real terms, only using the accounting “slight of hand” by hiding the cost of buying allocation are revenues up; however, when you get honest and factor in the cost of buying the necessary poundage to fish on very few operations are even paying their bills, no less profiting.  In many cases this new gambling aspect, introduced by catch shares, has created more "broker trips" than ever before. Plus we’re on target to leave 70% of the “allowable” biological catch of haddock swimming in the ocean again this year due to ridiculously low allocations. That is not a “fundamentally sound strategy” or an effective intelligent management system. 

It's enough of a gamble every time a fisherman leaves the dock without being forced to speculate on the fish prices paid out for poundage allocation before leaving that dock.  Returning with a load of fish worth less than the price paid for the "privilege" to go catch them is not what the fishermen, I talk to, are likely to call "…significant signs of promise" or the "…flexibility to fish more efficiently" as touted by Eric Schwabb at the latest DC hearing and quoted by Sen. Snowe.  They call it having the fish stolen out from under them by speculators and complicit mono-chromatic bureaucrats.

This editorial quotes one EDF lie after another, in fact, it looks like a blog straight from the EDF website.  Anyone who knows anything about fishing knows that it's the Total Allowable Catch that determines the mortality of a fish stock; not the particular control valve mechanism used to administer or regulate that TAC.

The claim that ITQ’s or Catch Shares have a profound beneficial effect on the health of fish populations and therefore become a benefit to fishing communities, cannot be statistically supported.  Actually the opposite seems true, most TAC’s worldwide under catch shares, some for decades, show a decline over the years.  Fish populations have increased and declined over the years with apparent disregard for the management regime in place.  What does have some effect on fishing mortality is TAC and trip and daily catch limits, not who owns what percentage of the TAC.

The report, "Updated Status of New Zealand's fish stocks", Sept. 2009, www.fish.govt.nz/ begins with the statement: "In New Zealand, setting and adjusting Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and/or Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACCs) to limit annual catches is the primary mechanism for managing our fisheries. This is generally thought to be the most effective management metthod worldwide."

The basic structure of the catch share system is the destructive commodification and privatization of the public resource.  In this system the fish are irreversibly separated from the fishermen and their licenses; then the allocated fishing “shares” or individual allocations of fish poundage become tradable market-capitalized entities. The “shares” will likely wind up bouncing around somewhere in the commodities cyber-trading world, perhaps bundled up into a “fishy” derivative. But after the consequent over-capitalization, as historically evidenced by other countries under existing catch share programs, and typical of these schemes, the majority of the shares definitely will not be found connected to small private fishing operations.  Because of a lack of financial liquidity for most fishermen, small fishing operations are now being priced out of their own industry. See “A cautionary tale about ITQ fisheries”, “8 Lessons”, (Ecotrust Canada). www.ecotrust.ca/fisheries/cautionarytale

This catch share system has nothing to do with fish stock health.  It is merely a financial ploy to make a few insiders (“winners”) rich.  Why else would EDF have been hawking catch shares to The Milken Institute investors months before NMFS approved them?

Over the last 20 years or more, fishermen took the need for regulations in stride and sacrificed large portions of their livelihoods; some lost their homes and businesses. The fish are not now recovering because of a financial boondoggle called catch shares; no more so than the Days-At-Sea system caused the industry’s deterioration.  The industry has problems because of unrealistic agenda-driven regulatory pressure.  That miracle was accomplished by Pew, EDF, NOAA, and by everyone who failed to stand up to them; not by a particular management method.

Sen. Snowe, this March 25 Portland Press Herald editorial is not worthy of you and your clear stance as a fisheries advocate.  Please turn off the EDF machine, go down to the docks and talk to some fishermen, not only in Maine (this is a national federal program, as you know, which is being foisted on all U.S. fishermen), but visit Gloucester MA, New Bedford MA, Point Judith RI, Montauk and Shinnecock NY, Point Pleasant and Cape May NJ, Hatteras NC, etc. and see how "promising" the "preliminary data" is from this catch share debacle.  We need you to fight for all of us.