Opinion

Jane Lubchenco made one very important public commitment — on the record and under oath.  She noted that the problems in enforcement of fishery regulations, documented in a blistering report by U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser, had predated her tenure. But she added, "I own them, and I intend to fix them."

If Lubchenco truly intends to fix the problems, there are two things she should carry out immediately.

The first is to out and out fire Dale Jones, the NOAA law enforcement director for the past decade of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Second, she should order that $8.5 million in an Asset Forfeiture Fund, also controlled by Jones until recently, be spent on improvements to the fishery, and on providing reimbursement to Northeast fishermen who have been driven into bankruptcy and out of the industry by fines and penalties 250 percent more severe than those handed out in other parts of the country.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

About a week ago I got a call from my friend John Edens the fisherman. He told me about a rally in Washington, DC, protesting the Magnuson-Stevens Act. A bus was going to take fishermen from Hampstead, N.C., up to the capital. After all the years I filmed in Sneads Ferry making Wild Caught, I had to film it—so I called and got the last seat on the bus.

The Magnuson-Stevens Conservation Management Act was passed in 2007 with the goal of controlling endangered fish species—but it’s turned into a rigid tool that endangers fishermen, especially the small-scale fishermen like the guys in Sneads Ferry. Two bills are in Congress that will allow more flexibility in applying the guidelines of the act. www.unitedwefish.com has information on the bills to make the act more fishermen-friendly.

The bus left at midnight Tuesday night, drove through the night to DC. I was surrounded by with a bunch of angry (but very amiable) fishermen.

Imagine a busload of fishermen in their slickers carrying signs walking through Union Station—we got a lot of stares!  We took the Metro to the NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration/National Marine Fisheries) offices in Silver Spring, MD. For John Edens, his son Rob, and many others, it was the first time they had ever been on a subway). When we got to NOAA, I was immediately ordered to shut my camera down! we were essentially thrown out of three office buildings; at the third building, I was threatened with arrest for stepping too close to the building. (Shades of Michael Moore, but I’m better looking.) We were forced to picket on a snow-piled, icy strip by the road.

Read the complete column at Word Press.

Many of the big decisions that affect our fishing industry are made by people who are far away and have never set foot in Alaska. The following are a few that fishing-dependent families and communities should have on their radars.

Laine Welch discusses catch shares, marine spatial planning, sea lions, and herring.

Read this column at Anchorage Daily News.

I am not an opponent of catch shares, limited access privilege programs, individual transferable quotas, sectors, or any other management tool. However, I am seriously opposed to any management tool being forced on a fishery and the people in it.

When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar
Then you know that fishing heaven’s not very far
Shovel all the coal in
Gotta keep it rollin'
Woo, woo, Catch Shares there you are
(With apologies to the memory and the art of Glenn Miller)

First off, a disclaimer of sorts. I am not an opponent of catch shares, limited access privilege programs, individual transferable quotas, sectors, or any other management tool. However, I am seriously opposed to any management tool being forced on a fishery and the people in it and I am seriously opposed to any management tool being misrepresented to gain industry, public or political support for its imposition.

 Since confirmation, NOAA/NMFS head Jane Lubchenco has used her position in the Obama Administration to force catch shares on US fishermen.

 The claims that New England groundfish fishermen have voluntarily accepted and embraced catch shares, as the system’s proponents have done, cannot pass the straight face test with anyone who was actually following events.

 One of Jane Lubchenco’s first act as the newly appointed head of the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was to travel to New England to announce she was instituting a national policy “encouraging” the use of catch shares as the management technique of choice. New England, of course, is ground zero for ineffectual fisheries management revolving around the Northeast groundfish complex (see Chronic Underfishing at Fish Net USA).

 This was not surprising. Dr. Lubchenco had been on the Board of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an ENGO that has been working towards the institutionalization of catch shares, and on establishing the financial infrastructure to capitalize on it, for years.

 What has been surprising is the manipulation of our federal fisheries governance system, evident in the recently released NOAA/NMFS budget for Fiscal Year 2011 (available from NOAA). Along with asking for $36.6 million in new money for Catch Shares, Dr. Lubchenco is seeking the transfer of $11.4 million out of Fisheries Research and $6 million – about half of last year’s request – out of Cooperative Research.

 At first glance this seems only a simple matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul – shifting funding from one program area to another. But the fallout is going to be much more significant.

 It all begins with the fact that in recent years what is known as the “precautionary principle” has been zealously applied to fisheries management. What this means is that the less is known about the status of a stock of fish, the more stringently fishing effort is managed on that stock. Simplifying a bit, if a stock assessment is estimated to have a 10% margin of error, it can be managed safely at 90% of the estimate. If it is estimated with a 40% margin, it must be managed at 60% of the estimate. Hence, the worse the data on a fishery is, the more the fishermen have to pay in foregone harvest for the inaccuracy.

 Recreational and commercial fishermen realize this and are constantly striving for better science and better data, which can only be had through better research and corresponding research budgets. Fishermen know that the more that is known about fisheries, the better off they, and the fish, will be.

 Considering the full spectrum of fisheries science, the gold standard – at least from a fisherman’s perspective – is cooperative research. In cooperative research projects, a team of scientists goes to sea on a commercial fishing boat crewed by a commercial fishing crew using commercial fishing gear. They measure, weigh, and count the fish that are caught. I doubt anyone will be surprised that trips crewed by professional fishermen produce higher yields than trips on research vessels with research crews.

 More fish caught means more accurate estimates.  Remember, you can’t catch fish that aren’t there, but it’s fairly easy to not catch those that are.

 (I wrote about cooperative research in 2007 in Improving the best available science. It’s available on the FishNet USA website)   

 I don’t know of any fishery supported with a cooperative research program in which the harvest was reduced because of the data it provided. Cooperative research has been a win-win proposition for the fishermen, for the scientists and for the managers.   

 In fact, cooperative research had been so popular with fishermen that last year’s budget requested -“a net increase of $1,247,000 for a total of $11,455,000 for Cooperative Research to expand and fully implement a nationwide, regionally based cooperative research and management program as directed by the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

 While not as popular with fishermen, and perhaps less accurate, the research carried out by NOAA/NMFS through its recently upgraded fleet of research vessels is just as critical to the fishermen and to the fish. Keeping in mind the mandates of the precautionary approach to fisheries management, the more we know about the status of the fish stocks, the closer we can approach the ideal harvest level.  And that should be in everyone’s interest: fishermen, ENGOs, and NOAA.

 So why the big cuts in the Research and Cooperative Research budgets?

 Consider the fact that Dr. Lubchenco was wed to the almost completely untried concept of catch shares* through EDF before taking over as head of NOAA/NMFS and has continued in that union since she came to NOAA/NMFS. As I’ve written before, her plan to force catch shares on US fisheries will have revolutionary impacts on those fisheries, on the people in them and on the people, businesses and communities that depend on them. And, for many of those people, businesses and communities, those impacts will be devastating (as she put it a little more nicely though perhaps not quite as exactly, the shift to catch shares would result in “fewer jobs, but better jobs.”) Obviously Dr. Lubchenco and her buddies at EDF couldn’t force such a revolutionary change and such economic hardship on millions of fishermen and the people and businesses that depended on them if everything was ok in their fisheries. There’d be no reason to, at least no reason that was acceptable to the public, to Congress or to President Obama’s administration.

 Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that better fisheries research means better fisheries data, nor that better fisheries data almost invariably means better catches for the fishermen. Taking two major Northeast fisheries, monkfish and sea scallops, as examples, a decade or so ago both were facing major cutbacks because the best available science indicated that the stocks weren’t doing well. In both fisheries, at the urging of the fishermen, who generally seem to know better, successful cooperative research programs were established that showed that the stocks weren’t in as bad shape as had been believed. The drastic cutbacks that were planned were avoided and the fisheries, the fishermen in them and the businesses that depend on them have thrived. Without that cooperative research, there would be two additional fisheries appearing to need the salvation offered by Dr. Lubchenco’s Catch Shares revolution.

 How many other fisheries could be brought back from the supposed brink of disaster, a brink enthusiastically manufactured by the ENGOs, by better science? That’s impossible to tell, but as I wrote above, more and better sampling is never going to indicate fewer fish than are actually there, but less and worse sampling definitely will. Couple that with the precautionary principle and you have a recipe for a real disaster. 

 

 

Nils Stolpe has written "Another Perspective" since 2005. He is communications director for the Garden State Seafood Association, and has been a consultant to the fishing industry for over two decades.                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just to be clear, fisheries research at SMAST goes beyond research related to scallops and addresses fisheries in general.

The recent criticism of the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) by Harvey Mickelson, the attorney for the American Scallop Association, unfairly demeaned the school's faculty, students, staff and administration. I respond on behalf of the academic leadership group of SMAST: Associate Dean Avijit Gangopadhyay; Professor Lou Goodman, chair of the Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences; Associate Professor Kevin Stokesbury, chair of the Department of Fisheries Oceanography; and me.

Mickelson clearly believes that SMAST should be a single-issue enterprise focused only on fisheries research that advances his clients' commercial interests. He would have SMAST abandon its work in both fundamental research and applications of that research to important societal issues such as coastal zone preservation, marine renewable energy, ocean modeling, climate change, and other marine-related priorities of the commonwealth and nation — all of which are ongoing at SMAST.

This is an insult to the many graduate students, staff and faculty who are dedicating their lives to this important work. Furthermore, it fails to recognize the importance of these fields to the future of our commonwealth and our SouthCoast communities.

In questioning the university's commitment to fishery-related research, Mickelson ignores the tangible support being provided to the Department of Fisheries Oceanography. During the past 12 months, a period of extremely difficult budget challenges for the university, Provost Anthony Garro and Chancellor Jean MacCormack have approved the addition of two new faculty members to the department. One of these faculty members has arrived and the other will arrive in June. The university is replacing a faculty member who left the department this past fall.

See this enitre column at The South Coast Today.

The coming “sector” system for management of the New England fishery sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Steve Urbon’ story today spotlights two problems.

1. A fishing boat owner’s catch will no longer be in his own hand’s; he will have to trust that opportunistic members of his sector don’t grab everyone’s share of a particular fish species before the limit is reached.

And

2. The sector system will inevitably push the small boat owners out of business as their share of the catch makes their businesses no longer viable.

 Mayor Scott Lang, state Rep. John Quinn and Congressman Barney Frank have vowed to apply further political pressure if the system collapses whole sectors of the New Bedford industry. The New England Fisheries Management Council objects to political pressure but it refuses to develop a workable fishery management plan for the sector of the ocean ecology called fishermen.

 It’s hard to understand how this kind of purist approach by NMFS, particularly because it is based on questionable science, will work for the fishery and the New Bedford industry that depends on it.

See this entire column at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

note: The Standard-Times is a subscription site.  Unregistered visitors are able to read three stories per month, and registered visitors may view ten.  For unlimited access, please follow the subscription instructions on the site. 

There will come a day when the industry will not have a Barney Frank, a Brian Rothschild or a Kevin Stokesbury, or a governor like Deval Patrick, who is the first one in my long memory who has given support to an industry rather than occasional lip service at election time, to whom they can run.

 

Harvey B. Mickelson, an attorney, has long represented the American Scallop Association and other New Bedford fishing interests.

 

It appears to me that since the departure of Dr. Rothschild as dean of SMAST, the excitement and enthusiasm that was part and parcel of its existence has decreased substantially. I believe that the school is floundering except for the activities of Kevin Stokesbury and his associates.

The very fact that the administration of UMass Dartmouth has either been unable or does not desire to retain a dean that has the qualifications to administer a school of fisheries may have changed the direction of the school. The future of its contributions to the fishing community throughout the country is diminishing. Rothschild's successor was obviously not capable of administering the school and soon departed.

A selection process is now going on for a new dean. It is my understanding that the candidates being considered are not so-called fisheries people. If true, this leads one to consider exactly what Chancellor Jean MacCormack and the administration of the University of Massachusetts and UMass Dartmouth really have in mind for this once major contributor to the economy of this area, the port of New Bedford, UMass Dartmouth and its own existence as a world-class fisheries school.

A clear answer from the administration of UMass Dartmouth to the community as a whole and particularly the fishing industry from Chancellor MacCormack as to her vision for SMAST for the near future and five to 10 years down the line is now required. She or whoever has the authority must make a commitment that SMAST will be dedicated to the further development of a highly respected fisheries school that attracts teaching personnel of quality and a student body seeking bachelor's or higher degrees in the field. Or is it going to be a hybrid of some kind or something totally different?

An organization that is administered over a period of time with apparently the wrong people, then by interim leaders, is one that projects instability and poor quality to the teaching community and its potential student body.

Read the complete story at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

note: The Standard-Times is a subscription site.  Unregistered visitors are able to read three stories per month, and registered visitors may view ten.  For unlimited access, please follow the subscription instructions on the site. 

The agency that brought us Trawlgate now presents Investigate, the next in the series

I can only imagine how much satisfaction hundreds of fishermen and folks from fishing businesses are deriving from the recently released first installment of the US Department of Commerce Inspector General’s report on the scandalously inadequate, unbalanced and inequitable job that NOAA/NMFS has been doing in enforcing fishing regulations, particularly in the Northeast. I can likewise only imagine the frustration that they must feel, knowing that their lives, their reputations, their finances and their future prospects were severely damaged – and in some tragic instances, destroyed – by what appears to be nothing less than an out-of-control bureaucracy. I sincerely hope that those people pursue whatever avenues of institutional and personal redress are available to them and wish them the best of luck in that pursuit. (The full report is available here, and a summary here).

The follow-up report, looking at specific cases that have been investigated by the Inspector General’s office, is on the way. That could be even more satisfying.

To nobody’s surprise, NOAA head Jane Lubchenco’s response to this report consisted of assuring us that NOAA/NMFS would be revising regulations, creating a policy manual, improving communications and convening a national “summit” on agency enforcement policies.

Shouldn’t we expect a bit more than that?

The “summit” sounds like it could be just another white-washing junket for those members of fishing organizations, ENGO staffers and academic researchers on the foundation-funding gravy train that are so interested in saving us from ourselves. I wonder if the NOAA/NMFS leadership is planning on holding it at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire. Once again that would keep the working people away in droves.

And I don’t find it all that comforting to know that in these days when just about everyone is suffering from a surfeit of communications – to such an extent that the NY Times deemed it front-page worthy – someone is in charge of NOAA/NMFS who actually thinks that more communications could be the answer to anything. In issue after issue that fishermen are facing we’ve had much too much communication and much too little substantive action.

What it all boils down to is that for you folks at the NOAA/NMFS Offices of Law Enforcement and General Council for Enforcement and Litigation, brace yourselves. You’re about to get your knuckles rapped really, really hard.

That isn’t anywhere near an adequate response for an agency that has purposely kept proud, honest and hardworking members of one of our oldest industries in a state of undeserved terror for most of a generation.

If there was ever a reason for Congressional oversight, this is it, and everyone who is demanding it – and that list is growing every day – is definitely heading in the right direction. But they’re not yet where they need to be.

It shouldn’t be oversight limited to the Inspector General’s report and the NOAA/NMFS Offices of Law Enforcement and General Council for Enforcement and Litigation. That’s not the disease that’s infecting NOAA/NMFS. That’s only one of the symptoms.

I’ve already heard and read that this enforcement fiasco can’t be laid at Ms. Lubchenco’s feet, or at the feet of the foundation/ENGO people she brought to Washington with her, that most of the enforcement mess-ups occurred before they were in Washington and running NOAA.

But let’s give that idea a bit more consideration.

First off, as we all know far too well, an ever intensifying anti-fishing malaise has afflicted NOAA/NMFS for at least a decade. What’s its source? To a very large extent, it’s come from a very successful and very expensive campaign bankrolled by very large foundations to convince as many people as possible with an interest in the world’s oceans that fishing is one of the greatest scourges to ever afflict them. Through the skillful – did I mention expensive? – manipulation of science and scientists, and through the selective – did  I mention expensive? – manipulation of the print and broadcast media, a large proportion of those people, and the officials who represent them, have bought into this fantasy.

Unfortunately, when the people and their legislators in Washington go in a particular direction, whether that direction is right or wrong, most federal agencies aren’t too far behind. Thus, it’s fairly easy to suggest that the NOAA/NMFS Office of Law Enforcement’s “treat ‘em like criminals” attitude towards fishermen and fishing businesses is an understandable outgrowth of the institutional attitude of the parent agency. No one in the front office, no matter how many complaints fishermen registered and no matter how surreal their persecution became, was concerned enough to do anything about it, so the whole mess just continued to spiral out of control.

That might be passed off as bureaucrats simply being bureaucrats. We could assume that it was only ineptitude that caused the people in charge to pay no attention to all of those official press releases going out with, we assume, their or their underling’s approval that were announcing with pride the most recent apprehension and prosecution of fishermen. We could as easily assume that Ms. Lubchenco’s ho-hum response to the partially completed Inspector General’s investigation, an administrative reshuffling and a feel-good “summit,” was just more of the same.

But is it? In case after case, fishermen were investigated and treated as criminals by an Office of Law Enforcement staff trained and paid as criminal investigators when virtually all of the supposed offenses, the Inspector General’s report puts it at 98%, were non-criminal in nature. And even now this trend is apparently continuing in NOAA, with the newly appointed NOAA Chief Counsel’s most notable accomplishment as an Assistant Attorney General being development of the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s environmental crimes program.

Is it a stretch to suppose that much of this was due to the demonization of fishermen by the media? 

How this took place, what was – and is – behind it, and how else it has affected and is affecting NOAA/NMFS in carrying out its mission regarding fishermen and fishing is every bit as deserving of oversight investigation by Congress as the dysfunction endemic in the NOAA/NMFS Offices of Law Enforcement and General Council for Enforcement and Litigation. In general that wouldn’t be the case, but the leadership at NOAA in the Obama Administration, the close ties of those leaders to the foundation/ENGO world that has so successfully persecuted so many people connected with harvesting fish for fun or profit, takes this beyond the realm of the “general.”

For all of the fishermen who were wrongfully criminalized, for their families, for the businesses they support, for the communities they are a part of, for all of the rest of us in or associated with fishing and for the future of fishing in the United States, we deserve answers to some crucial questions. How involved were the people now in the upper management levels of NOAA/NMFS in this process? To what extent, if any, were they responsible for establishing the institutional mindset at NOAA/NMFS from the outside that allowed the abuses reported by the Inspector General to flourish? And, of course, how much of that involvement, if any, has been carried over into the current management and philosophy of NOAA/NMFS?

As Ms. Lubchenco’s unilateral shifting of the entire management focus of NOAA/NMFS to the implementation of catch shares virtually overnight illustrates so clearly, she is in a position to tremendously influence the lives and futures of millions of fishermen, the economic well-being of tens of thousands of fishing dependent businesses and a huge segment of our coastal economy. If that isn’t justification for intense Congressional scrutiny, it’s hard to imagine what is.

 

 

The idea that scallopers, with lifetimes invested, with boats worth millions, and with respectable incomes, would jeopardize it all in a “to hell with tomorrow” assault on the resource is absurd.

January 20, 2010

The successful politicians in New Jersey, in Massachusetts and in Virginia get it, and those in every other state – if they want to remain in politics – better get it as well. In the U.S. we’re starting to lose patience with having public policies forced down our throats by elitists who are convinced that they know best. Government by condescension is on its way out, and none too soon.

But, on the morning after the drubbing that was handed the Massachusetts candidate who was most identified with a “we know what’s best for you in spite of what you believe” attitude, the Boston Globe still doesn’t get it.

In an editorial this morning the Globe bemoaned the fact that the New England Fishery Management Council will reconsider its decision to reduce next year’s sea scallop harvest by almost a quarter; an action that would cost the coastal economies of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia and every other coastal state from North Carolina to Maine hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs.

The editorial finished up with the words “while the industry is all too willing to risk permanent harm to scallop stocks – and its own livelihood – the council must be steadfast in protecting the region’s marine resources.” That fits perfectly with the condescending attitude towards fishermen espoused by the elitists who run the multi-billion dollar foundations behind so much of the current – and unnecessary – suffering in the commercial fishing industry; the attitude that they’re there to protect us from ourselves.

But it’s dead wrong.

Members of the sea scallop fishery have been leaders in campaigning for the sustainable management of their fishery. The idea that those fishermen, with lifetimes invested on the water, with boats worth several millions of dollars each, and with respectable incomes from those boats, would jeopardize it all for a “get rich quick and to hell with tomorrow” assault on the resource is absurd.  Fisheries scientists with international reputations (and without funding from those crusading foundations) have attested and will attest to that.

A newspaper with editorial offices only an hour’s drive from New Bedford, the busiest scallop port in the country, is condemning the reconsideration of a decision that would rip a huge amount of money from the Massachusetts economy next year. That decision would precipitate economic hardship at a time when Americans are still in the grips of a devastating economic downturn. It’s going to cost Globe readers jobs and money they can ill afford. Finding fault with that reconsideration is even more absurd, no matter what advice is being given to the Globe by foundation flacks whose careers depend on selling the notion that their only interest is saving fish and fishermen.

As I wrote a few weeks back, the times, they are a-changin’ and yesterday’s special election in Massachusetts demonstrated that it’s not just in how we’re relating to fisheries management that’s changing; it’s the whole social, cultural and economic sphere. The people don’t want elitist control frosted with feel good rhetoric, they want – and they’re going to get – a say in what’s going on.

Perhaps the editorial writers at the Boston Globe will figure that out, but they’re going to have to venture outside Route 128 to do it.  If they do, their first foray should be to New Bedford to meet with some real conservationists who have a real stake in the fisheries management process.

 

 

 

The New England Council has bowed to political pressure and will now revisit its decision on 2010 scallop allocations. This is a positive sign for New England fisheries.

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton -Jan 12, 2010 – Undoubtedly there are some bruised feelings among some council members, council staff, and the NMFS regional office in Gloucester. In a highly publicized fight, the New England Council has bowed to political pressure and will now revisit its decision on 2010 scallop allocations. This is a positive sign for New England fisheries.

If two council members change their votes, a new scallop allocation will be recommended to NMFS.

For years, we have supported the idea that the 'best science' is required for fishery management, and condemned instances where the best science has been overridden for political reasons. One of the biggest reasons for the failure of European fisheries management, and the success of the U.S. model, is that the U.S. system makes it harder for political concerns to override scientific stock assessments.

But the scallop issue was not about science. After years of New England fishermen accepting cutbacks because of stock collapse, and rebuilding plans that required huge sacrifices, the region has finally accepted the principle that scientific stock assessments guide harvest levels. Don't laugh. This is a big change.

New Englanders suffered during the 1960's and early 1970's as the Soviets conducted pulse fishing off their coast – very often within easy sight of land. The soviet fishing style was to wipe out a productive area and then leave, hoping to return in 10 or 15 years when it had recovered again. This was the way they deployed their factory fleets around the globe.

When Magnuson was introduced in New England, there was such distrust and disgust over the government's failure to have protected the region that fisheries stock science was thought to be useless. The very first article I ever wrote about the seafood industry was in 1978, called 'Why Scientists Don't Fish Like Fishermen', and it explored how the survey method – fishing in a grid in the ocean and not on productive hot spots, appeared crazy to most fishermen. Why would they believe in something that appeared so stupid.

By 1982, the scientist's ideas about stock status and fishermen's feelings had diverged so greatly that catch limits were being almost universally ignored. New Bedford boats would come in, unload 40,000 pounds at night, and then show up and hail an additional 40,000 lbs at auction the next morning.

In 1982, bowing to political pressure from Massachusetts representatives and the impossibility of controlling catch limits, the council abandon hard TAC's. That decision sent New England fisheries into a 20 year decline. Most harvesters now look back on the early 1980's as a time when they could really catch fish, and concede everyone would be better off today if catch limits could have somehow been maintained.

In 1994, NMFS was sued by the Conservation Law Foundation for its failure to manage New England fisheries in a way that protected stocks. Instead of fighting the suit, NMFS agreed with the charge, and entered into a consent decree. This led to the development of days at sea restrictions, and a period of declining landings, although fishermen continued to land at levels often above the recommended total TAC's.

Nevertheless, by the early 2000's, New England stocks were showing signs of recovery. The last few years most stocks have been on a strong upward rebuilding trajectory, although not all. The fact that the groundfish complex in New England consists of 13 separate species in 17 or 18 different management units creates tremendous complexity, so that fully recovered stocks like haddock, now at the same levels as when the Russians came, can only be fished at a fraction of their allowable catch due to restrictions on other species.

The reauthorization of Magnuson in 2007 has made annual catch limits mandatory in all fisheries. At the same time, the New England Council has adopted a plan to transition to a catch share system for groundfish, in which all vessels would be allocated a share of their historical catch. Because the vessel histories cover time periods when the stocks were extremely low and even absent in many traditional fishing areas, many vessels received allocations that will not allow them to economically survive.

Estimates are that about 50% of the currently permitted vessels cannot survive with the 2010 allocations, although within a few years, larger stock sizes will make many of these permits viable for single vessels.

The council is faced with a problem: how to make a transition to a catch share program and at the same time protect the rebuilding trajectory that stocks are on.

In this light, the scallop reversal is a welcome lesson. The original decision to not allow scallopers to fish at the maximum recommended level was driven by essentially arcane management considerations. The number of vessels fishing in prior years had been underestimated. Yellowtail TAC's were being set at a very low level due to the high rate of discards and the precautionary principle. The upshot was that it was easier for managers, and many council members, simply to take the conservative route – and limit scallopers to a F 0.20 fishing level, despite the fact that the F 0.24 fishing level would also keep landings within annual catch limits and was scientifically acceptable.

This decision, if it stands, costs scallopers 25% of their income. They reacted furiously, and because it is such a large and well represented industry, they had the power to compel reconsideration. No such power exists among the scattered groundfishermen who are looking at draconian limits on yellowtail, pollock, Gulf of Maine cod, and some other species.

The reconsideration means that managers will face the economic issues that are driving the fishery as well as the scientific issues. This is a good thing.

New England fisheries are heading towards a complete disaster later this year unless NMFS and the Council are willing to adopt more flexibility in order to achieve larger management goals.

Much of the draconian limits on some of the most restricted groundfish species comes from the fact that managers don't know how many fish are being discarded (a natural consequence of low trip limits), and as a result, they make huge reductions in allowable catch levels to provide a buffer.

Yet the whole concept of catch shares is to prevent discards, to do away with trip limits, and to land all legal size fish that are caught. NMFS has the opportunity to create a buffer using the amount of fish set aside for precautionary purposes, and use this buffer to make the transition to catch share systems work economically. If the catch share system works, the amount of discards will fall dramatically.

The scallop reversal should help managers understand that at this time, trends on fishing mortality and stock recovery are moving in the right direction, in contrast to the early 1980's, and that embracing flexibility and finding economically viable solutions is key to maintaining the integrity of Magnuson and the rebuilding of New England Fish Stocks.

The scallopers are not the last ones whose voice will be heard. Already another coalition of recreational and commercial fishermen are planning a Washington DC rally in favor of the Schumer – Pallone effort to reopen Magnuson. If NMFS cannot show some flexibility when warranted on economic issues, the management of fisheries in New England will again collapse, and in the process, most of the historic fishing ports in the region will be lost as commercial entities.

NMFS can easily manage a fishery of a few dozen large vessels taking all of New England's fish. The problem is that that vision is a declaration of economic war on the rest of the industry, and as the scallop decision has shown, most harvesters are unlikely to accept this, with negative consequences for all of U.S. fisheries management.

After dealing with scallops, the council and NMFS should look into the ways in which they can be more flexible in implementing catch shares for groundfish. One place to start would be in allowing some economic flexibility by reducing the 'buffers' held in reserve for many stocks

 

Disclosure: John Sackton has been involved with the issue of catch shares for scallops since the late 1990's when new seafood company investments were being made in New Bedford. In 2009 Sackton accepted a contract with the Environmental Defense Fund to provide comments and analysis on the National Catch Share Policy paper put out by NOAA. Sackton has also been involved with ITQ programs in Alaska since 2005, as non-binding price arbitrator for the crab rationalization program (hired by both harvesters and processors), and has worked more than ten years on Canadian snow crab, shrimp and lobster pricing. Since 1994 Sackton has worked with hundreds of seafood companies, government agencies, industry associations and environmental groups providing seafood industry market analysis and research, in addition to his founding and editing of Seafood.com News.'