– 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
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