The displacement of commercial fishermen through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's new regulatory policy is proceeding.
But a Gloucester gillnetter has become the first apparent casualty of the system to be forced out of business by his own colleagues within one of the catch share "sector" cooperatives.
Daniel Bubb, a Long Island native who's been fishing out of Gloucester for about a decade, was expelled last month from his sector, made up of 38 other gillnetters whose boats are Gloucester based.
Members and sector officers declined to shed light on the internal workings of the sector and the reasons behind the vote to expel Bubb, which all involved found wrenching, according to multiple interviews.
The case is unresolved, and could result in litigation, or possibly arbitration or mediation. But both sides โ the fishermen in the sector and their former colleague now outside it โ agree that the root cause of the events that have led to Bubb's exile is the "catch share" system, which grants the fishing sectors "shares" of a total allowable catch for each stock, with fishermen encouraged to buy, sell or trade their shares among one another, or deal to outside investors.
The net effect in working catch share systems to date has been to shift control to bigger and stronger boat operations, while driving smaller vessels out of business. Industry leaders and advocates are finding the same result already surfacing in the $60 million New England groundfishery, with tight catch limits from NOAA Fisheries further strangling the individual fishermen and their operations.
"Getting pushed into catch shares has caused my family and I to just about lose everything," Bubb wrote to NOAA on Dec. 30.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.