The fish used to belong to the people, but they increasingly belong to fishermen, nonprofits, and others who have the ability to buy up the resource. This trend toward privatizing the ocean's fish has caused some fishermen to be very creative in order to survive, as evidenced by Captain Cullen's boat. Cullen's vision is similar to that of many folks in Maine: figure out how to anchor the benefit of fishing jobs in rural ports while make more money catching fewer fish. This begs a rethinking of the role of markets in fisheries management. Why can't we also consider the economic benefits to a community and conservation outcomes, as a different kind of market-driven efficiency?
One of the tragedies of fisheries management is that it is so complicated that it alienates the people who should be the most involved. In this column I attempt to explain one way of understanding what is happening.
It is April, and I am boarding a 35-foot lobster boat built by R.P Boat Shop in Steuben, Maine, but I am in Morro Bay, California. Even more odd to me, the fishing vessel Dorado is rigged to jig for groundfish. Roger Cullen captains the Dorado, and is a member of the Central Coast Sustainable Groundfish Association.
Today, market-based fisheries management schemes are termed "catch shares." A few fishermen like catch shares, most are seriously concerned about them, and still others become downright livid upon hearing the words uttered.
Catch shares at the most general level grant individual fishermen pounds of fish that they can catch, sell, lease or trade when and how they like. On the West Coast, the predominant management scheme allots quota to individuals or corporations that can fish or lease their quota as desired. In New England, fishermen can fish their allocation of fish, but only if they cooperate with other fishermen in what are called "sectors." Sectors shift the emphasis of management away from individuals and create a framework for fishermen to work together, something that is more aligned with the culture of fishing communities on the coast of Maine. They are cooperatives (501c5) organizations, where a board of fishermen set the rules for how a larger group of fishermen will fish, and in some cases, where.
In Maine we have three sectors, one based in Stonington, another based in Port Clyde and another based out of Portland. Although these sectors are based in specific communities, they have fishermen participating in them from many different ports. For example, the Port Clyde sector contains about 30 boats under 65 feet that fish out of Maine ports, some with gill-nets and others with otter-trawl gear. The Portland and Stonington based sectors have fishermen from throughout New England. The primary bond for proponents of catch-share schemes nationally is the belief that markets can best manage fisheries.
This transition toward privatizing the ocean's fish has been underway for a long time. It started with the creation of the New England fishing territory. When the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone was enacted by the U.S. Government in 1976, primarily as a means to exclude foreign fleets, it also raised the prospect of how to count fish and manage fishermen in this territory. A grid was placed over the territory to ease the counting of fish. Through counting fish biologists could estimate how many groundfish are in the New England region. The science behind the total number of fish in the ocean informs the total allowable catch (TAC) that can be extracted from the territory. You need this type of cap on the total number of fish that can be caught in order to divide up the fish among individual fishermen. Just to be clear, I am not saying that the creation of territory was a deliberate part of a long-term plan to make privatization possible. I am only suggesting that a TAC is one of the components of a management system that is necessary to privatize fish.
Read the complete story at The Working Waterfront.