“When you go home every day, and your kids look at you in the eye and say, ‘Dad, why are you so miserable?’ … What do you say to the kids, 8 and 10 years old … What do you say? The government’s screwing me? I don’t know what else to say to them. This is going to be the hardest Christmas I’ve ever had since I had my first child … ”
Spoken by 27-year veteran fisherman Jim Keding at New Bedford, Mass. Mayor Scott Lang's December 9th Oceans and Fisheries Council meeting, these words brought an emotional stir of recognition to many in the room. As with so many fishing communities throughout New England, locals are frustrated by Washington policies, and the bureaucrats who are failing them.
According to data cited at the meeting, since the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration began implementing a restrictive catch share policy in May, more than half of New England's entire groundfish fleet – 253 boats — have become idle. With between three and five jobs per vessel, this means that Mr. Keding is hardly alone; up to as many as 1,265 jobs have been lost in the last five months.
"These regulations are having a dramatic adverse impact on fishing families and communities in New England and along the East Coast," said New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang. "NOAA is acting as if they are dealing with proofing mathematical equations, not a human crisis."
Early last month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick submitted a report to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke providing scientific statistical data requisite to increasing fishing allocations, information requested by the Secretary as a means to enact emergency powers that would allow for such increases. This report, prepared by the Division of Marine Fisheries and the University of Dartmouth, indicates that the new catch share policy has resulted in $21 million in direct economic losses and forgone yield of $19 million for the Massachusetts groundfish fishery. The report also showed that that an additional 14,500 metric tons of ground fish (such as flounder and cod) can safely be brought to market.
Compounding the entire issue is the fact that the program has also resulted in consolidated fishing enterprises and decreasing access to fishery resources for small-scale fisherman like Keding. During the first five months of the 2010 fishing year, more than half of the fleet had not fished at all, collecting zero fishing revenue from landings of any finfish. Yet, the number of vessels that earned more than $300,000 increased from 21 vessels to 41 vessels. These forty-one vessels account for roughly 55% of the total revenues, leaving little room to compete for smaller operations.
As yet though, no emergency enactment has taken place, and, according to Mayor Lang and many speakers at the meeting, each passing day only serves to compound the need.
"It is time for the Secretary to act and ensure we do not lose the necessary support infrastructure, and that we preserve fishing families, fishing culture and heritage in our communities," Mayor Lang said.
Secretary Locke's spokeswoman Shannon Gilson told the Gloucester Daily Times: "NOAA scientists are reviewing the information, and are committed to completing a thorough scientific analysis as quickly as possible."
"This is pretty simple," New Bedford Mayor Lang said at the end of the two-hour meeting. "If we were overfishing, it would have taken a week to put a moratorium on.”
Keding was among other fisherman who spoke after the mayor, including two Portuguese emigrants, both exemplars of the simple American notion that hard work yields success.
Known locally as “The Codfather,” Carlos Rafael made his way to the United States in 1968. He worked in textile mills for a decade, until starting his first business, Portuguese American Seafood, in 1978. The company struggled and soon closed. But he was persistent and opened Carlos Seafood in 1980. The company was so successful that by the end of the same year, Rafael was able to purchase his first boat. He became the largest vessel owner in New Bedford with a business that supplied many wholesalers, employed more than 300 and operated a fleet of 40 boats with 45 commercial fishing permits. But under the restrictive new catch share program, he has had to lay off 80 fishermen, downsize the operation to only eleven vessels and then borrow more than a million dollars to purchase quota from other fishermen to just to keep those 11 boats fishing for the year.
“What the government is doing today is injustice,” Rafael said at the meeting. “It’s not fair.”
Rafael is relatively lucky in that he’s still in business. Consider his fellow countryman Antonia Pereira. A fisherman for the past 36 years, Pereira moved to this country at the age of 16. He worked as a deckhand and a mate before becoming captain of a dragger for five years. He then purchased a small vessel that he used to fish for twenty five years, earning a good enough living to send his two children to college. Today his boat is tied up at the New Bedford docks, unable to fish because of the small allocation that he received under the new catch share system. He was forced to sell his quota to a larger vessel, leaving three crew members and himself unemployed.
“Every day, I come down to the pier … I look at the vessel that’s tied up to the pier, just rusting away,” said Pereira. “As of this time, we really do need more quotas to fish. I feel very sad that in the United States, this ‘country of dreams’ … you have to pay to go to work. We need help and we need help desperately.”
Examples of the hardship that so many fishermen are facing this holiday season are unfortunately profuse, thanks to the new policy. Mr. Keding’s case, however, is especially demonstrative of the insult being heaped on injury by Washington. Keding purchased a fishing vessel several years ago after receiving from NOAA a letter outlining the vessel's catch history. This year, NOAA, basing fishermen's shares on vessel catch history, allocated to Keding 15,000 lbs of fish, a dramatic reduction from the 73,000 lbs he caught last year. When Keding complained that the new allocation did not reflect the boat's history as outlined in the letter NOAA sent him, he was advised that a previous owner had sold the boat but kept his history; and that the catch history described in the earlier letter, on which he based his decision to buy the boat, was accurate but not valid for the purposes of allocation. The previous owner denies retaining the history.
Suddenly unable to earn a living, Keding raised his concerns at a forum in November, where National Marine Fisheries Chief Eric Schwaab promised to look into the matter. So far his efforts have resulted in only another letter from NOAA explaining in greater depth why their letter outlining the boat's history was simultaneously accurate but not relevant. Senator John Kerry's office is investigating his claims and has advised NOAA's legislative affairs division that they are not pleased with NOAA's initial response to Mr. Keding's inquiry.
In New Bedford more than a month after airing his concerns at the November forum, Keding could hardly portray his dilemma more clearly. "I am going down and I am going down fast," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, the U.S. government is putting me out of business."
Representatives from the offices of Congressmen and Senators from Massachusetts and Rhode Island attended and spoke at the meeting. No NOAA representatives spoke, although Preston Pate, a current member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and former chair of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission who was designated in September by NMFS Administrator Eric Schwaab to oversee a regional assessment and management review of the fishery management process in New England, was acknowledged from the dais and declined the opportunity to speak.