June 11, 2012, NEW BEDFORD — Two veteran New Bedford fishermen who have lived with the catch share system of fishery management since its introduction to New England in May 2010 say it is inherently flawed and has brought only hardship to the majority of groundfishermen.
Under catch shares, each boat receives an annual quota to fish and that quota can also be traded or leased. Many independent fishermen found their allocations too low to make a profit so they tied up their boats and leased their quota to bigger companies with the capital to acquire all the fish they need. The crews of these idled boats are now without work.
"Everything about this was done for the boat owners and nothing for the crews," said Tony Borges, captain and part-owner of the 77-foot steel dragger Sao Paulo. And with a smaller fleet there is less business for dockside companies that support the fishing industry, he said.
Peter Jura, 62, is Borges' cousin and is a longtime captain on the New Bedford waterfront. Jura owns the Fisherman, an 81-foot dragger that is actively fishing even though Jura is not making a profit. He said he is doing it simply to keep his longtime crew members employed.
"What I have today is because of me and because of my crew," Jura said. "Nobody ever left my boat unless they moved up to be captain or retired from fishing."
Jura, like many boat owners could sell his quota and stay home. "I could sell it tomorrow for $120,000 easy," he said. "I'm fishing for free. But sometimes money is not the most important thing in life."
The need to buy fish to go fishing is a burden and the price of quota has added to the expenses traditionally shared by the boat and crew for fuel, ice and grub, the fishermen say.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has responded to these concerns and is conducting surveys this summer to gather more information about the costs of fishing, according to NOAA communications officer Maggie Mooney-Seus. "The surveys are intended to get at the social and economic drivers within fishing businesses and communities," Mooney-Seus wrote in am email to The Standard-Times. Workers will meet with crew members on the dock to conduct the survey, she said. Owners will receive a separate survey in the mail.
Borges says his costs keep going up. "I spent $95,000 to lease fish last year," he said. "That's $47,000 against my crew. For four guys. That's $11,000 each."
The price of quota has increased more than anyone had envisioned, he said. "Boats have gone out and made zero because their expenses were $35,000. Top-notch crews are making a couple of hundred dollars for a trip." Yellowtail quota is now going for $1.50 and flounder was $1 last year, he said. "When they started talking about catch shares they were saying prices would be 10 cents a pound," he said. "If they don't do something to keep boats working, we're just going to fall, one by one."
Catch shares have generated plenty of controversy and a study of crew positions done by NOAA's Northeast Fishery Science Center in 2010 found that crew position in New England declined from 2,687 in 2007 to 2,277 in 2010.
"About half of that was between 2007 and 2009 before catch shares," said Tom Nies, a fishery analyst with the New England Fishery Management Council. "It's hard to attribute the drop to any one factor."
Read the full article at the New Bedford Standard Times.