PROVINCETOWN, Mass., — September 9, 2013 — To purchase quota, fishermen have to take out loans that can have payback periods of 15 years or longer, explained Cape Cod Fisheries Trust director Paul Parker.
"Nothing (no fishery) stays good that long," he said. By maintaining a bank of quota shares to lease at lower pricing, the trust can help fishermen transition to a fishery that is making money.
Eastham fisherman Scott Nolan, 57, mortgaged his home, used all his retirement savings and took out loans to buy the 80-foot New Bedford fish dragger and refit it with the massive apparatus needed to go sea clamming. He had been fishing it since only this spring.
After a 36-hour trip, working around the clock, the Goody Hallet tied up at the end of MacMillan Pier and crewmen Max Nolan and Tim Klekotka removed the decking over the big hold where wire cages filled with clams awaited transfer to an idling trailer truck.
At 5 a.m., sleep-starved but alert, standing next to the big wooden ship's wheel, Nolan explained that his small business employed three full-time crewmen and one part-timer and contributed to the incomes of a welder, a truck driver and others. But, like many new businessmen, Nolan, 57, wasn't sure whether he himself was making money yet.
One thing he was certain of was that his bottom line was helped substantially by the Cape Cod Fisheries Trust, which leased him the majority of the sea clam quota he needed at rates half what he would have had to pay on the open market.
"It's a huge help that they've done that," Nolan said of the impact of paying that discounted rate had on being able to make his business work in the first year.
Sea clams, also known as surf clams, are fist-size to hand-size clams that are buried less than a foot deep in sandy ocean bottoms both close to shore and more than 100 miles out. Along with ocean quahogs, they are used in chowders, stews and other processed food items like clam strips. Using heavy steel dredges equipped with hydraulic hoses that blow the sand away so the clams can be scooped up, the fishery is mainly done from large vessels like Nolan's.
More and more fisheries are coming under quota management, which portions out what fishery managers consider a sustainable annual catch among fishermen according to how much they caught in the past. Fishermen can then buy or lease more quota shares or lease or even sell off their shares. The current demand for quota usually sets the price.
While that helps longtime fishermen, it adds more cost to those, like Nolan, who are trying to start a new fishing business, especially in an area like the Cape where small boat fishermen have always been diversified, prepared to catch the species that fetched the best price and was available.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times