February 19, 2013 — On Tuesday, February 19, 175 active fishermen and members of the Northeast Seafood Coalition wrote to 12 Senators and 13 Members of Congress from Northeastern states “to express [their] very serious distress over the recent decision by policy-makers to accept the lowest of low allowable catches for our fishery in 2013 and beyond while simultaneously expecting an industry on the brink of economic ruin to absorb monitoring costs.”
The fishermen wrote:
– “The forced transition of our New England groundfish fishery to catch share management and hard TACs came with all sorts of rosy promises of resource abundance and economic stability,” they write. They also noted that many businesses were unable to survive the transition.
– Rather than producing the promised benefits, the transfer of the groundfishery to sector management has led to a prolonged period of economic instability. “There is no stability. There are only repeated, record reductions in catch limits. Prosperity is a discarded dream.”
– They blame the current state of the groundfishery on failed government management, writing: “Three weeks ago, NMFS Regional Administrator John Bullard told us at the Council meeting that this was our day of reckoning. This is not our day of reckoning – we’ve done nothing wrong to reckon. We didn’t cause this problem.” Instead, they maintain that the government does not have the science and data necessary to properly manage the fishery. “For too long we’ve been subjected to the volatility and futility of pretending to know the unknowable.”
– “For nearly a decade now our fishery has fished at or below every catch limit set by the government on every stock. We lived within their quotas, but it is now our businesses, our families and our communities that will be paying the price.”
– “Government cannot expect our industry to continue to be subjected to drastic cuts in allowable catches while placing additional, government-imposed expenses upon us.”
– They noted that, as the current catch share management system was being implemented, the Northeast Seafood Coalition publicly made clear that adequate federal funding and catch allocations would be needed for the system to properly function. They added: “Sure enough, here we are – less than 3 years after sector implementation – and the agency is telling us there is not enough money to monitor or enough fish to sustain our fishery. It’s difficult for many of us to believe that this was just a coincidence.”
The fishermen made four requests:
1) The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) should reconsider their decision to reject the Council’s request for interim measures on Gulf of Maine cod and haddock and should adopt the Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) for Georges Bank yellowtail as recommended by the Council for fishing year 2013. “How are we – those who have endured the brunt of efforts to rebuild groundfish stocks for over two decades now – expected to survive until all those promises of stock abundance are fulfilled?” they wrote. They added: “Did the NMFS lawyers really get it right? Or, was this just an unfortunate policy decision influenced by [Non-Governmental Organizations] or the threat of litigation?”
2) NMFS must cover the cost of at-sea monitoring in FY 2013 and continue to do so until the economic situation in the fishery improves.
3) NMFS must fix their stock assessments. The fishermen noted that the science on which management of the fishery depends is riddled with flaws and the law overreaches. “The Magnuson-Stevens Act now demands more from the science than it can produce,” they write. “That law also needs to be fixed, and Congress can do it.”
4) Congress should continue its work to find a way to fund fishery disaster declarations. “We have seen this great nation step up time and time again to help those that have suffered disasters at the hands of nature to get back on their feet—from hurricanes to droughts to tsunamis. Our disaster is the same,” they write.
Read the full letter to the Members of Congress here
Read the full letter to the Senators here