Saving Seafood

Biden’s 30×30 plan gives hope, but also uncertainy

June 16, 2021 — On May 6th, the Biden administration released the “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful” report that instructed NOAA to expand the National Marine Sanctuaries System, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, to “help restore fish populations and better protect threatened and endangered species.” This report is considered the administration’s plan to meet the 30% of land and water protected by 2030 or “30 by 30” initiative put forth by executive order (E.O. 14008) in January 2021.

Before getting into the specifics of this report, it is worth reviewing the history of the “30×30” planning process and some of the initial responses from stakeholders:

  • October 2015 – Jane Lubchenco and Kirsten Grorud-Colvert publish a paper in Science Magazine titled: “Making waves: The science and politics of ocean protection”. This paper is credited for introducing the 30% global marine protected area (MPA) target.
  • September 2016 – The World Conservation Congress voted to support increasing the portion of the ocean that is highly protected to at least 30% to help effectively conserve biodiversity.
  • November 2020 – U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva introduced the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act. Title II of this act called for expanding marine protected areas (MPAs) in U.S. waters to equal 30% of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
  • November 2020 – Immediately after this introduction, more than 830 seafood industry stakeholders sent a letter to Rep. Grijalva expressing their concern about the proposals under Title II.
  • December 2020 – 28 prominent marine scientists sent a similar letter of opposition to Congress, questioning the justification for 30% MPAs described in Title II.

When the Biden administration introduced the 30×30 initiative in January 2021, various fishing industry stakeholders were upset for similar reasons described in the letters of opposition towards Title II of the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act.

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

White House appoints former NOAA leader Jane Lubchenco to key climate change role

March 23, 2021 — The White House has appointed Jane Lubchenco, a well-known marine scientist at Oregon State University and former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to a high-level position coordinating climate and environmental issues within its Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

The announcement scheduled for Friday marks another step in the Biden administration’s all-of-government approach to tackling climate change.

Lubchenco is serving in the renamed position of deputy director for climate and the environment, which in previous administrations had been known as the head of “energy and the environment.” The renaming signifies the emphasis the Biden Administration is placing on climate change.

Lubchenco’s portfolio encompasses a broad set of issues that President Biden asked OSTP officials to address in a letter on Jan. 15. In the letter to Eric Lander, nominated to serve as presidential science adviser, Biden tasked OSTP with finding climate change solutions that will help improve the economy and health, “especially in communities that have been left behind.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Global sustainable fishing initiative agreed by 14 countries

December 4, 2020 — Governments responsible for 40% of the world’s coastlines have pledged to end overfishing, restore dwindling fish populations and stop the flow of plastic pollution into the seas in the next 10 years.

The leaders of the 14 countries set out a series of commitments on Wednesday that mark the world’s biggest ocean sustainability initiative, in the absence of a fully fledged UN treaty on marine life.

The countries – Australia, Canada, Chile, Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Norway, Palau and Portugal – will end harmful subsidies that contribute to overfishing, a key demand of campaigners. They will also aim to eliminate illegal fishing through better enforcement and management, and to minimise bycatch and discards, as well as implementing national fisheries plans based on scientific advice.

Each of the countries, members of the High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy, has also pledged to ensure that all the areas of ocean within its own national jurisdiction – known as exclusive economic zones – are managed sustainably by 2025. That amounts to an area of ocean roughly the size of Africa.

Read the full story at The Guardian

As the world’s population grows, researchers say the ocean and seafood have big roles to play

August 27, 2020 — Seafood production could see as much as a 75 percent leap over the next three decades if certain policy reforms and technological improvements are put in place, according to research conducted by Oregon State University (OSU) in collaboration with a bevy of international scientists.

By 2050, the earth’s human population is expected to reach 9.8 billion, an increase of two billion people over the current global tally. Researchers, who published their latest findings in Nature, believe that seafood has the potential to feed the growing world over the next 30 years sustainably – if certain conditions are applied.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Seafood Could Account for 25% of Animal Protein Needed to Meet Increase in Demand in Coming Years

August 24, 2020 — Policy reforms and technological improvements could drive seafood production upward by as much as 75% over the next three decades, research by Oregon State University and an international collaboration suggests.

The findings, published recently in Nature, are important because by 2050 the Earth will have an estimated 9.8 billion human mouths to feed, a 2 billion increase in population from 2020. Seafood has the potential to meet much of the increased need for protein and nutrients, researchers say.

Read the full story at Seafood News

JANE LUBCHENCO & BRAD PETTINGER: With America’s fisheries rebounding, we can’t turn back

November 28, 2016 — The following is excerpted from an opinion piece written by Jane Lubchenco and Brad Pettinger. It was originally published Saturday in The Oregonian:

In the last 20 years, one of the country’s most valuable natural resources has transformed from a national disaster to a great American recovery story. But unless you’re a fishery scientist or a fisherman who suffered through the near collapse of a fishery, you’ve probably never heard the story.

We lived it.

We’ve been working along the West Coast for 40 years and can attest to the catastrophic collapse of a once massive groundfish fishery. We know fixing it was hard and messy. But we also know that troubled fisheries in the United States and around the world should look to our success and others for lasting solutions.

In the early 2000s, the fishery was in terrible shape. A number of rockfish species were becoming significantly overfished. As long-lived species, their recovery was expected to take decades. Level of discards of “bycatch” — accidental catch that occurs when fishing for target species – was high. This led to the fishery being declared a ‘federal disaster.’ Fish, fishermen and the communities that relied on them were suffering, and it was clear that if the system hadn’t yet hit rock bottom, it soon would.

Fortunately, potential economic extinction is a strong motivator. Fishermen teamed with scientists, conservationists and government managers. In 2011, we adopted a new approach that would bring science, accountability and long-term sustainability to a system that badly needed them.

Where previous management approaches placed numerous and strict limits on when, where and how boats could fish, the new approach established and managed secure fishing privileges for the fishery. Scientists used sound data to determine the amount of each species that could be caught each year while still allowing the species to recover. That total annual catch limit was divided among members of the fishery.

In five short years, the conservation turnaround has been remarkable and faster than anticipated. Species have rebuilt, bycatch discarding decreased by 75 percent and fishery managers have increased the amount of fish that can be sustainably caught. In fact, the fishery was recently certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council and received a slew of top ratings from Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch.

Read the full opinion piece at The Oregonian

How a ‘rogue’ environmental group transformed American fisheries

October 5, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story written by Ben Raines and originally published on AL.com. Mr. Raines is a 17-year veteran investigative reporter for Al.com specializing in Alabama’s natural systems. He wrote, narrated and coproduced ‘America’s Amazon’, a documentary about the Mobile River Basin. He is a Coast Guard licensed captain and leads tours in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, to barrier islands and other remote spots:

“We always hear from them at the Council meetings,” said Bob Shipp, a former president and longtime member of the Council, which sets regulations for the commercial and recreational fisheries in the Gulf.

“They don’t explain how their groups are linked, but EDF and the fishermen with these non-profits are always on the same page.”

The intimate connection between EDF and the non-profits they helped start was on display on national television this year on the National Geographic TV show “Big Fish, Texas,” which starred Buddy Guindon and his family. On that show, the top EDF official in the Gulf was shown in a private meeting coaching Guindon on what to say moments before he spoke to the Texas Legislature.

“They pay for all of the travel, meals, everything for anyone who goes on one of these trips to Washington or the council meetings. They talk to the fishermen about what to say. And they tell the fishermen to just give them all their receipts and they’d cover everything,” said Wayne Warner, who was a founding member of the Shareholder’s Alliance but quit the first year because he disapproved of the environmental group’s involvement.

One of the nation’s largest environmental groups — bankrolled with $50 million from the heirs to the Walmart fortune — has spent millions of dollars pushing a wholesale change in how the U.S. manages its fisheries, an AL.com investigation reveals.

Critics blame the Environmental Defense Fund effort for hurting fishing communities on every coast, from Kake, Alaska, and Gloucester, Mass., to Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

But catch share systems are also blamed for knocking thousands of fishermen out of the industry, usually because of inequities in how the shares were originally distributed by the government.

In the Gulf of Mexico’s red snapper fishery for instance, some fishermen were granted the right to catch six percent of the annual harvest, worth millions of dollars a year, while others were granted as little as 0.006 percent of the harvest, or a few hundred pounds a year, meaning they could no longer earn a living from fishing.

Because all other fishermen are locked out of the fishery unless they buy or lease catch shares, critics say the system has turned those who were granted the largest portion of the harvest into Sea Lords who lease the right to fish to those who received the least. Many of these lords are able to earn millions of dollars a year without ever leaving the dock, simply by bartering the right to fish. The Sea Lord problem has affected fisheries all over the country, creating haves and have-nots when it comes to the basic right to fish, and forcing hundreds of crews out of the industry.

EDF gained unprecedented access to the levers of power in 2008 when President Obama appointed the vice-chair of EDF’s board – Jane Lubchenco — as the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the nation’s fish stocks. Once in power, Lubchenco, a respected but little known fisheries professor at Oregon State University, enacted a national catch share policy that mirrored EDF’s longtime goals.

As Lubchenco pushed for catch shares from the top, EDF staff members simultaneously organized and funded the creation of several non-profit activist groups made up of small numbers of commercial fishermen on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Critics say the move was intended to create the impression of grass roots support for catch shares that didn’t actually exist.

The leadership of these non-profits often consists of the fishermen who control the largest portion of a given fishery, who are also the folks who benefitted most from the switch to catch shares.

“They work hard to make the public and politicians believe they are representing the majority of charter for hire boats when in reality they represent maybe 200 of 1,300 federally permitted owners,” said Bob Zales, president of the National Association of Charterboat Operators. “Through EDF and their puppet associations such as the Charter Fishermen’s Association, there is much political lobbying and at least yearly, sometimes more often, trips to D.C. to garner support for catch shares in all fisheries, commercial, charter, and private recreational with stamps.” 

“What you are seeing is a conservation group that has gone rogue… What EDF really wants is to privatize the entire resource,” said Daniel Pauly, a professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the world’s preeminent fisheries scientists. Pauly is responsible for developing the concept of keystone species in aquatic food webs and popularizing the notion that the world’s fish stocks are much worse off than most scientists believe. He disputes the EDF position that catch shares improve fisheries. Instead, he said, they cause “economic redistribution.”

“Everywhere you have a catch share, a small group of people end up controlling the fishery. We have in British Columbia, one person controls 50 percent of our fishery. This is what is happening in the Gulf,” Pauly said. “EDF has no business favoring the concentration of capital and ownership, but that is what it is doing.”

Indeed, one of the key benefits of switching to catch shares, according to Lubchenco’s national catch share policy, is “consolidation” of the fleet. In other words, when catch shares are put in place, the number of people in a fishery shrinks, often dramatically, as the larger harvesters buy up shares from the smaller fishing boats.

EDF officials describe such concentration as one of several “unintended consequences.” Others say it created an age of the sea lords and sharecroppers that began in earnest with Lubchenco’s appointment. Lubchenco, who left NOAA in 2013 and resumed her position on the EDF board, did not respond to requests for comment.

Lubchenco met fierce resistance in Massachusetts, when catch shares were enacted for the fisheries in the north Atlantic. John Kerry, then a senator, along with Gov. Deval Patrick and most of the state’s congressional delegation, bitterly opposed the introduction of catch shares, saying they would cost hundreds to thousands of jobs and devastate coastal communities.

“A lot of our fishermen have been put out of business or pushed to the brink,” because of catch shares, Kerry said at the time.

“Normally environmental groups and NGOs are for the little guy, but here, the EDF people are siding with the big guys, the corporate interests that want to own and privatize our fisheries,” Pauly said. “It makes EDF very strange in the world of environmental groups. But then they are being funded by Walmart.”

Pauly said the solution is to require the owner of shares in a fishery to actually captain the boat that is doing the fishing. In most U.S. catch shares, such as the red snapper IFQ, there is no such requirement. In fact, any U.S. citizen is allowed to buy, sell, or trade shares in the fishery, whether he or she has a boat, or has ever been fishing in their life.

Read the full story here

New England Fishermen File Lawsuit Over At-Sea Monitoring Mandate

WASHINGTON — December 9, 2015 — The following was released by Cause of Action:

Today, Cause of Action is announcing that its clients, David Goethel, owner and operator of F/V Ellen Diane, a 44-foot fishing trawler based in Hampton, N.H., and Northeast Fishery Sector 13, a nonprofit entity comprised of over 20 groundfishermen located up and down the eastern seaboard, are suing the U.S. Department of Commerce over a program that would devastate much of the East Coast’s ground fish industry.

The complaint challenges the legality of a federal mandate requiring groundfishermen in the Northeast United States to not only carry National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) enforcement contractors known as “at-sea monitors” on their vessels during fishing trips, but to soon begin paying out-of-pocket for the cost of these authorities. In addition to the complaint, the Plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would protect fishermen from having to bear the costs of the at-sea monitors.

“Fishing is my passion and its how I’ve made a living, but right now, I’m extremely fearful that I won’t be able to do what I love and provide for my family if I’m forced to pay out of pocket for at-sea monitors,” said Goethel.  “I’m doing this not only to protect myself, but to stand up for others out there like me whose livelihoods are in serious jeopardy. I’m grateful to Cause of Action for giving my industry a voice and helping us fight to preserve our way of life.”

“The fishermen in my sector are hard-working and compassionate folks who would give the shirts off of their backs to help a fellow fisherman in need,” said Northeast Fishery Sector 13 Manager John Haran. “Our sector will be effectively shut down if these fishermen are forced to pay, themselves, for the cost of at-sea monitors.”

“By the federal government’s own estimate, this unlawful regulation will be the death knell for much of what remains of a once-thriving ground fish industry that has been decimated by burdensome federal overreach,” said Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein. “Americans, particularly those who enjoy good, quality seafood, should be extremely concerned that an industry that has been around since before our nation was even founded is slowly going extinct, having been left out at sea by a federal government that seems more interested in caving to special interests than protecting jobs, families and consumers everywhere.”

 

BACKGROUND: 

“Catch Shares” are a fishery management tool that dedicates a secure share of quota allowing fishermen or other entities to harvest a fixed amount of fish. Since 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has coerced New England groundfishermen like Mr. Goethel into joining a form of catch shares known as “sectors,” where they share quota, and are forced to invite federally-contracted monitors onto their boats anytime they set out to sea. 

Although the agency has claimed in Federal court that “Sector membership is voluntary; permit holders need not join a sector in order to be able to fish,” the reality is they have designed the alternative, known as the “common pool” to be so prohibitive, that fisherman are forced to join a sector to remain economically viable in the groundfish industry. 

Catch Shares were promoted heavily by environmental groups and NOAA during the first years of the Obama Administration. Former NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, asserted that “fisheries managed with catch share programs perform better than fisheries managed with traditional tools.” She promised that catch shares are “the best way for many fisheries to both meet [federal mandates] and have healthy, profitable fisheries that are sustainable.” However, the promises made by Federal appointees and environmentalists have not been fulfilled in New England.

Unfortunately, it’s about to get much worse for these struggling fishermen, who are already policed by the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some time in “early 2016,”, NOAA will begin forcing them to pay the costs associated with having at-sea monitors watch over their shoulders.

This unlawful mandate will cost Mr. Goethel and the groundfishermen of Sector 13 hundreds of dollars per day at sea, which, for many of them, is the difference between sinking and staying afloat. In fact, according to a study produced by NOAA, nearly 60% of the industry will be rendered unprofitable if it is required to pay out of pocket for these monitors. 

NOAA has implemented the industry funding requirement for monitoring despite the fact that:

  • The Secretary of Commerce declared the groundfish fishery an economic disaster in 2012.
  • The industry continues to struggle with the precipitous decline in groundfish profitability, as evidenced by a four-year low in groundfish revenue of $55.2 million for Fishing Year 2013 – a 33.6 percent decline from Fishing Year 2010.
  • Congress has directed NOAA to use its appropriated funding to cover the cost of these at-sea monitors, which NOAA has refused to properly utilize and allocate in accordance with congressional intent.
  • NOAA is specifically required by statute to implement regulations that allow fishing communities sustainable prosperity and “minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.”
  • As mentioned above, NOAA itself produced a study indicating that upwards of 60 percent of the groundfish industry could be rendered unprofitable if it is required to pay for at-sea monitors.

About David Goethel:

Mr. Goethel, who has been fishing for over 30 years, holds a B.S. in Biology from Boston University, and worked at the New England Aquarium as a research biologist before choosing to go back out to sea as a fisherman. Mr. Goethel served two terms on the New England Fishery Management Council, and has been an advisor to seven state and federal fishery management boards, including the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission and the governor’s commission on marine biology. Mr. Goethel has been awarded the National Fisherman’s Highliners Award for his active involvement in cooperative efforts to research and manage marine fisheries resources, and is a member of the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative.

About Northeast Fishery Sector 13:

Northeast Fishery Sector 13 is a nonprofit organization comprised of 20 active groundfishermen who are permitted in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia. The number of groundfishing activity within the sector has declined sharply in the past five years due to poor science and overregulation, which has resulted in quota cuts. Click here for more information about the sector.

About Cause of Action:

Cause of Action is a government accountability organization committed to ensuring that decisions made by federal agencies are open, honest, and fair.

MEDIA CONTACT: Geoff Holtzman, geoff.holtzman@causeofaction.org, 703-405-3511

Read the Complaint here

Read the Motion here

Watch a YouTube video to learn more about the case here

Are “Strongly Protected” MPAs the Future of Ocean Conservation?

November 19, 205 — A new paper in science by Jane Lubchenco and Kirsten Grorud-Colvert discusses the recent progress and advocates for creating and enforcing “strongly protected” marine protected areas (MPAs). For the purposes of this paper, strongly protected MPAs are those that restrict all commercial activity and allow only light recreational or subsistence fishing. Today only 3.5% of the ocean is protected but only 1.6% is strongly protected. The 10% protection goal for coastal marine areas by 2020 decided recently at the Convention on Biological Diversity is too loosely defined and should be specific to strongly protected MPAs or marine reserves. However it should be noted that significant progress has been made in establishing more strongly protected MPAs in the past decade, which, “reflects increasingly strong scientific evidence about the social, economic and environmental benefits of full protection.”

The authors highlight seven key findings suggesting that such MPAs are indeed needed in a greater percentage of global oceans. Successful MPA programs must be integrated across political boundaries but also with the ecosystems they assist – an ecosystem-based management approach is essential. Engaging users almost always improves outcomes. MPAs may improve resilience to future effects of climate change, but there is no question that, “Full protection works,” such that primary ecological goals are almost always met with strongly protected MPAs.

In conclusion, six political recommendations are outlined. An integrated approach is equally important in the political balance for successful MPAs – other management schemes must be considered and dynamic planning is most effective in preparation for changing ecological systems. There is no one-size-fits-all method for MPAs. Top-down or bottom-up approaches have been successful and to determine the right strategy stakeholders should always be involved in the process. Perhaps most importantly, user incentives need to be changed in order to alleviate the economic trauma of short-term losers.

Read the full story at CFOOD

 

 

NILS STOLPE: So how’s that “catch shares” revolution working out for groundfish?

FishNet USA/October 22, 2015 — NILS E. STOLPE — Most of you probably remember when newly appointed NOAA head Jane Lubchenco went to New England and announced that she was going to save our nation’s oldest fishery. But if it didn’t make a lasting impact on you, quoting from the Environmental Defense blog, EDFish by Tesia Love on April 8, 2009, “Sally McGee, Emilie Litsinger and I got to witness something pretty wonderful today.  Jane Lubchenco came to the New England Fishery Management Council meeting to announce the immediate release of $16 million to the groundfish fishery to help move the fishery to ‘sector” catch share management by providing funding for cooperative research to help fishermen get through a tough fishing year with very strict limits on fishing effort.”  She went on to quote Dr. Lubchenco “we need a rapid transition to sectors and catch shares. Catch shares are a powerful tool to getting to sustainable fisheries and profitability.  I challenge you to deliver on this in Amendment 16, to include measures to end overfishing.  I will commit the resources to my staff to do their part to ensure Amendment 16 is passed in June. We are shining a light on your efforts and we will track your progress.  There is too much at stake to allow delay and self-interest to prevent sectors and ultimately catch shares from being implemented.”

I’m sure that you were there with the rest of us, heaving a huge sigh of relief with visions of Dr. Lubchenco on her shiny white steed,  first riding to the rescue of the New England fishery, and then on to all of the rest of our struggling fisheries. “Hyo Silver! Away!”

So how did she do? A couple of years back NOAA/NMFS released the 2012 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2012 – April 2013). It’s available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1401/. The report included a table – available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1401/tables.pdf – included a table titled Summary of major trends (May through April, includes all vessels with a valid limited access multispecies permit) for the fishing years 2009 to 2012. The table only takes up a single page, is pretty easily understood and is well worth your consideration in its entirety but I’ll take the liberty of synopsizing what I think are the major points it illustrates. In each of the four years the groundfish revenues, landed weight, number of active vessels that took a groundfish trip, the total number of groundfish trips, and the total crew days on groundfish trips decreased. The non-groundfish revenues and landed weight increased. The days absent on a non-groundfish trip increased slightly then decreased. 

And then we come to 2013 (it seems that according to NOAA/NMFS, 2014 hasn’t gotten here yet). Had the myriad benefits of Dr. Lubchenco’s and her ENGO/foundation cronies’ Catch Share Revolution finally arrived? Apparently, not quite yet. According to the 2013 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2013 – April 2014), just about everything that was falling in FY 2009 to 2012 continued to fall in FY 2014. I won’t go over any of the details, but the corresponding Table 1 for that year is available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/read/socialsci/pdf/groundfish_report_fy2013.pdf.

Oh well, I guess she deserves a few points for trying – and we shouldn’t forget that before she could really focus on fixing groundfish she was distracted by having to dump a couple of millions of gallons of Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico.

Thirteen species are included in the New England Fishery Management Council’s multi-species fishery management plan, the “groundfish” FMP. Four of those species support no or minimal directed fisheries. The landings of those that support a significant commercial fishery are in the table below (from the NOAA/NMFS commercial landings database). Looking at these data, it’s impossible to suggest that after years of intensive management this management regime is anything that could be considered a success – unless your idea of success is putting a whole bunch of people out of work. In fact only the most charitable among us could term it anything other than disaster – and it’s a disaster that has been in the making since long before Dr. Lubchenco so fatuously announced that she was going to fix it.

(I’ll add here that catch share management is not a cure-all for all that’s wrong with fishery management nor is it the reason for management failures – though at the time Dr. Lubchenco and her “team” apparently believed it was. It is nothing more than an option for dividing the catch among users. As such it can have profound socioeconomic impacts on participants in the fishery and on fishing communities that depend on it, but not on the fishery resources themselves.)  

 

Species

Year

Metric Tons

Value

Species

Year

Metric Tons

Value

Atlantic

2009

8946

$25,223,364

Haddock

2009

5,818

$13,655,842

Cod

2010

8039

$28,142,681

 

2010

9,811

$21,715,488

 

2011

7981

$32,596,942

 

2011

5,709

$16,316,219

 

2012

4766

$22,200,043

 

2012

1,959

$7,833,001

 

2013

2261

$10,455,352

 

2013

1,869

$6,002,480

Plaice

2009

1395

$3,886,809

White

2009

1,696

$3,556,719

 

2010

1413

$4,498,591

Hake

2010

1,807

$4,116,221

 

2011

1387

$4,274,757

 

2011

2,907

$5,849,790

 

2012

1480

$5,048,688

 

2012

2,772

$6,933,743

 

2013

1318

$4,688,995

 

2013

2,238

$6,484,444

Winter

2009

2209

$8,094,381

Pollock

2009

7,492

$10,010,039

Flounder

2010

1587

$6,959,547

 

2010

5,158

$9,529,022

 

2011

2124

$8,002,376

 

2011

7,193

$12,292,573

 

2012

2395

$10,331,500

 

2012

6,743

$13,185,509

 

2013

2746

$9,899,924

 

2013

5,058

$11,395,943

Yellowtail

2009

1605

$4,759,536

Acadian

2009

1,440

$1,572,292

Flounder

2010

1318

$4,193,981

Redfish

2010

1,646

$1,959,681

 

2011

1827

$4,762,969

 

2011

2,014

$2,754,692

 

2012

1808

$5,396,502

 

2012

4,035

$5,891,429

 

2013

1278

$4,199,927

 

2013

3,577

$4,337,163

Witch

2009

949

$4,036,115

Flounder

2010

759

$3,773,526

 

2011

870

$3,955,053

 

2012

1037

$4,247,528

 

2013

686

$3,735,330

How might it be fixed? In the original FishNet article I quoted a couple of paragraphs from a National Academy of Sciences study Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Stock Rebuilding Plans in the United States (available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18488/evaluating-the-effectiveness-of-fish-stock-rebuilding-plans-in-the-united-states). I can’t think of anything more valuable than repeating those words here. On page 178 of the report the authors concluded “the tradeoff between flexibility and prescriptiveness within the current legal framework and MFSCMA (Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act) guidelines for rebuilding underlies many of the issues discussed in this chapter. The present approach may not be flexible or adaptive enough in the face of complex ecosystem and fishery dynamics when data and knowledge are limiting. The high degree of prescriptiveness (and concomitant low flexibility) may create incompatibilities between single species rebuilding plans and EBFM (Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management). Fixed rules for rebuilding times can result in inefficiencies and discontinuities of harvest-control rules, put unrealistic demands on models and data for stock assessment and forecasting, cause reduction in yield, especially in mixed-stock situations, and de-emphasize socio-economic factors in the formulation of rebuilding plans. The current approach specifies success of individual rebuilding plans in biological terms. It does not address evaluation of the success in socio-economic terms and at broader regional and national scales, and also does not ensure effective flow of information (communication) across regions.”

In other words, the fishery managers need more informed flexibility to adequately manage our fisheries. It has been the goal of the fishing industry’s friends in Congress to provide this necessary flexibility (with adequate safeguards, of course). Conversely it has been the goal of a handful of foundations and the ENGOs they support and a smaller handful of so-called fishermen’s organizations to prevent this, and it seems that they have been willing to resort to just about any tactics to do it. As they have been successful in their efforts the fishing industry has continued to lose infrastructure that will never be replaced and markets that will be next to impossible to recover – and the percentage of imported seafood that we consume will continue to increase in spite of the fact that our fisheries are among the richest in the world.

View a PDF of the opinion piece