New England fisheries are facing serious challenges. The groundfish industry has been experiencing steep job losses and drops in harvest levels for decades.  Historically low catch levels and a change in management strategy, though geared toward restoring the health of the fishing industry in the long-term, have also meant short-term economic and social stress.

That's why the public needs fair, accurate and useful information — especially those who are not able to attend all public meetings. The public needs to know what is happening and what it means to the fishing industry, to the community and to the health of local fish stocks over time.  Unfortunately, readers of the Gloucester Daily Times are not getting a realistic picture of what is happening or why.

EDF, alongside many in New England, is advocating for a different set of fishery regulations called catch shares. This new type of management has been shown elsewhere to maintain sustainable fishing harvests while helping fishermen stay in business.  Catch shares, like any management system, must be designed well to fit both the biological constraints and the social and economic goals of individual fisheries. 

EDF has spent years learning from managers and fishermen in well over 300 catch share systems currently operating in the United States and other countries. To help promote best practices and transparent information, EDF put out for public comment a draft 130-page catch share design manual that helps fishermen and managers set goals and craft design options to develop quality catch share systems.  We have sponsored fishermen's exchanges with catch share practitioners from British Columbia and Alaska to help New England stakeholders better understand the pros and cons of different catch share systems.  Our goal is to provide research and information sharing that can help everyone make decisions that have better outcomes for the resource and for fishermen than status quo management.

However, readers of the Gloucester Daily Times likely don’t know this. Because instead of providing balanced, objective information about the pros and cons of the current days-at-sea system versus other systems, reporter Richard Gaines has focused his coverage almost entirely upon criticisms of this management tool and given voice almost exclusively to those opposed to it. Coverage of those speaking in favor of the program and its potential benefits has been heavily loaded with biased language that questions the validity of the science, the organizations and the credentials of the experts delivering this point of view.

Sadly, the ones who lose most here are his readers—especially those who have a stake in the health of the fishing industry. We hope those who are interested in learning more about the pros and cons of catch shares and other fishery management practices will contact us, contact the Fishery Management Council, or contact fishermen's groups that have been advocating for a form of catch shares called "sectors" for years.

Change is difficult, and can cause undue stress when it’s not accompanied by an open and thorough exchange of information. Those affected by the changes in New England fisheries need and deserve to have the full story of the changes that are occurring—and they're not getting it in the Gloucester Daily Times.

Two very thoughtful articles came out of New England earlier this week, both talking about the current difficulties groundfish fishermen are having in staying afloat financially under the current fisheries management system (1, 2). Both pieces make the case that it is not catch shares but low catch limits (i.e., not enough fish to go around) that is causing such hardship, and that sectors provide fishermen with a better chance to stay solvent while fisheries recover. 
 
I have consistently found John Sackton of Seafood.com and John Richardson of the Portland Press Herald to be two of the most nuanced, insightful reporters covering the New England fishing industry.  They have each clearly been writing about this for years, care about what happens, and provide a perspective and context to current events that move my understanding forward.

I was hoping the Pew Environment Group’s new report, Design Matters: Making Catch Shares Work would provide some good information about how to design catch shares, but instead I found it over-simplistic,  somewhat confusing and lacking any new insight into catch shares and effective design.  Just about everyone agrees that catch shares can and should be designed for the unique needs of fisheries and the communities that depend on them. 

EDF has been working on catch share design for years, and recently released a 100+ page draft of a Catch Shares Design Manual that outlines a roadmap for designing catch shares based on experience from around the world.  (After an open peer review is done, we’ll finalize the manual.)  I agree with the title of Pew’s report.  Design of catch shares does matter.  It matters a lot. 

The overall feeling I left with was that Pew is comparing catch shares to an ideal world that doesn’t exist rather than to the reality of current management.  The report identified many issues that traditional management hasn’t solved, and makes the case that catch shares should solve all of those problems. 

The good news is that catch shares generally do make progress on those problems—and as they are adjusted over time they get even better.  These include setting an accurate, science-based cap, establishing an appropriate monitoring and enforcement program, managing multiple species, reducing bycatch and habitat destruction, and compensating fishermen who are caught in a system that has led to over-capitalization.

Pew is right that these are tough problems for fisheries, but they neglect to mention that catch shares are better at achieving positive outcomes than nearly any other management approach currently in use.  For example, Pew says:

“In some fisheries, improvements were more likely the result of hard TAC limits than an IFQ system.” 

What they failed to mention is that not only are catch share fisheries more likely to have a hard catch limit, but fishermen are also far more likely to stay within the identified catch limits.  And, the science behind those catch limits is also dramatically better than it was before catch shares were implemented.  In short, catch shares lead to more accurate science-based catch limits and fishermen who come in below catch limits, 5% on average. 

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When Nobel Prize winners speak, people tend to listen. Recent economics prize winner Elinor Ostrom was cited “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.” The governance of the commons is exactly the problem we face in fisheries—in the United States and the world.

This week Dr. Ostrom has been quoted in the catch shares debate in New England—and the quotes did not sound to me like the work that Dr. Ostrom has done. So we at EDF asked her what she thought. Here is what she said:

“I am quite distressed to find that I am being characterized as supporting or opposing particular policies to manage fisheries in New England. To be clear, I have not taken a side in this debate.

“Fishermen and fishing communities all over the world are facing loss of the ocean resources that they depend on. What my work and the work of other scholars shows above all is that the issues involved in managing natural resources are complex. A range of approaches have worked in different places and under different circumstances.

"I have not yet had the opportunity to study the “sectors” approach in detail, and so do not have a view on how it is likely to perform. What we can be confident of is that reducing overfishing and achieving sustainability for the long run will require good-faith effort, hard work, and cooperation among local communities and government authorities.”