Time to put scallops under a catch share/ITQ program to end industry – NMFS battles (Editorial) 
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS
By John Sackton 
Jan 8, 2009 

[Editorial Comment] It's time for the scallop industry in New England to move towards an ITQ or catch share program. If such a program were in place, much of the dispute between the industry and the New England Fishery Management Council would simply not occur.

Currently, the movement in 2011 is toward 'accountability measures' – such as closing the fishery if a hard cap is reached. But the accountability measures under consideration seem unlikely to change the relationship between the scallop industry and NMFS.

The reason is simple: without an effective ITQ or catch share program, the amount of scallops harvested annually misses management targets – either being more or less than predicted prior to the season. This is natural when a fishery still uses effort based management – where only the number of days fishing is controlled, and the cpue and the productivity of the fishing grounds varies. If 'accountability' then requires a hard cap, the industry will be hit with closures, and a race to fish will ensue.

The industry has long objected to catch shares or an ITQ system because, first, they are happy with the rotational system of closed areas and trip limits, which function similarly to catch shares to some degree, and secondly, a fully developed catch share system would raise the specter of consolidation.

In fact, the scallop industry is highly concentrated with two large owners each responsible for a significant portion of the catch. Scallop vessel owners can operate up to a limit of 17 vessels. Companies with large numbers of vessels and stacked permits can rotate crews to keep the vessels operating far beyond the nominal limits of days at sea per vessel.

Moving to catch shares would probably cap the current level of ownership for the largest scallop fleets, or even reduce it – and that is one reason it is opposed in the industry.

But it is hypocritical for the industry to flail away at NMFS without addressing the fact that more scallops were caught last year than planned. After the fact, some are arguing that the scallop landing limits were set too low. This may be true. But the best cooperative experiences in stock assessment and research take place in fisheries with catch shares – where regulators know exactly what is going to be caught, and the industry works with, and even funds, science to document stock levels, mortality, and knows what are the highest scientifically based harvest levels.

A good example is the crab fishery in Alaska, where this week vessels are participating in a undersize discard mortality study that will be used by NMFS and could conceivably result in higher harvest levels due to changes in assumptions about the survival of undersized crab. The fleet is in a position to adopt new handling techniques if they can be shown to contribute to an increased overall catch.

Such an effort cannot take place in the New England scallop fishery until the war between NMFS and the industry is settled.

Stock assessment science is always going to have uncertainty. Currently that uncertainty is a battleground between the industry and NMFS. With a catch share program, that battle becomes a fight for the best science, as now both parties have reason to work towards the best possible facts with the least uncertainty.

The trade off is simple: the less uncertainty faced by the scientists in monitoring the fishery, the closer harvest levels can come to their maximum value, since less precautionary buffers and assumptions are needed.

This has clearly been the experience in other fisheries, and it would likely work in New England as well if issues of consolidation and ownership caps could be worked out.

Instead of the current battle being fought from New Bedford to Washington, the industry and NMFS could get back to achieving the highest harvest levels possible from a healthy resource.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Ohio and lived there with my younger brother and mom (who is a nurse) and my dad (who is a math teacher). We moved to South Carolina when I was twelve and I moved to New England 25 years ago. 

How did you get interested in fisheries and oceans issues?

I tried an office job but decided I wanted something different. I signed up for a three-month educational program through the Sea Education Association (SEA) that is run by Boston University out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Students live and work on an oceanographic research vessel to study the ocean. Our 135’ vessel, the Corwith Cramer, had a full science lab so we could do a wide range of research projects.

When the program was over, I didn’t want to leave the water. They had an opening for a cook. I thought to myself, I can handle cooking for 36 people and making a fraction of what I had before, as long as it means staying at sea.  So I sold all my belongings and ended up living on the water for the next five years.  I sailed in New England, the Canadian Maritimes, to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, the Galapagos Islands and throughout the South Pacific.

I held various jobs including cook, deckhand, and eventually became the captain of a skipjack for another educational program in the Chesapeake Bay. After five years at sea, I decided to study in a traditional classroom and got a Master's in Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island.

What was your first desk job after returning from sea and completing graduate school?

I worked for Republican Congressman Wayne Gilchrest, from Maryland’s eastern shore, who was then the Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans. That was in 1999 when Magnuson Stevens (the nation’s fisheries law) was up for reauthorization, so I quickly became immersed in fisheries policy.

Congress had to decide whether to let the moratorium on catch shares expire. Fishermen from all over the country visited our office to ask for the ban to be lifted because traditional management was making their lives difficult and wasn’t stopping fish populations from being decimated. Catch shares were benefiting both fishermen and the environment across the globe, and fortunately Congress passed legislation that would enable U.S. fisheries to introduce them. 

Why do you think fisheries management in New England need to change?

Many of New England’s fisheries are in very bad shape. The closest fishing port to my house in Mystic, Connecticut is in Stonington.  This once-vibrant fishing community is now a shadow of what it once was because of dwindling fish populations.  It makes me sad that so many fishermen can’t make a living fishing anymore and that New England could lose such an important part of its heritage. Most fishermen I talk to want their children to be able to become fishermen. I’d like my three-year old to have that option, too, one day if he wants to. But it’s only going to happen if we make some pretty major changes in how we manage our fisheries.

Will New England fisheries be adopting more catch shares?

The New England Fisheries Management Council voted unanimously to expand catch shares by approving nineteen new fishing cooperatives for groundfish fishermen who will be allocated a portion of the overall catch and be freed from many burdensome rules, like trip limits.  The cooperatives will begin operating on May 1, 2010.

While this decision has been portrayed as controversial, it’s important to know that many of the members of the New England Fisheries Management Council are fishermen or work in the fishing industry, and since that decision was made, more than 90 percent of groundfish fishermen voluntarily signed up for these new cooperatives.

The New England Fisheries Management Council also included in its priorities for 2010 development of a region-wide policy for catch shares, and specific plans to address major bycatch problems in the scallop fishery using a catch share approach as well as catch shares options for the monkfish fishery.

Lastly, what is something many people don’t know about you?

I have a 100-ton U.S. Coast Guard merchant mariner's license and I teach Sunday school.

Two editorials we print today against catch shares contain enough mis-information and hypocrisy that we felt compelled to set the record straight. Reading the Food and Water Watch editorial in the Portland Press Herald, or the editorial again slamming NMFS in today's Gloucester Daily Times, you would think a conflagration is burning in New England against catch shares.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The biggest issue causing consternation in the industry in New England is not catch shares, but whether blind adherence to bureaucratic procedures will doom the success of catch shares. About 97% of the fleet has signed on to sector programs, and they are focused on making them work.

Here is our attempt to set the record straight:

Huge errors in NMFS data

There have been repeated stories about how many errors exist in the NMFS catch history database, so that many boats are fishing on incorrect history, and have no opportunity to correct them until 2011. At the recent Council meeting, Pat Kurkul, NMFS regional administrator, said that out of 1480 eligible histories, only 66 have been challenged. This is far fewer than NMFS expected. As a result, they are able to have individual discussions with each person challenging their history.

On the other hand, if you don't own the permit yourself, there is no way to challenge the history, so if you had been leasing a permit, it is the owner of the permit who is responsible for making any challenge. Therefore it is quite likely that there are additional vessels using leased permits where the lease holder thinks the history is inaccurate, but the owner either does not have the records or has left the fishery, and will not challenge the allocation. But in either case, the number of errors and challenges is not nearly as large as some would want you to believe.

Catch Shares will destroy small boat fleets

The basic argument of Food and Water Watch is that the catch share system will destroy the ability of small boats to survive and make a living. The problem here is not catch shares, it is that there is not enough fish to support the level of effort that would allow all New England boats to thrive. The idea that the alternative to catch shares is some idyllic return to the early 1980's, when fish were abundant, and small boats could thrive, is simply a myth.

Here are the facts about the small boat fleet: There are 757 permits in the common pool, with a total of about 3600 days at sea. Out of these permits, 477 have no days at sea whatsoever, meaning they have been in-active or non-participatory for several years. Of the remaining 280 permits, 79 never fished in 2007, and 98 never landed a single groundfish, monkfish, or skate.

None of these numbers account for leased permits, so the total number of small vessels actually making landings, and remaining in the common pool is likely to be between 30 and 100 or so. The average length of these vessels is around 38 feet. The share of landings they will get is equal to about 3% of the total landings expected in 2010.

The council gave NMFS the power to shut down the common pool fishery as soon as the limits are reached for various species, and since the weakest species will be the limiting factor, it is highly likely that the common pool fishery next year will last no more than a few weeks, and then be shut for the remainder of the year. On some species, it may not open at all.

This is the reality – not some myth of healthy small boats bobbing in many local harbors. Instead of destroying small boat fleets, catch shares will allow a portion of them to survive, by either temporarily leasing their shares, or by combining more shares on a single boat to make it viable. Last year, 549 leasing deals were approved by NMFS, for a total of about 11,807 days at sea, at an average value of $442.00 per day at sea.

Hypocrisy spouted by the Gloucester times over NMFS funding

Today they rail against NMFS going to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for additional funds to implement catch shares in New England. They say it 'is grossly inappropriate for the government to accept money for its own mandated programs from a foundation whose funding or investing 'partners' include the likes of Wal-Mart, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America and the Big Oil gang of British Petroleum, Exxon/Mobil, Marathon Oil, Shell, and Conoco-Phillips.'

'Even local city councilors, selectmen and municipal administrators know the potential conflict and dangers that can come through letting private entities openly contribute to projects that are government-run and should be government-funded.'

'Letting Big Oil companies and other corporate entities essentially fund a major government regulatory program one that has never been given a congressional green light crosses so many lines it has to be considered far out of bounds, even in today's 'stimulus' age of governmental corporate takeovers.'

The reason this is so shockingly hypocritical is that the City of Gloucester, State representative Bruce Tarr, and the entire local government lobbied hard and welcomed $16 million in direct payments to Gloucester interests from Suez and Excelerate, the two companies involved in building an offshore LNG terminal off Gloucester. These are giant global oil and gas conglomerates.

The oil money from Suez paid $12.6 million to the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund – established specifically to buy and lease days at sea and fishing permits for Gloucester. The oil money paid $3.6 million directly in compensation to fishermen. The oil money paid $150,000 to the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center.

The fact that the Gloucester Times can rail against NMFS accepting money from the well respected and highly monitored National Fish and Wildlife Federation, and not mention that their own community received direct payments of $16 million from oil and natural gas companies is simply not acceptable. Here is State Sen. Bruce Tarr in the Gloucester Times in 2007 , 'We've been trying to expedite it [the funding] because with all the threats facing the industry, I'm trying to get some dollars soon for some extra days to fish.'

If the Gloucester Times wants to attack NMFS as being in the pocket the oil companies because of the funding chain, then they must also censure their own fishing community, who took oil money to extend their ability to purchase days at sea. It would be far better for them to focus on the real issues at stake, which are concerns about imprecise science, stock assessments, and flexibility.

New England has already opted in to the Sector Program

About 95% of the New England fishing industry has opted into the sector program, and they are focused on making it work. The biggest threat is not oil companies, environmental groups, or outside investors, it is that rigid adherence to 'precautionary' principles in a time of rapidly rebuilding stocks can doom the best chance New England has to transform its industry.

At the council meeting, it was stated that within the next few years, due to catch shares and hard TAC's, 11 to 12 stocks now classified as overfished will no longer be so, within a 2 year time period. Environmentalists should be jumping up and down celebrating this success.

Everyone who cares about the success of New England fisheries should keep their eyes on the main goal: giving fishermen the flexibility to align their interests with the conservation requirements of hard quotas. Opponents of catch shares need to answer one question: Why do they want to perpetuate a system in which up to half of the fish caught in New England are thrown overboard, dead, and wasted, due to the current management system.

Catch shares are a trade off: fishermen get the flexibility to fish in the best and most efficient manner, they get to keep all they catch without trip limits or arbitrary closures, and they get monitored. As a result, the government gets reliable information about landings, virtually all fish of legal size are landed, and the improvements in monitoring mean that quotas can go up as less of a precautionary buffer is required to deal with discards.

Around the globe, no fisheries management system has been proven better at aligning fish production and conservation interests. Yet from all the noise, it seems that opponents of catch shares cling to a myth of the idyllic fishery, not the reality that the industry is dying due to self-inflicted wounds of a management strategy that creates permanent war between fishermen and regulators.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher
Seafood.com News
781-861-1441

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.