EDFish

Managing Our Nations Fisheries 3 Conference: Take away messages

By / Bio / Published: May 17, 2013

America’s fishing laws are generally working well to rebuild fish stocks, but there is still work to be done to make sure that our sustainable fisheries are sustainable for fishermen. That was the takeaway message from the recent gathering of the nation’s top fisheries advisors, scientists, members of regional councils and the eNGO community who gathered in Washington DC for the “Managing Our Nations Fisheries 3” conference on May 7-9. The conference convened to discuss how concepts, policies, and practice of fishery sustainability can be advanced to make the system work better for fishermen and fishing communities. It provided a forum for information exchange and an opportunity to hear a wide range of perspectives on the sustainability of fish stocks and ecosystem, and the fishing communities that depend on them.

This conference is an important exercise because it gives the entire fishing community (managers, fishermen, NGOs, industry etc.) the opportunity to think broadly about what’s been happening on the water and apply it to big policy issues that need to be resolved, clarified or improved. Read More »

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Revitalizing the Mexican Corvina Fishery with Sustainable Management

By / Published: February 25, 2013
Corvina Fishing Boat

Mexican fishermen with a catch of Corvina. Photo Credit: Silvia Yee

For many years the short, six week commercial Corvina fishing season in the Upper Gulf of California was marked by a frenzied race to fish, with as many as 600 boats in the water at the same time. Beginning in late February, and aligned with moon cycles, this species gathers in the Colorado River delta to spawn, a yearly ritual eagerly awaited by the local fishermen. And so every year, with so much fish to be had, and so many fishermen, thousands of tons would hit the market simultaneously. This drove the price down and resulted in even more fishing effort, which would even further depress prices – to values below that of a recycled plastic bottle. It was a vicious cycle that has become all too familiar in fisheries in Latin America and around the world. Scientists have long advised that, if unchecked, this way of fishing could lead to the complete collapse of Corvina, having dire consequences for a region with very limited economic alternatives. It is estimated that Corvina represents as much as 60% of all fish sold in Mexico City during this time of year, coinciding with Lent, when seafood consumption is highest. 

Three years ago EDF, fishermen, and critical partners like Noroeste Sustentable (NOS), the Academy for Systemic Change, and the state and federal governments, set out to bring catch share management to this fishery to give fishermen and others a stake in its biological and economic success. Read More »

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Accumulation Limits a Critical Component of Catch Shares to Provide Benefits to Fishing Families and Communities

By / Published: October 17, 2012

Small boatCatch shares, a fishery management system that gives fishermen a secure share of the catch in exchange for increased monitoring and greater accountability, represent a substantial change from the way U.S. fisheries have been managed in the past.

Well-designed catch shares – particularly when they include accumulation limits – can provide safeguards for small boat fishermen, their families, and their communities. Because these are the people who are hurt most when fisheries collapse, EDF believes it is imperative to ensure that management programs take the needs of both fish and fishermen into account.  Catch shares are uniquely suited to do so in a number of ways that conventional fishery management plans could not.

For example, conventional fishery management plans typically call for shortened seasons and even closures when overfishing or other factors deplete stocks. This unpredictability of management can endanger smaller operators more than bigger ones, since they may not have the flexibility to weather the changes.  Because catch shares usually allow fishermen to operate all year long, they provide far greater job stability for fishermen, who know in advance how much fish they can catch during the season and what their needs will be at any given time. They can spread their catch out over the year, avoiding the gluts that occur when everyone brings in their catch at once and timing trips to maximize the price they’ll earn for that catch. Some fishermen are working directly with processors so they are fishing for species that are most sought-after at the most desirable times, earning the highest price per fish. Read More »

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October Brings Even More Closures to the South Atlantic

By / Published: October 3, 2012

 If you think the headlines about fishery closures in the South Atlantic are getting old, imagine being a fisherman in the region.  As these closures continue to pile up, they are looking at months off the water.

On October 8, 2012 the commercial black sea bass fishery will close for the year.  The fishery opened on July 1, 2012 after having eliminated half of its fishermen – many who had made serious investments in gear and relied on black sea bass for many years.  This was a result of a fishery management tool called “endorsements” implemented by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

Endorsements eliminate fishermen from a specific fishery to handle overfishing by setting a minimum average of pounds of fish that fishermen must have caught in the past to receive an “endorsement” to fish for that species in the 2012 season. The unfortunate truth about endorsements is that conservation-practicing fishermen who fish with less gear, catch less fish, and are paid a higher price for their quality fish are forced out of the fishery in favor of those who use more gear, catch more fish, and flood the market with lower quality fish.

In South Carolina this program eliminated 80 percent of the fishermen who had previously been trapping sea bass. It hurt fishing families throughout the region, and especially in the Carolinas – where in some fishing towns, not a single fisherman received an endorsement.  To make this hardship worse, after all of that, this year’s season only lasted 55 days longer than the previous year.

Fishermen are willing to sacrifice to ensure the long-term sustainability of the fish, but a program that results in blanket removal of fisherman, without any hope for a future stake in the fishery, isn’t good policy.

More closures are coming for fishermen in this region and the question of how long they can hang on is getting harder to answer.  The outdated command and control management isn’t working for the stocks and isn’t working for the fishermen.  They deserve better. Read More »

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Bridging the Gulf Report: Preparing for Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration in Cuba

By / Published: September 11, 2012

Oil Rig, Photo Credit: Vidar Løkken

Reprinted with Permission from Center for Democracy in the Americas Center for Democracy in the Americas (September 7, 2012)

The following article was written by Dan Whittle, EDF’s Cuba Program Director for the Oceans Program, and featured on CenterforDemocracyInAmerica.org. In the article, Dan discusses our new report, Bridging the Gulf, which gives great insight into the roadblocks that existing U.S. foreign policy on Cuba has on making environmental protection progress. The article also dives into the constructive conversations the two countries have been having about ways to improve communications and policy keeping the best interest of the environment in mind.

The Environmental Defense Fund recently released a report called Bridging the Gulf, in which we concluded that “current U.S. foreign policy on Cuba creates a conspicuous blind spot” that is detrimental to the interests of both countries.  A failure to cooperate on oil spill planning, prevention, and response in the Gulf of Mexico could result in devastating environmental and economic impacts on a scale greater than the 2010 BP oil disaster.

Recently, I witnessed a potential bright spot in US-Cuba relations that could lead to real and meaningful cooperation in protecting Cuban and American shores from future oil spills. Read More »

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New Study Shows That Catch Shares Meet Economic and Conservation Goals

By / Published: January 17, 2012

Reprinted with permission from SeafoodNews.com

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [seafoodnews.com] Jan 12, 2012 By Kate Bonzon

The following article was written by Kate Bonzon, who works for EDF and was one of the authors of a new scientific paper published in Marine Policy that analyzed the performance of 15 catch share programs in the US and Canada. She argues the data shows these programs met most of their goals, especially in the area of conservation, reduced discards, and increased revenue to harvesters. There was a shift in jobs from a larger number of part time jobs to a smaller number of full time jobs, which had varying social impacts depending on the fishery.

America’s fisheries, and the fishing communities they support, have struggled for decades to find a way to both rebuild depleted fish stocks and allow fishermen to earn a decent living. But it has become increasingly evident over the years that traditional management practices – such as drastically curtailing the fishing season – were failing to achieve either of these goals: fleets shrunk, revenues dropped, fishermen were often forced to put out to sea in bad weather, and the industry grew highly unstable. Fish stocks, meanwhile, continued to decline.

The latest effort to achieve that balance – a management approach known as “catch shares,” has generated much discussion among fisheries stakeholders over whether this approach is any better or worse than previous efforts. Now, a recent analysis of 15 fisheries in the United States and British Columbia published in the journal Marine Policy, provides data that clearly show significant environmental and economic improvements in fisheries that have made the transition to catch shares, an approach that allocates fishermen a share of the total allowable catch in exchange for making them accountable for staying within the catch limit.

Commercial discards reduced. Percentage reduction vs. baseline year (year before catch shares)

Discards declined substantially with catch share fisheries.

Read More »

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