EDFish

NPR Covers Forthcoming West Coast Catch Share

By / Bio / Published: December 23, 2010

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition ran a story this morning about the West Coast groundfish catch share that will start January 1, 2011.   The story featured fishermen who are preparing for the new program and believe that it will be a big improvement over the old management system.  To help fishermen make the transition to catch shares, the West Coast Trawlers’ Network, a group of industry leaders from the west coast groundfish trawl fleet, created a new web site filled with information and resources.

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Dangerous fishing derby a backdrop for latest South Atlantic Council meeting

By / Published: December 15, 2010

Progress made toward catch shares, which will end derbies and provide year-round fishing

The latest South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) meeting resulted in several positive outcomes for fisheries and fishermen, notably the unanimous votes to add details to the snapper grouper and golden crab catch share programs and seek public input on them in early 2011.

Dangerous derby a reminder of need for catch shares

At the same time the Council met, a dangerous year-end black sea bass fishing derby kept many fishermen away from the meeting and served as a reminder of why improving management is urgently needed.

The black sea bass fishery was opened for a short end-of-year season Dec. 1-15. With vermillion snapper off limits, fishermen rushed to catch black sea bass, even in bad weather, to catch as many black sea bass as possible before the season closes. As these fish glut the market, prices stand to drop significantly.

Dangerous fishing derbies like this one are becoming more prevalent as fishing seasons are drastically shortened throughout the region.

Fishermen and communities are struggling as fishermen and fish dealers go out of business. Catch shares are a proven solution to rebuild prosperous fisheries and communities. Catch shares also eliminate destructive derby conditions.

The SAFMC should move aggressively to gather fishermen input on catch share design and feedback on the pending catch share amendments.

Catch shares improve the safety of fishing

Below are examples where catch shares improved the safety of fishing.

 httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBbCH77xKW0
Alaskan fishermen talk about improved safety under catch shares in this video from Marine Conservation Alliance. 

Fishing derbies are brewing in the Southeast. Fishery managers should act responsibly for fish and fishermen, including taking steps to reduce derby fishing conditions with catch shares.

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Cabinet of Belize Approves Catch Shares in Belize’s Network of Marine Protected Areas

By / Published: December 13, 2010
Catch shares team in Belize from Environmental Defense Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Belize Fisheries Department.

Catch shares team in Belize from Environmental Defense Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Belize Fisheries Department.

“Fish Forever” – the motto of Belize’s fishermen.  Last week the Government of Belize in partnership with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) took a major step towards fulfilling that vision with a vote by Belize’s cabinet to authorize the implementation of catch shares in its network of marine protected areas. 

“Belize’s decision will protect the country’s magnificent Mesoamerican Reef and promote the vitality of its fishing industry,” said Larry Epstein, Mesoamerican Reef Program Manager for EDF, “This substantially adds to the growing list of successful conservation measures Belize is using to preserve its oceans for future generations.”

As a first step, the Belize Fisheries Department will implement their design for TURFs and catch limits for spiny lobster in 2011 and 2012 in Glover’s Reef and Port Honduras Marine Reserves.  Belize has already taken the first steps for allocating access to TURFs, creating a monitoring regime, and creating committees of fishermen to participate in the implementation and management of catch shares.

“Catch shares will assist in enforcing marine laws and ensure that fishermen are part and parcel of the enforcement, and respected as custodians because it will be part of their livelihoods that they will be protecting.”

– Hon. Rene Montero, Belize Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Cooperatives

In 2009 EDF created a partnership between the Government of Belize Fisheries Department, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the leading Belizean conservation NGO – the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE).  Our coalition achieved this milestone in Belize through an education campaign that engaged fishermen, policy makers, elected officials, and government managers of marine reserves.  EDF’s team of economists, scientists, and catch shares experts built Belize’s technical capacity for catch shares and helped develop the catch share design – including Rod Fujita, Kate Bonzon, Laura Rodriguez, Jake Kritzer, Doug Rader, Tom Lalley, and Tesia Love.   The Government of Belize has stated a vision for catch shares in all marine reserves, and for the commercial lobster fishery. 

Monkey River, Belize Fishing Boats

Monkey River Fishing Boats in Belize

Fishermen in Belize understand first-hand and have been advocating catch shares since EDF, WCS, and TIDE began working in their communities.  According to one fisherman from Placencia, a fishing community in southern Belize, “Every year for the past ten years we have had a decline in lobster production.  That is due to, I think, to overfishing and a general decline in product itself.”  Now Belize and its fishermen have a tool at their disposal that protects its oceans, while at the same time supporting the livelihoods and food security for the people that depend on its resources.

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Bering Sea Crabbers Say Catch Shares Have Been an ”Unqualified Success”

By / Published: December 13, 2010

Reprinted with permission from SEAFOODNEWS.COM

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [seafoodnews.com] – December 10, 2010 – Alaska’s Bering Sea crabbers are calling the catch share program that has been operating in their crab fisheries since 2005 an “unqualified success.”

This assesssment came in a five-year review of the catch share program by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council which is meeting in Anchorage.

Prior to catch shares, hundreds of boats would race to load up with crab in wild winter conditions in a fishery that would lasting mere days or weeks. Under the catch share system, each vessel has a set amount of crabs to catch during extended seasons.

Crabbers claim their “grounds truth” proves that the new way of crab fishing is achieving the goals set out by managers and industry five years ago.

The problems associated with the crab fishery were identified in 2002 as resource conservation, reducing bycatch, excess harvesting and processing capacity, economic instability, high loss of life and injuries. The results of the five-year review released last month by Council staff concluded that the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Crab Catch Share Program is performing better than expected in reaching its objectives.

The report also said remaining crew positions in the crab fisheries are more stable, and crew generally make better pay under the catch share program.

Crabbers were pleased with the review findings, said Edward Poulsen, director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade group representing 70% of the vessels fishing crab in the Bering Sea.

“From the harvesters’ perspective, we feel the catch share program has met or exceeded expectations in delivering against the problems it was intending to solve,” Poulsen said.

Notably, the Bering Sea crab fisheries have gone from being the deadliest catch to the safest catch.

Arni Thomson, director of the Alaska Crab Coalition said: “We lost 85 crabbers between 1989 and 2005, an average of 5.3 men per year. Since then, there has been one fatality and no vessel sinkings. The catch share program has saved 25 lives so far.”

Crabbers say the slower paced fishery is far more eco-friendly, with less impact on the crab and their habitat. Pot usage in the red king crab fishery, for example, has gone from 50,000 to 12,000 pots, a 76% reduction. By fishing more strategically, the crab fleet uses far less fuel, cutting its carbon footprint by more than half.

Poulsen said the catch share program encourages being “co-operators instead of cutthroat competitors who all benefit by working together”.

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San Francisco’s KQED Radio Takes a Look at the West Coast Groundfish Catch Share

By / Published: December 9, 2010

As part of their weekly Quest series on the science and environment of Northern California, San Francisco’s KQED public radio took a look at the groundfish catch share management program that will be rolled out on January 1st in the state’s largest commercial fishery.

KQED reporter Lauren Sommer interviewed both commercial fishermen and federal regulatory officials – two groups who are often at odds when it comes to fisheries management. Her reporting revealed significant consensus on likely effects of the new system, which allocates individual fishing quotas – or IFQs – to fishermen who harvest groundfish – any of  90 plus species of rockfish (like chilipepper or yellowtail), flatfish (like dover and petrale sole) and roundfish (like sablefish and lingcod) on the West Coast.

That growing consensus suggests that IFQs on the West Coast will:

  • Inspire and increase stewardship of fish stocks, by doing away with a fishery management system that promotes the wasteful shoveling of “bycatch” – fish that current regulations require crews to shovel overboard, usually dead, after it is brought aboard in trawl nets.
  • Create full accountability for all fish caught – tallied by federal fisheries observers who will be onboard trawl vessels while they’re at sea.
  • Dramatically increase quality of the scientific data provided by fishermen to federal scientists whose job it is to assess fish populations and help set harvest guidelines.
  • Provide fishermen with a valuable and marketable asset, in the form of quota shares – a percentage of each year’s total allowable catch.
  • Help to replace competition and distrust among industry participants – fishermen, seafood buyers and regulators – with cooperation and communication, hallmarks of catch share fisheries the world over.

Listen to KQED’s story on the West Coast catch share.

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Fishermen Embrace Change in the Sinaloa, Mexico Shrimp Fishery: Part III

By / Published: December 6, 2010

Community-based enforcement: a positive and unexpected result of catch shares in Sinaloa.

As we mentioned in the previous two posts of this blog series the coastal shrimp fishery in Sinaloa, Mexico has been managed under a catch share program for two years now. Over 10,000 legal fishermen work in the fishery from Sinaloa, a coastal state in the northwestern part of Mexico.

One of the biggest challenges we have faced in working with the coastal shrimp fishery is the vast amount of illegal fishing activities. Nonetheless, through great efforts by the Mexican federal government, fishermen and NGOs, we have achieved great milestones in this project including the first science-based estimation of a total allowable catch for shrimp by Inapesca (the Mexican Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Institute), the allocation of catch shares to 140 cooperatives, and the unprecedented financial support of the Mexican government to hire a third-party firm to monitor landings.

Figure 1: Location of the two lagoon systems under a community-based surveillance and enforcement system.

Figure 1: Location of the two lagoon systems under a community-based surveillance and enforcement system.

Still, there is plenty of road to travel in this process of implementation to get the system to function properly and produce the biological, economic and social benefits possible with catch shares. Surveillance and enforcement have become an important issue. There are not enough government inspectors to ensure compliance with rules and regulations, so our team has worked with fishing communities to design and assist in setting up a community-based monitoring and enforcement system.

At the beginning of this year, we helped organize cooperative meetings in two of the largest lagoon systems in Sinaloa: Altata-Ensenada Pabellones and Santa María-La Reforma (see Figure 1). The overarching goal of these meetings was to get community members together so they could come up with a system that included: codes of conduct that promote sustainable fishing practices, designate community inspectors (which would ensure compliance with these codes) and a “Surveillance and Enforcement Committee” in each lagoon system.

The community-based enforcement initiative works like this: the agreed upon codes of conduct are communicated to all participants via coop leaders, large signs, and portable plastic cards that fishermen are to carry on board their skiff. If any member of the community identifies somebody breaking any of the rules stipulated in the codes of conduct, that person has two options, either to call a 1-800 government phone number and place an anonymous report, or to call a community inspector who will place the report for them. These numbers are printed on the signs and the plastic cards. When the report is done by the community inspector, the Surveillance and Enforcement Committee has the obligation of reporting the government and follow up.

Figure 2: How the system works from bottom-up to top-down.

Figure 2: How the system works from bottom-up to top-down.

Conapesca, the Mexican Fisheries Management Authority, has approved and supported this co-management scheme by providing a substantial amount of financial resources to implement it and is considering how it could be facilitated in other fisheries in Mexico.

The potential benefits of this system are considerable given the astounding number of fishermen involved in this fishery.  We will begin evaluation as soon as preliminary results are available to measure the success of this initiative. One of the most important lessons we have learned is that with a fishing community this large, it is best if the users themselves lay out the rules so they have an incentive to comply with them.

Sometimes, our most important job is to simply create the conditions for success, and the rest will fall into place.

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