EDFish

Selected tag(s): Catch Shares

3 Months In: New Bedford Standard Times Provides Insight into the Progress of Catch Shares in New England

By / Published: September 1, 2010

Julie Wormser, NE Regional Director for EDF Oceans program.

This past Sunday, the New Bedford Standard Times published a set of three articles that gave insight into the progress of sectors (group catch shares) in Massachusetts.

There is good news in the articles:

The fishermen who are fishing are seeing higher revenues, while others are waiting for prices to increase, a strategy they are free to employ under this system.
Sectors such as the one in New Bedford, managed by David deOliveira, are working together to manage their allocations of scarce stocks to “keep everyone fishing.”
Leasing allocations is of real value financially to fishermen considering retirement.

The articles also highlight improvements to the sector system that can and should be made as well as the challenges associated with low catch limits, which is entirely unrelated to catch shares. Many of these issues are currently being discussed by the industry, the New England Fisheries Management Council, and conservation groups.

Many opportunities identified in the articles are a function of how the catch share was designed. Catch shares can be designed to accommodate the communities that depend on fisheries.

Catch limits

As Don Cuddy’s article points out, “Many fishermen believe their economic woes are not a result of sectors or any particular management system but from catch limits that they believe are set artificially low.”

The 2010 catch limits were developed based on NOAA’s best available science. But carefully targeted investments in science and scientific processes – including those outlined by Senators Kerry and Snowe in their recent appropriations request — can provide relatively quick improvement in assessments of key stocks, and may well increase allocation of certain stocks.

There are several design elements that can help the fleet through times of low catch limits. For example, the Pacific groundfish fishery held back ten percent of the quota for “adaptive management” and has already dipped into that quota to provide additional allocations of a particularly weak stock—canary rockfish—for fishermen who lacked enough to legally fish for other species.

Consolidation

In Steve Urbon’s NBST piece, he discusses the “consolidation of the industry.” While that is a concern, it has to be weighed against the consolidation of the fleet that was occurring under the previous Days-At-Sea (DAS) management system.

In the New England groundfish fishery, in 2001, 1,100 active boats used 65,347 groundfish DAS for an average of 60 DAS per active vessel. In 2007, 574 active boats used 32,804 DAS for an average of 57 DAS per active vessel. As the number of days fishermen were allowed out on the water dropped dramatically, so too, did the number of boats fishing.

There are design elements in catch share systems around the world that can alleviate some of the consolidation concerns while supporting fleet diversity, smaller ports, and small-scale fishermen with less access to capital.

For example, quota accumulation caps could be used to limit the amount of fish that any one participant has access to. The Interspecies Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council voted unanimously at its April 2010 meeting to recommend to the full Council that accumulation caps be developed and implemented for the 20 groundfish stocks managed under sectors. This action can help protect the smaller boats by preventing the fleet from being dominated by a few big players.

Limiting permit transferability, ownership and use is also used to achieve specific objectives. For example, some catch share systems require a certain percentage of the harvest to be landed in specific ports to protect the shoreside infrastructure. Other fisheries require quota owners to be on board in order to catch their share in order to discourage corporations from acquiring large amounts of quota.

Moving forward

Much of New England’s fishing community has struggled over the past several decades. Regulations meant to bring back once-abundant cod, flounders and other groundfish have instead squeezed the fleet’s profitability.

Sectors can help the New England groundfishery move towards an increase in fish populations; an increase in per-boat revenues; a dramatic reduction in bycatch and an increase in the use of sustainable fishing practices.

The New Bedford Standard Times has raised important questions and opportunities for improvement in the groundfish fishery. Now is the time to make refinements to New England’s groundfish sectors. There are many options and the best outcomes will likely occur when all stakeholders – fishermen, shoreside businesses, conservation groups, legislators, and Council members — participate in the process with the shared goal of creating a fishery with healthy fish stocks and thriving fishing communities.

Posted in New England / Also tagged Fishermen, Fishery Management, Groundfish, New England, Sectors | Comments are closed

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

By Erica Cunningham / Published: August 20, 2010

The fisherman’s story of frustration with compliance issues under the Sinaloa Shrimp fishery catch share was what I and two of my colleagues continuously heard during our outreach trip in Mexico in July. After spending a month in fishing camps along the Sinaloa coast giving presentations on catch shares and facilitating other exercises to communicate and dissect the issues of fishery management, we believe the fishermen we reached now understand that achieving success through catch share management will take efforts from all the stakeholders: NGOs, government, and most importantly the fishermen themselves.

Although it is easy to become frustrated with the challenges of implementing a new fishery management program, we stressed that real lasting change will take time and that our workshops aimed to empower fishermen to begin solving their own problems with compliance.

One thing that has always interested us is what type of management fishermen would implement if they could choose. To find this out, we played a “fishing game” with three rounds that mimic the problems in the fishery for both the fishermen and the authorities, while inviting fishermen to solve these issues using their own knowledge.

The first round represents the race to fish; the second round a command and control management, and in the third round the fishermen themselves are allowed to make up their own rules. In many cases the third round resulted in some form of catch shares. In response, we communicated that although the realities fishermen face are bleak, without their participation and compliance we will never see the third round in reality.

Implementing catch shares in Mexico has many challenges, and illegal fishing is one main roadblock. In 2009, a historic year for fisheries in Mexico, a TAC was set and shares were allocated for the artisanal blue shrimp fishery. NGOs and government were working together to improve fishery management, something rare in any country.

Though in a land where the laws are written well but commonly disobeyed, it has become clear that with catch shares the story is no different. For this reason it has been of utmost importance for us to maintain contact with the fishermen and continue our presence on the ground. Adaptive management and design continues to be our motto as we work with fishermen to implement innovative solutions and design to confront these challenges.

During our trip, I was a proud catch share cheerleader, and for this shrimp season in Sinaloa we have restored the faith in many fishermen that catch shares equals change. Now we must continue to work with fishermen to help design solutions that will turn theory into practice and implement innovative enforcement programs, which will reward those who are part of a catch share and gather their support as advocates and better stewards of their resource.

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Posted in Mexico / Also tagged catch share, Fisheries Management, Fishermen, Fishery Management, Mexico, Shrimp, Shripmers, Sinaloa | Read 1 Response

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

By Erica Cunningham / Published: August 18, 2010

Docked boats in Sinaloa, Mexico

Over the past two months EDF’s outreach team traveled over 200 miles up and down the coastal state of Sinaloa, Mexico visiting five major lagoons that participated in the artisanal shrimp fishery catch share program. We were all eager to listen to fishermen’s concerns and see first-hand how this new catch share management program was progressing. The artisanal shrimp fleet opened under a catch share management system in September 2009, an initiative of the federal fisheries management authorities – Conapesca and Inapesca, with the support of EDF, WWF, and Noroeste Sustentable – a local Mexican NGO.

Mexican fishermen during a fishing cooperative meeting on catch shares

Conventional wisdom says that people are generally resistant to change, but what we heard from over 1,000 shrimp fishermen was quite the opposite. In fact, these fishermen want change and are ready to embrace the change that catch shares represents for them and their fishery. Furthermore, EDF’s outreach team was far from the middle aged Mexican male bureaucrat official that is status quo for these fishermen. Without anticipating it, we ended up representing change simply because we were a group of women from all different parts of Mexico coming to talk to them about how to keep their fishery alive and thriving.

It then became our goal to cultivate trust and encourage these fishermen to “keep the faith” that catch shares is a change for the better. This story portrays the sentiments of many fishermen that our team met in dozens of fishing camps.

Imagine you are an artisanal fisherman fishing in the lagoons and bays of Sinaloa, Mexico. You are a member of the same cooperative your father was during his days as a fishermen; you are a proud fisherman because you work alongside family and neighbors on the waters of the once-bountiful Gulf of California – it is your community and your livelihood.
Occasionally you daydream about your father’s fish tales of when the mangrove forests were lush and sprawling and the lagoons were teeming with big blue shrimp. A season’s catch was enough to buy a new pickup truck or take the kids to the doctor and send them to school with new books and tennis shoes. Unfortunately times have changed…
Today mangroves are being cleared for shrimp farms producing smaller, cheaper shrimp that lowers market prices of all shrimp. The lagoons are filling up due to sediment washing down from the growing number of agricultural fields, as Sinaloa has become the largest vegetable producing state in Mexico. As a result, more and more pesticides and other pollutants are entering the lagoons causing shrimp hatches to decline. Last year’s catch barely put food on the table for your family, and your cooperative is battling debt. You feel trapped and know that something has to change if you want to return to those days of plenty. No one is playing by the rules, more and more illegal fishermen are poaching the lagoons, and traditional enforcement efforts are futile.
But, this past year seemed different.
This past fishing season a team of government and NGO representatives arrived in your community to talk to you about catch shares, an innovative management system that establishes a total allowable catch for the fishery and allocates shares to each cooperative with the goal of ensuring a sustainable catch and improving the value of the fishery. Meanwhile, Conapesca has paved a brave new path by installing microchips on all the skiffs, handing out identification cards for all licensed fishermen and sending an independent company to monitor your cooperative’s landings.
You listen attentively in the workshops, and considering your circumstance the arguments are compelling. You speak with your fellow fishermen and everything looks quite promising so you decide to support the transition to catch shares and wait to see how it plays out in practice You prepare your skiff knowing your cooperative is only getting a small percentage of a total number of shrimp that you have to share with 140 cooperatives, 5,988 skiffs and more than 10,000 fellow fishermen.
The season opens and the usual “race to fish” seems to have subsided. Unfortunately though, it is an “El Niño” year so the temperatures seem colder than normal and you are catching significantly less than last year. While the monitoring company appears to be doing their job, you can’t help but notice that many illegal fishermen are still on the water, and can easily land and commercialize their catch – enforcement is lacking. Some of them you can’t blame because they are locals who are just trying to provide for their families. But your frustration mounts as temporary fishermen from other areas, even ones who migrate back from the United States for this lucrative short season, dip into the catch.
You feel robbed because you are playing by the rules, catching your share but know that there are still too many leaks in the system. The season comes to a close and it feels as though little has changed.

Stay tuned for more on the Sinaloa story …

Posted in Mexico / Also tagged Fisheries, Fishermen, Fishery Management, Mexico, Sinaloa | Comments are closed

Pacific Groundfish Catch Shares Approved, Slated to Start Jan 1, 2011

By Johanna Thomas / Bio / Published: August 12, 2010

Johanna Thomas, EDF Oceans - Pacific Coast Regional Director

After seven years of planning, the catch share program for the Pacific groundfish trawl sector has cleared one of its final regulatory hurdles. On Tuesday, NOAA’s Fisheries Service approved the plan submitted by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council to revitalize the multi-million dollar fishery. The new system joins a spate of other new catch share programs around the country, including one for the iconic New England groundfish fishery and the grouper and red snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the West Coast groundfish sector, fishermen have struggled to make a living under the current management system and have been plagued by increasingly strict regulations to address the incidental catch (bycatch) of depleted fish species. Landings for West Coast trawlers had plummeted 70 percent in the last two decades, and since 1998 revenues have dropped from $47.3 million to $22.2 million.

The new system provides fishermen with a guaranteed percentage of the overall catch, based on the size of their vessel and their fishing history. Under catch shares, fishermen will have much greater freedom to fish when they want, and will also be able to sell or lease their shares to other fishermen. Based on results from other fisheries that have transitioned to catch shares, bycatch is expected to drop dramatically for the West Coast trawl fleet, allowing fish stocks and the industry to recover from years of decline.

We applaud both NOAA and the Pacific Fishery Management Council for taking this important step. This is a new day for a fishery that was declared a disaster just ten years ago. From now on, West Coast trawlers will not be in a rush to fish and deliver their catch. Instead, they will time their trips in accordance with both weather and market forecasts, maximizing their profits while fishing in a safer, more efficient, and sustainable way.

The approved plan includes precedent-setting provisions aimed at protecting coastal communities and the environment. There are several features in the plan that makes it stand out as a model for sustainable and adaptive fisheries management. The Council and NOAA have seen to it that fishermen and coastal communities have a real say in how they adopt new practices and adapt to the catch share system.

Years from now, when we look back on this moment, we’ll see that this was a turning point for West Coast trawlers and the groundfish species they harvest.

Posted in Pacific / Also tagged Fisheries, Fishery Management, Groundfish, Management, NOAA, Pacific Coast | Comments are closed

The Future of the Pacific Groundfish Trawl Fishery Without the Catch Share Program

By Merrick Burden / Bio / Published: August 5, 2010

Merrick Burden - Senior Fisheries Economist

Fishermen in the Pacific groundfish trawl fishery are understandably anxious about the transition to catch shares that starts January 2011, but it’s helpful to consider what is likely to happen if the fishery is left under current management. Perhaps the biggest problem facing fishermen and fishery managers is that eight out of over 90 species caught by fishermen are overfished. To protect these overfished species, fishery managers have closed parts of the ocean to fishing by creating “Rockfish Conservation Areas” that have changed shape in response to locations of overfished species. In recent years, productive fishing grounds off Washington and southern Oregon have been among the areas closed. If current management were to continue there would likely be more closures off other areas of the coast.

I’ve had the experience of working as a fishery manager in the Pacific commercial groundfish fishery for over 6 years and have seen how the existing management system is slowly suffocating the industry and fishing communities. Avoiding closures is just one reason why I see the groundfish trawl IFQ (catch share) program as progress in Pacific groundfish fishery management.

Posted in Pacific / Also tagged Fisheries, Fishery Management, Groundfish, Pacific, Regulations | Comments are closed

How Alaska’s Crab Fishery Went from Deadliest Catch to Safest Catch

By EDF Oceans / Published: July 23, 2010

Reprinted with permission from SeaFoodNews.com (July 23, 2010)

A new study by the Anchorage-based National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) details 504 fishing-industry deaths from 2000 through 2009. Shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Mexico was by far the most deadly fishery with 55 lives lost. That compares to a death toll of 12 Bering Sea crabbers during the same time. In fact, the Bering Sea crab fisheries can claim the lowest loss of life for all of Alaska’s major fisheries.

Since 2005, when the crab fishery began operating under a slower paced catch share system, one life has been lost in the Bering Sea; there have been no vessel sinkings.

Prior to catch shares, hundreds of boats would race to load up with Bering Sea crab in wild winter fisheries lasting mere days or weeks. Now, each vessel has a set amount of crabs to catch during extended seasons.

The improved safety is ‘black and white,’ said veteran crabber Bill Prout of Kodiak. ‘It’s so much better. We can wait for good weather. It’s really paying off in saved lives.’

Third generation crabber Lance Farr of Seattle said sleep deprivation is no longer an issue in the famous crab fisheries. ‘The catch share program has done what it was intended to do,’ Farr said. ‘It’s made it safer.’

Longtime crab skipper Kale Garcia agreed. ‘I know we’ll have to keep all the drama for Hollywood, but the reality is the Bering Sea crabbers have gone from the deadliest catch to the safest catch.’

The Bering Sea crab fleet is also more organized, having established an association, called the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, an alliance that represents all crab fisheries of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands and they have a website at www.alaskaberingseacrabbers.org

Posted in Pacific / Also tagged Alaskan Crab, Bering Sea | Comments are closed