EDFish

Selected tag(s): Fishing

We Seek Your Expertise; EDF Releases Catch Shares Design Manual for Public Comment

By / Published: September 11, 2009

Draft Catch Shares Design Manual - For public commentEffective design of a catch share program is the critical piece that can make all the difference in how the needs of a fishery and its fishing communities are met under catch shares management. Catch Shares Design Manual: A Guide for Fishermen and Managers provides information and recommendations to fishery managers and stakeholders on specific catch share design elements as they relate to conservation, economic, and social objectives.

EDF developed this manual to provide a roadmap to catch share design, drawing on the experience of hundreds of fisheries in over a dozen countries and expertise from over 30 fishery experts from around the world.

While the Manual is comprehensive, it is not prescriptive: It is a series of questions whose answers help guide and inform the catch share design process.  Detailed discussions of various design elements are coupled with tools (including charts, check-lists, and case studies) to outline and highlight options.

Today, we release the draft of the Manual and ask for your constructive feedback and comments. We seek your expertise to make the document even better and will incorporate comments into the final version to be released later this year.  We hope you will contribute to this document.  Please go to www.edf.org/catchshares to provide your review before September 30.

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged , , | Read 1 Response

Statement from EDF on Fisherman Protest off Martha’s Vineyard

By / Bio / Published: August 25, 2009

A small fleet of fishermen is expected to stage a protest today off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard directed at President Obama over a recent change in regulations for commercial groundfish fishermen.  The following statement is from Sally McGee, the New England Policy Director for EDF and a member of the New England Fishery Management Council, which recently voted 16-0 in favor of the new management approach for the groundfish fishery (Motion 21a from NEFMC meeting held in Portland, ME, June 25, 2009).

“Today’s demonstration comes at a tough time for fishermen in New England.  Many are anxious over a change in fishing policy that is coming after decades of declining fish stocks and complicated rules that have squeezed scores of fishermen out of business.  Once we are through this transition process, however, the decline of the groundfish fishery will have been halted, rules will be simpler, and fishermen will be making money once again.

“The new rules – called “catch shares” or “sectors” – will give groundfish fishermen a dedicated share of the overall catch.  Instead of being forced to fish under ever-increasingly restrictive rules, catch shares will give fishermen in New England flexibility to choose how they meet the scientifically-set catch limit.  Catch shares have a history of success in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as two groundfish sectors already on-the-water in New England.  Under catch shares, fish stocks recover and fishermen once again become profitable.

“The change to catch shares is coming after a lengthy and thorough public process.  In fact, the final decision was delayed a full year to allow more time for additional public input.  The three-year process showed broad and growing support for catch shares in New England. 

“The problems with the New England groundfish fishery are deep, severe and centuries in the making.  Catch shares will not turn this situation around overnight.  The alternatives are far worse however.  Without catch shares the fish stocks and the health of the ocean will only decline further.  Catch shares offers hope and a track record of success. ”

Posted in New England / Also tagged , , , | Read 1 Response

Catch Share Options Include Community Fishing Associations

By / Bio / Published: August 12, 2009

Diane Regas, Associate Vice President - EDF Oceans ProgramCommunity Fishing Associations are a good idea.  It might surprise you to hear that from Environmental Defense Fund.  Sara Randall and Nate Grader got our position wrong, but their exploration of Community Fishing Associations (CFAs) got a lot of other things right, and those other things are worth paying attention to.  Randall and Grader take a look at what CFAs might accomplish, and some of the structural and regulatory challenges that face these new systems.  They conclude that CFAs can provide a way to promote sustainable fishing. We agree.

Community Fishing Associations–if designed well–can successfully address fishing community concerns about maintaining traditional access for fishermen by “anchoring” quota in a community.  We see CFAs as a prime example of the flexibility and creativity allowed under catch share systems to address not only conservation and economics, but a wide range of social values.  That is why EDF is working with fishermen, scientists and managers in New England to implement “sectors,” a form of catch shares based on cooperatives, and we are working to advance CFAs in New England and the West Coast.

Catch shares are not “one-size-fits all.” There are several viable options to designing catch shares, ranging from IFQs, to community-held quotas like CFAs, to area-based management approaches (also known as Territorial Use Rights Fisheries or TURFs).  We would call all of these options–properly designed–“catch shares.” 

Whatever you call them, all of these approaches need a scientifically-determined catch limit, allocations to accountable entities (e.g., individuals, cooperatives, communities), and monitoring and enforcement to ensure fishermen are staying under their allocations.  Contrary to Randall and Grader’s assertion that we just need to get the Total Allowable Catches (TACs) right to end over-fishing, fisheries need TACs set right and a well-working mechanism to make sure that the TAC is actually met.  TACs alone have a relatively poor track record in fisheries management. 

We want fisheries management to work; that’s why we have urged NOAA to create a level playing field for various fishery management alternatives, and then make sure every plan measures up.  A level playing field means holding all fisheries management plans accountable for getting results:  improved conservation, improved science and better economic conditions.  It’s the results that matter!

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged , | Read 2 Responses

Sage Words from an Old Timer

By / Published: August 10, 2009

Julie Wormser, NE Regional Director for EDF Oceans program.As the New England groundfish fishery moves to “sector” management (fishing cooperative-based catch shares), it’s good to get the perspective of someone with nearly a half-century of fishing experience.  Frank Mirarchi, a fisherman out of Scituate, Massachusetts, describes the busts that repeatedly followed boom years.  I share Frank’s optimism that sector management–once all the details are worked through–will restore the natural abundance of fish in the Gulf of Maine.  This time, however, as long as sectors are well-designed and enforced, the boom years should keep going in perpetuity, moving us away from the crisis management that has marked the New England groundfish fishery for the last several decades.

Posted in New England / Also tagged , , , | Comments are closed

New Oyster Reef Yields Good Results in Chesapeake

By / Bio / Published: August 7, 2009

Here’s something you don’t hear about every day: good news about the Chesapeake Bay.  The Washington Post is reporting that an artificial reef in a tributary is teeming with new life.  The reef is nothing more complex than a large pile of shells.  Historically reefs like that were so numerous they were a hazard for ships.  So many oysters lived in the Chesapeake that they filtered all the water in the bay every few days. 

The demise of the Chesapeake oyster came around the turn of the last century through a manic and violent harvest that reduced the population to just one percent of historic abundance in less than a century.  As many as 15 million oysters were harvested annually in the late 1800’s, compared to 100,000 or less today.

Scores of people died in the mad pursuit of oysters.  Maryland was forced to establish the Oyster Police to protect its oystermen against their counterparts from Virginia.  Violent conflicts between watermen from the two states became so common that this era is now known as the Oyster Wars.

Posted in Mid-Atlantic, Seafood / Also tagged , , | Comments are closed

Is the Debate Over?

By / Bio / Published: August 5, 2009

As originally posted on Grist.org

Diane Regas, Associate Vice President - EDF Oceans ProgramIn the current issue of Science twenty-one leading ocean scientists declared a truce—it’s as if Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner agreed to stop the chase for a day. The paper was authored by many of the biggest names on all sides of the debate on ending overfishing—Boris Worm, Ray Hilborn, Andy Rosenberg and Chris Costello. So what are the terms?

First, they agree on what I will call a “Goldilocks” catch level (You know—not too hot, not too cold, but just right.) If we fish too much, then fish get smaller, catch levels eventually go down and lots of species end up on the road to ruin. If we fish too little, we can keep the fish in the oceans healthy, but fish for people goes way down. Fishing just right would mean aiming to catch about 20 percent of ocean fish every year. At that level, fish would be bigger, the long term catch would be stable at a high level, and the news for ecosystems—whales, dolphins, and turtles—would be good too; at least 90% of species would be at healthy levels-which is quite a bit better than we are doing now.

The second part of the paper is where the scientists waded into the hot debate on what management works to get to the Goldilocks level. The scientists looked at the big ocean places that are making progress and asked managers what worked. The first thing they found was that most places use a mix of approaches for the mix of ecosystem types-so there is not a panacea. Pretty much everyone will agree to that.

What comes out on top, though? It comes down to effectively implementing caps on catch levels using two key tools: reducing the Total Allowable Catch and putting in place catch shares. (You can look at their table where a solution was identified in at least five of the ten fisheries, and was usually ranked an “essential” part of the solution.) This is strong stuff!

There are lots of questions yet to answer—like why is it that a catch share program always had a reduced allowable catch level? Is the theory right that catch shares make it easier to set the catch level properly? And what makes it possible for enough stakeholders to agree to close off areas of the ocean? What are the keys to community co-management, which seems to work in small-scale fisheries? I expect that the scientists will go back to their corners and duke out those questions. I can’t wait.

Posted in Uncategorized / Also tagged , , , | Comments are closed