The terms "sector management" and "catch shares" were a mystery to many only six months ago, and to some they still are. After months of hearings and seminars, there is still much confusion, frustration, fear and anger over the new system. There are predictions that 50 to 75 percent of New Bedford's groundfishing fleet will be out of business within a short time, perhaps months in some cases.
Despite hailstorms of criticism and dire warnings about the looming destruction of local, family-based fishing economies, NOAA has pressed ahead with the new management system that effectively privatizes the fishery resource and in theory allows market capitalism to shake out the weaker players and thin out the fishing fleet to render it sustainable. Most who predict the eventual outcome see a corporate model dominated by a handful of major players and the permanent loss of fleet and shoreside support capacity — the end of an era.
The early figures suggest what is going on already: Fifty-four percent of the sector catch permits, 812 in all, represent 98 percent of the commercial catch history.
Until today, the system hasn't been tried on a fishery that needs to manage 15 or more species of fish that intermingle with one another not only in fishing nets but in the ecology of the ocean. It's never been applied to a complex ecosystem where every species is expected to be at its peak population in a few short years, a condition that scientists say doesn't happen even without a fishing industry.
As if the picture weren't complex enough, it is overshadowed by years of bad blood between fisheries law enforcement officials and the fishing fleets around the country, especially in the Northeast. In early 2009, Lubchenco bowed to political pressure and asked for an investigation by the Commerce Department's inspector general. Just as NOAA was busy finalizing Amendment 16 to the Magnuson Act, setting up sectors in the Northeast, the inspector general revealed that enforcement, particularly in the Northeast, was often vindictive, unfair and disproportionate. His report vindicated the fishermen who paid sometimes extreme penalties and were ruined financially while NOAA built an $8.4 million asset forfeiture fund with almost no oversight.
The name of NOAA's chief law enforcement officer, Dale Jones, is no longer spoken by the agency. A month ago it announced that Alan Risenhoover, a Maryland conservation official with no law enforcement experience, is now the head of NOAA law enforcement. But there has been no word on Jones' fate, whether he was fired, transferred or retired.
And no other changes in NOAA law enforcement have been announced, frustrating those such as Attorney Pam Lefreniere, who represents many fishing boat owners. She met privately last week with Risenhoover in Gloucester, along with that city's mayor, Carolyn Kirk, and others. The private meeting replaced a public forum that was met with the threat of a boycott by fishermen, by Kirk and by New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang.
But Lafreniere was frustrated at the result of the meeting. For one thing, regional NOAA enforcement officials who were implicated by the inspector general remain on the job. For another, Lafreniere said NOAA was asked whether there would be any sort of grace period while the new rules settled into place and fishermen all became familiar with them. "There was nothing. No commitment. They took notes," she said.
"They came and they listened. They committed to nothing."
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