By JAY LINDSAY and DAN MCDONALD
BOSTON and NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – August 14, 2010 – The catch for fishermen in the Northeast during the first three months following drastic rule changes fell 10 percent compared to last year but revenues rose 17 percent, according to federal statistics released this week.
It's too soon to draw broad conclusions, but the relatively stable first-quarter numbers are cause for cautious optimism about the switch, said Patricia Kurkul, the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast regional administrator.
"It's sort of on track with what we saw last year, so there's nothing catastrophic going on here," Kurkul said.
However, in New Bedford, some locals panned the federal findings, saying such numbers do not tell the whole story.
Richie Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City and Boston Seafood Display Auction, said in New Bedford for the month of July, his operation saw 700,000 fewer pounds of groundfish than it did in July 2009.
Canastra said 65 percent of the boats in New Bedford are tied up and "they're not going to fish for the year."
The boat owners are, however, leasing out their quotas to larger boats at 60 cents to $1 per pound, he said.
"Take that off the top of the price and where are we?" Canastra asked. "Who's profitable here? It's not the pretty picture they're painting. It's costing the fishermen to go fishing."
Canastra said for the first two months, numbers were up because of haddock, which only a small number of boats in New Bedford can catch because of the separator trawl — a special kind of net — that is needed.
"You need to get that net in mid-water and you need a lot of power," Canastra said. "In New Bedford, many of the boats do not have the power, so they can't take advantage."
Jim Kendall, owner of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, chalked NOAA's numbers up to simple supply-and-demand economics.
"If your supply is down 10 percent, your demand is going to be up and that's being borne by the American consumer," said Jim Kendall, owner of New Bedford Seafood Consulting. "It's great that prices are up for fishermen, but if you have less to sell … where's the balancing point?"
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Kendall said, is whitewashing the real state of the industry.
"They're trying to put a happy face on it when they can't," he said. "It's like telling someone: 'The earthquake wasn't that bad. Some people lived.'"
Others are outright questioning the accuracy of NOAA's figures.
Robert Vanasse, executive director of The Project to Save Seafood and Ocean Resources, said NOAA had floated out a number of 38 percent revenue increase earlier this week. NOAA later told him that figure was based on old numbers, he said.
Vanasse, however, was not satisfied with the new numbers, either. He said 36 metric tons of flounder, a "no take, no possession" species, were factored into the new figures.
"It calls into question the whole report," he said. "When we get numbers we can trust, we need to establish who are the winners, who are the losers under catch shares."
Read the complete story from the South Coast Today [subscription site]