May 1, 2013 — Sharp new cuts in fishing quotas mark the start today of the fourth year of fishing catch shares and sector management in the Northeast, NOAA's prescription for rebuilding fish stocks and streamlining the fishing industry.
Today is also known as "The Day of Reckoning," the unofficial name given by those on both sides of the issue. The implication is that the fishing industry is finally paying the price of failed management that has brought a collapse of some groundfish species and a sharp curtailment in fishing for the most popular species: cod, yellowtail flounder and haddock.
But the fishermen who now see their quotas of some fish cut by more than 70 percent, who see their livelihood evaporating before their eyes, who are losing homes to foreclosure, insist, without contradiction, that they have done everything NOAA Fisheries has asked them to do in the past three years, and years before that.
They set up sectors, the once-mystifying system of cooperatives in which boats team up to manage their quotas as they see fit.
They took the oftentimes meager quotas they were assigned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and made the best of them. As loudly predicted by Carlos Rafael, who owns dozens of boats, many boat owners quit the business because their quota couldn't make them any money and leasing quota from others wasn't worth the money.
But at least the government's stock assessment surveys were at first quite upbeat. Yellowtail flounder, haddock and especially cod were on the rebound, plentiful and multiplying.
Then came 2011, when suddenly stock assessments were showing the opposite. NOAA and the Commerce Department clamped down, tightened the quotas, and in anticipation of a collapse in 2012, declared an economic emergency.
Linda McCann manages sectors 6 and 7 in New Bedford, which three years ago had about two dozen boats each. Today the number of boats remains almost the same, but few of them are actually fishing.
"In sector 7, we have 10 boats fishing, only three of them in groundfish. The others are monkfish guys," she said.
"In sector 8, there are just four boats, in groundfish."
In meetings of the New England Fishery Management Council, owners and captains have pleaded their case, that quota costs, fuel costs, stagnant prices, and the cost of running sectors have made it impossible for many of them to make any money.
But Congress and the White House have done nothing to provide disaster relief for the fishery (and two others in the Gulf of Mexico and on the West Coast). The Senate tried, but the GOP-controlled House removed the money from the Hurricane Sandy relief bill early this year.
McCann explained that the idle boats haven't been sold largely because of a pension system requirement. If the pension account for the boat is short of its obligations, owners must make up the difference when the boat is sold. The amounts range from $250,000 to $600,000, McCann said.
Some are paying off in quarterly payments while collecting less than generous pensions themselves, McCann said.
Another problem cropped up this year: the weather. A fierce winter kept the fishing fleet in port during January and February. These were boats, McCann said, whose owners had mortgaged their houses to lease or buy quota. But they couldn't fish and the last few days leading to today, they made a last-ditch effort to fish for some of that quota.
But leaving so much quota in the sea will start many boats off in the red this year, she said.
The fishing boats aren't the only ones suffering. With fewer boats fishing, support businesses are enduring tough times.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times