The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Defense Fund have separately announced efforts to regulate the nation's recreational fishing operations under the same type of catch-share system now being used to manage New England's commercial fisheries.
The government effort at transforming the recreational sector into a limited-access, regulated market comes on the heels of a bitterly divisive campaign by Jane Lubchenco, the Obama administration's chief of oceans and atmosphere and a former EDF official, to bring New England's commercial fisheries under catch share management.
The catch share system was put in place in New England's groundfishery last May, and has resulted in rapid consolidation in conjunction with catch limits set by Lubchenco's NOAA Fisheries, reducing the productivity of the Massachusetts fishery by $21 million and costing the regional industry an $38 million in opportunity, according to figures released Thursday by the administration of Gov. Deval Patrick.
The governor and the state's congressional delegation won the commitment of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to consider ordering emergency increases in the allocations of groundfish to obviate a demonstrated economic need.
Paul Diodati, director of marine fisheries for Massachusetts, was scheduled to brief Eric Schwaab, Lubchenco's NOAA Fisheries administrator, today on research generated primarily from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth's School of Marine Technology in the days after Locke acknowledged his authority to alter the catch limits.
The full report will be delivered to Locke next week, said Patrick spokesman Bob Keough.
NOAA's announcement this week of the "action agenda" for the recreational fisheries did not mention catch shares, but the direction the Obama administration is heading was embedded into the agenda itself in various places. The regulated commodities market imagined by the document requires aggressive data gathering.
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