After a similar meeting in Gloucester, New England fishermen met in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on March 8 to discuss the pending shift to a catch share system that many fishermen feel they are being forced to accept.
Some, including boat owner Carlos Raphael of New Bedford, said the low allocations under catch shares will drive 50 percent of the fishermen out of business in a matter of months.
The shift to an incomplete sector management system and catch shares as been driven by a deadline some say is arbitrary. U.S. Representative Barney Frank called for a moratorium. But, he told the Fishermen’s Voice, the new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) head, Jane Lubchenco, “is determined to go forward, in spite of the fact that catch shares is just another term for transferable quota, which according to the re-authorized Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA) of 2006, requires a 2/3 majority vote in Congress, that the catch shares plan does not have.”
Read the complete story at Fishermen's Voice.