The latest version of the ‘asset commoditization’ of USA fisheries is well underway with the New England Fisheries Management Council’s approval of “Catch Share” systems to convert part of the common pool into sectors for the sake of non-fishing investors.
Catch shares back East are being handled through ‘sectors’ — community-based fishing cooperatives. These are not the familiar processor-linked-cooperatives we’re used to in Alaska’s collectivist oppression system, and the temporary rhetoric is that they are not (yet) individual fishing quotas. But we recognize this species-by-species march of economic warfare that moves relentlessly forward in the allocation jackboots of political racketeers until the boots-on-deck fishermen and our coastal communities fall into indentured servitude. New England fisheries are now well on the way, too.
There is much to this story about how the need for Total Allowable Catch limits (or Annual Catch Limits) management is being leapfrogged by outside investor needs, that it’s already quite the story on the East Coast. Use your favorite search engine and check out the tremendous reporting from Richard Gaines of the Gloucester Daily Times. If you thought environmentalists’ real concerns were for the health of fisheries, be prepared to learn more about following the money and power, and who is in cahoots with whom.