June 7, 2015 — Five years have now gone by since the reshaping of the Northeast fishery, five years that the the Northeast groundfishing industry does the best it can under a new set of rules.
Five years ago, few knew the definition of the word “sector” as NOAA Fisheries was suddenly using it. Basically they are what most people would call co-operatives. “Catch shares” were a bit easier; it’s another word for quotas. And it’s the catch shares, not so much the sectors, that many believe are at the root of the problem.
Sectors and catch shares have become common currency as the groundfish industry continues its long collapse, which in fact began years before the new experiment was unveiled in 2010. And as it does, federal regulators and environmental groups cling to the system that many already consider a failure — failing to turn around the stubborn collapse of the Atlantic cod population as well as that of yellowtail flounder, in NOAA’s view.
There is no shortage of people who believe that shutting down fishing boats was the objective all along. Peter Shelley, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation, said that some environmentalists use the term “fleet rationalization,” which to some means getting rid of boats that are not efficient. Squeeze them with tight quotas and it eventually becomes impossible to go fishing and make any money.
Johanna Thomas, director of planning and strategy for the Environmental Defense Fund, had a different take on what fleet “rationalization” is meant to describe.
The old system of “days at sea” regulation, with every boat for itself, was “a very irrational system of fish management,” she said. Sectors and catch shares were a way to organize the fishery in a way that involved fishermen cooperating with each other, with everybody following an understandable, rational, uniform set of rules.
“It doesn’t mean reduced capacity,” she said. “It is helping fishermen make a viable, stable living.”
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times