NEW BEDFORD — November 9, 2010 — The frustration was palpable as fishermen and fishing advocates lamented industry rules that many at a forum Tuesday night said were regulating livelihoods out of existence.
During the forum at the Fairfield Inn, fishermen peppered National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials and an environmental activist with pointed questions regarding the logic behind a new management system known as "catch shares" that came into effect May 1.
The tense atmosphere was at times punctuated by shouts, boos and claps. The forum, sponsored by The Standard-Times, drew a standing-room-only crowd of a couple hundred.
Julie Wormser, the Environmental Defense Fund's New England and Mid-Atlantic regional director for the oceans program, said catch shares are "very designable" and that fishermen "are no longer racing against the clock."
Wormser said she believed there were "compatible values" that both fishermen and environmental activists shared. She spoke of catch shares presenting an opportunity to "shift control from the authorities to fishermen."
But many suggested the new system is a disaster that is not grounded in solid economics or science and was crafted with no input from the people whose livelihoods are at stake.
Of the present sector management set-up, authorities should "scrap it, fix it right and do it over again," said Fisherman Stephen Welch.
Fishermen faced two choices, neither desirable, before the new system took hold, said Richie Canastra, co-owner of the New Bedford and Boston Seafood Display Auctions. Under the previous system, allocations were so tight they spelled doom, he said. The other option was catch shares.
"The implementation of catch shares in New England was about as voluntary as Stalin's collective farms," said Canastra. "You didn't have to join one voluntarily, but the other option was Siberia."
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