On May 10, 2010, in a letter to Commerce Department Secretary Gary Locke, New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang wrote “Important structural details in the exchange of quotas, shares, or allocations are ill-aligned. Stock assessments used to determine ACLs are not current. Of utmost concern, the intent of Congress as expressed in the language of the Magnuson-Stevens Act does not appear to have been taken into account, particularly with regard to National Standard 8 and the consideration of socio-economic impacts.”
In the mayor’s letter, he wrote to express, “Full support of the letter furnished by key members of the federal delegation on the northeast multispecies fishery and the request to…promulgate emergency regulation to increase the annual catch limits of groundfish.”
“I maintain my position that the catchshare system is premature and will have catastrophic impacts. Part of this relates to very risk adverse ACLs. With scheduled quotas, 50-75% of the fleet and thousands of jobs will be lost in a relatively short time.”
“Due to the high capital costs of running a boat,” Lang continues, “the owner is likely to allow other fishermen to fish his allocation based on negotiated compensation through contract agreements for that sector in large part because the ACLs for each sector are not high enough to make the sectors profitable. Conservative estimates from industry experts predict that 50% of the vessels will no longer be utilized. The lack of sufficient ACLs for groundfish will inevitably and significantly downsize the fleet and trigger a domino effect of economic harm.”
Read Mayor Lang’s letter here.