John Sackton's Seafood.com editorial, "Don't fight the last war – Our view on the fishing rally" criticized March's Keep Fishermen Fishing rally, and argued its goals wouldn't improve management and would politicize fisheries science. Rod Moore of the West Coast Seafood Processors Assoc. responded by defending the rally's goals.
WEST COAST PROCESSORS RESPOND TO SEAFOOD NEWS EDITORIAL ON RALLY; SAY MAGNUSON MUST BE REFORMED
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [Letters] March 23, 2012
Dear John:
As editor of Seafood.com, you have the opportunity to put forth your opinion ("Don't fight the last war – Our view on the fishing rally (opinion)" – March 21st) on the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally held in Washington, D.C. this week. I hope that you will now allow an opportunity for response.
The theme of the rally was simple: the need to provide flexibility in the rebuilding provisions of the MSFCMA. It was not about catch shares, annual catch limits, or the leadership of NOAA, although strong views on all of those issues are held by many who participated (and many who didn't). Nor was the rally the exclusive provenance of any one group or any one region of the country; the issue of how to accomplish rebuilding stocks while giving recognition to both the needs of the resource and the needs of our coastal fishing communities is one that faces every regional fishery management council.
Your suggestion that we are "fighting the last war" is puzzling. Halibut – the example you use – is exempt from rebuilding requirements due to its international management. So let's look at a species that is subject to rebuilding requirements and suffers from the same ecological displacement that is being suggested as the problem with halibut – Pacific ocean perch. POP has a large biomass centered in the Gulf of Alaska; by the time you get to the waters off Washington you've reached the fringes. During the heyday of foreign fishing, that part of the POP population that is under the jurisdiction of the Pacific Fishery Management Council was reduced to extremely low levels and it has been designated as overfished and subject to rebuilding requirements, even though it is likely that it will never recover to pre-fishing levels. In fact, at any harvest level considered for 2013 (including zero), it is predicted to at best have an 85% chance to rebuild within the maximum time allowed under the MSFCMA. Yet the Council is still required to act as though it can be rebuilt to the target level based on pre-fishing populations. POP can act as a restraint on other healthy deep water species. Seems to me a little flexibility would help here, along with a little common sense.
As for fishery regulations too important to be left to politics, I'd like to know what utopia you've been occupying. Whether we like it or not, politics in the form of policies expressed by whomever is in charge influence how regulations are developed. You see it daily at the state level, the Council level, and the national level. It's a fact of life. Yes, it would be great if all of our regulations were truly based on science, if everybody fought their fights at the Council level and all Councils were so evenly balanced among competing interests that they could act as neutral arbiters, but it doesn't work that way. In fact, the original Fishery Conservation and Management Act was the result of the triumph of fishermen acting politically over a Republican administration that opposed extension of fisheries jurisdiction. Politics is and always has been a part of fisheries regulation.
Finally, as to your claim of a disconnect between fishermen and processors, I can only repeat what I said to you before your wrote your editorial: the West Coast Seafood Processors Association was a supporter and co-organizer of the rally. Our Board of Directors, which includes representatives of Pacific Seafood, Trident Seafood, and Bornstein Seafoods, took an affirmative vote on providing such support. WCSPA and its members are strong supporters of science-based management and appropriately developed annual catch limits. We have no desire to "gut" the MSFCMA nor do we think that all attempts at rebuilding overfished stocks should be abandoned. But we also believe that the Councils need some flexibility to be able to consider how best to rebuild those stocks within time frames that give due consideration to both conservation and the needs of our coastal communities, not just under artificial time limits imposed by the law or by court decisions.
Yes there are lots of other issues out there, but access to resources underpins all of them whether you are a sport fisherman, a commercial fisherman, or a processor. In that we are all united.
Rod Moore
West Coast Seafood Processors Assoc.
DON'T FIGHT THE LAST WAR – OUR VIEW ON THE FISHING RALLY (OPINION)
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton (Opinion) March 21, 2012
I hate people who stand on the side lines and say ‘please don't fight' when there are big issues at stake, and fighting is called for.
Yet as most readers of Seafood.com News know, we have not been a supporter of the fishing rally being held today in DC, nor of the attacks on NOAA and NMFS in New England over catch shares.
We have a lot of readers who are harvesters, or closely connected to harvesting, and I think it is appropriate to explain our discomfort about combining anti-regulatory fervor with the need to amend or reform Magnuson.
Here is the argument, in three simple steps.
(1) Don't Fight the Last War
The most important story we are running today is on the biology of Alaskan halibut. Over the past twenty years, the average weight of a 20 year old fish has declined from 100 lbs to 40 lbs – a 60% decline. The weight of a 12 year old fish has fallen about 40%, from 25 lbs. ot 15 lbs. The primary reason halibut allocation battles are so intense right now is that the biology of the fish has changed – and we are seeing the smallest fish since the 1920's.
There is no agreement on why halibut are not growing, but one possibility might be the 2 million ton cap in the Bering sea. That cap has long been a cornerstone for the industry, and for conservationists, and has been hailed as one of the foundations the outstanding success of fisheries management in Alaska. But it is possible that the explosion in population of less desirable species, such as arrowtooth flounder, are essentially starving the halibut, so they can't grow.
In New England, there is much concern about failing cod stocks in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank – particularly after some initial reports of good year classes. Again it seems like one possibility is that environmental conditions, or the huge masses of dogfish and seals, may have titled the system against cod survival.
For healthy sustainable fishing to continue for another hundred years, these issues have to be addressed by new types of fishery management – aimed at total removals, or longer term quotas than every year, all of which are simply not possible given the present myopic focus on every single species in isolation. Tweaking Magnuson to allow for a few more species to have flexibility may be a short term fix, but ultimately does nothing to address the larger problem of fishing on a big time scale.
(2) Fishery regulations are too important to be left to politics
Yes, there is a lot of politics around fishery regulations. But the strength of US fisheries for the last two generations has been that compared to other industries, we have been largely insulated from politics. This is because there has been a consensus that fish management has to be science based.
There are of course fights over science. But there is a line between fights over science and rejection of the need for science decisions to guide fish management.
When battles over fish become too political – for example when Tea-Party anti-regulatory and anti-government fervor becomes part of the campaign to reform fisheries, it threatens the basic foundation of fisheries management which is fundamentally based on all participants accepting a government role in regulating a common property resource.
The environmental community is extremely well funded, and is very good at lobbying and couching their arguments about fish preservation in scientific terms — but this is not reason enough to simply reject all arguments coming from environmentalists. Instead, we should push for the environmental arguments to be made in the council process – where they can be voted on and vetted by commercial and other representatives – who have a far better understanding of the issues than the politicians who appoint them.
That leaves NOAA. Yes, NOAA regulations and interpretations do determine how fishing is conducted. But my own impression is that NOAA has been bending over backwards in New England to address the criticisms it has received, and recognizes the conflicts and problems with revising the cod numbers, for example. And yes, Congressional action may be needed, but that action should have the support of some of the fishery managers.
(3) The Disconnect between seafood companies and the harvesters
Jim Donofrio, head of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, says ‘"We've watched access to vital coastal fisheries like cod, summer flounder, black sea bass, red snapper, amberjack, gag grouper and others virtually destroyed during the past 5 years,” in organizing for today's rally.
But these are not the major commercial fisheries in the US. With 1.1 million tons of cod on the world market, New England's 8,000 tons (approximately) cod is a tiny fraction of the market. The surge in cod sales during Lent that we wrote about yesterday had nothing to do with New England cod. The other species mentioned have some local fresh distribution, but are not major commercial species, with the possible exception of red snapper.
Because over 80% of most US commercially sold seafood products are imported, there is often a disconnect along most of the East Coast between the major seafood sellers and local production. The exception are those companies that specialize in local fresh distribution to supermarkets, like North Coast. But on the Gulf, the West Coast and Alaska, a much higher proportion of sales comes from US harvested fish.
Yet this is not where we have seen the main push for these rallies and the reform of Magnuson. Non-East Coast US seafood companies like Trident, Icicle, Pacific Seafood, Bornstein and others have a huge stake in successful US harvesting. Yet their issues – access to resources, fair treatment for processing investment, the ability to do their sales and marketing free of interference, are not part of the push to reform Magnuson.
This is because many of the most vocal rally organizers do not have good long term relationships with seafood sellers, and regard those on the other side of the dock with suspicion – as if the buyers were continually out to cheat them.
The major processors have a real stake in how our fisheries get reformed, and they should be part of this process.
So, while we can honestly support the commercial fishing organizations that are participating in this rally, we think this is not the fight we should necessarily be having. Ultimately, we get the politicians riled up for small ball solutions, when we actually need them to get out of the way so we can come to terms with bigger issues – like what to do about dogfish and seals on Georges, or what do to about halibut in the Gulf of Alaska.