August 15, 2011 — New Jersey freshman Congressman Jon Runyan, along with North Carolina Congressman Walter Jone's and Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has introduced the “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011.” It is another weapon in the growing arsenal which is being provided by Members of Congress who are intent on re-establishing the role working fishermen once had in managing their fisheries.
Participation by fishermen was a central part of federal fisheries management following passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 1976. It is a role that has in recent years been usurped by a handful of agenda-driven ENGOs, the multi-billion dollar mega-foundations that support them, and the anti-fishing activists that have been put in charge of our Nation's fisheries in the U.S. Department of Congress (for more on this, see "Obama Ocean Priorities" at http://www.fishtruth.net/ObamaPriorities.htm).
The pro-catch shares ENGOs and the fishermen, fishermen's organizations and fishermen's publications that they have bought have already started another foundation-funded PR campaign aimed at convincing Congress that the Runyan/Jones/Ros-Lehtinen legislation will sound the latest death knell for U.S. fisheries, but in reality it is far from that. Rather, it's an attempt to save fishing jobs – a supposed priority of the Obama Administration, but obviously not when it applies to fishermen – and to give back some of the control of their fisheries that fishermen used to enjoy.
It doesn't prohibit the establishment of catch shares or any other form of management in any fishery, it merely prevents the federal fisheries management establishment from being able to unilaterally force catch shares on a fishery without the approval of the participants in that fishery. This approval would be expressed first by a simple majority of the participants, allowing the managers to proceed with the design of a catch share program. Then, a two-thirds majority of the participants would have to vote to adopt the resultant program.
Approval of a catch shares program by the affected fishermen is supposed to be federal policy already. Unfortunately, Ms. Lubchenco and her cadre at NOAA/NMFS have bureaucratically "finessed" their way around this in forcing catch shares on the New England groundfish fishermen.
The legislation also provides for the rejection of any catch shares program by the Secretary of Commerce if, once it is in place, it results in a job loss greater than 15% in the fishery. If that isn't a legislative provision fully in keeping with the will of the U.S. people today, it's hard to imagine what is – but when the head of the U.S. Department of Commerce must be told by Congress that a federal program in place that is putting people out of work must stop, Washington is far ahead of Denmark in the "something's rotten" department.
Of course the ENGOs, the Obama Administration, the compromised fishermen, fishing organizations and publications and the foundations behind them will be providing specious arguments for why the Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 will be bad for the fish and bad for the fishermen, but as is being demonstrated in more domestic fisheries every year, conservation and sustainability can be accomplished quite effectively without destroying fishing jobs, fishing lives, fishing families and fishing communities by imposing catch shares against the will of the people dependent on those fisheries.
So why are the people in the catch shares claque so hard at work voicing their objections and exercising their political muscles? It's impossible to think that they believe that the fish need it. We have hundreds of domestic fisheries that aren't classified as overfished today that have gotten there without the supposed benefit of catch shares. We have perhaps a dozen in which catch shares have been in place long enough to consider them successful – and that's successful from a biological, not a socio-economic, perspective. So if the fish don't benefit from catch shares, who does?
If the fishermen feel that they can benefit from catch shares, the Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 will allow them to have them, but why should anyone from outside the particular fishery care?
I quoted from a 2011 report commissioned by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation "foundations in the field are now looking to support this transition from fisheries conservation as a purely philanthropic investment to a blended conservation and business investment by encouraging non-profits, social change leaders and business entrepreneurs to create innovatively structured projects that can both build value for private investors and improve the speed and scale of fisheries conservation impacts” (see Is this the future of fishing? at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/All%20Stolpe%20Columns.htm#Future%20of%20fishing). The enthusiasm with which the ENGO community, the foundations that support the ENGOs, and the federal bureaucrats who very likely consider themselves only temporarily "on leave" from the ENGO world could easily see catch shares as a way to not only impose their distorted idea of what fisheries management is on fishermen, but to pick up a bunch of dollars in the process.
Of course, the price of seafood in the U.S. now being controlled by imports, there's only so much money to be made from every domestically harvested fish. With some of that money being funneled off by billion-dollar foundations and the people and organizations that they are subsidizing, it's easy to see fisherman after fisherman "owing his (or her) soul to the company store." And, according to Packard's consultants, that's exactly where the foundations, the ENGOs and the temporary bureaucrats want them. Otherwise, why would Packard have allowed the report to see the light of day?
(I have to note here that Fishery Management Plans that implement catch share programs may have provisions to limit the ownership of quota. This is to limit concentration of catching capacity in the fishery, and is certainly laudable. However, there is no way that control of quota – or more accurately, control of the individuals who own the quota – can even be determined, let alone regulated.)
It was the intent of Congress to allow fishermen a significant role in how their fisheries are managed and to prevent the impacts of top-down, out-of-touch management from destroying fishing communities, one of the most significant segments of our coastal heritage. This legislation by Representatives Runyan, Jones and Ros-Lehtinen recognizes that, and recognizes as well that in no way, shape or form should our federal bureaucracy be purposely and unnecessarily putting our citizens out of work. That obviously means nothing in the plush board rooms where the marching orders for the people at NOAA/NMFS are apparently originating, but it does on main street America, and the People's Representatives in Congress, or at least the ones who are listening, are hearing that loudly and clearly. Thank you, Congressman Runyan, Congressman Jones and Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen. Every independent fisherman, anyone in a fishing-dependent job, their families and their communities all are deeply indebted to you, as is every seafood lover who would like to see more than imported basa, tilapia and shrimp in their fish markets and restaurants.