One year ago, Oregon's commercial groundfish trawlers, based out of Astoria, Newport, Coos Bay and Brookings embarked on the 2011 fishing season under an entirely new fishery management program known as a "catch share" system. The new system was the product of years of painstaking public process involving the Pacific Fishery Management Council, fishermen, scientists, seafood processors, community leaders and members of the environmental community.
In developing and adapting to catch shares, fishermen and fishery managers squarely addressed a litany of systemic problems that were largely the result of irrational, one-size-fits-all, status quo management. These included persistent problems with overfished species; restrictive fishing seasons that were completely disconnected from weather and market conditions; and, perhaps worst of all, regulations that forced fishermen to throw overboard thousands of pounds of perfectly good seafood. Discarding good fish is something that every fisherman hates, but regulations left them with no practical choice in the matter.
By assigning every trawler a percentage-based annual quota of each species' total allowable harvest, catch share management has changed the fishing business. Intense competition has been replaced with cooperation and information-sharing among fishermen. Now, fishermen target their catch more accurately, do a better job of avoiding overfished species, and fish safer.
Read the complete opinion piece at Oregon Live.