Looks like EDF/NOAA and perhaps a "winner" fisherman or two from the Great State of Maine got to Sen. Snowe, et al, with almost every one of the patently untrue EDF/NOAA talking points.
"The Days-at-Sea program had plunged our fishing industry into a downward spiral, decimating fish stocks and diminishing prospects at sea from 65 days to as few as 14 in 2010." Sen. Olympia Snowe
Looks like EDF/NOAA and perhaps a "winner" fisherman or two from the Great State of Maine got to Sen. Snowe, et al, with almost every one of the patently untrue EDF/NOAA talking points: namely that the Days-At-Sea system was the culprit all along and catch shares have now saved the day and all the fishermen want to "stay the course" and "…make continued improvements to the management of the new, sector based system" "…rather than developing a new one". (That statement doesn't make any sense at all, does it? EDF/NOAA just arbitrarily rammed in a new system last May 1).
Of course we don't need another new system; what we need is some honesty and integrity in this debate. In fact we need a debate; we never had one.
There was no demonstrable scientific need in 2010 for a drastic change in the management regime to the new catch shares or for a further reduction of the catch limits at that time. The input control or days-at-sea system had seen the majority of fish stocks return to health, some were completely rebuilt, and most were not being overfished and were progressing toward sustainability (see NOAA website linked below). A fishery will fail under any type of management scheme if there are simply not enough fish in the system that can be landed, whether it’s a days-at-sea, or a hierarchical point system, or a catch shares/sector model. What effects fish mortality is Total Allowable Catch not who owns what percentage of the TAC.
The problems the industry experienced with the days-at-sea system were largely due to the labyrinth of additional overly constrictive regulations: trip catch limits, daily catch limits, rolling and seasonal closures, and low yearly Total Allowable Catches, —and unprofessionally hostile adversarial enforcement. The surveys used for the stock assessments which saw the Days-At-Sea diminished to nearly nothing, were shown to be outdated and flawed.
It was flawed data admitted by NOAA to be inaccurate, but used anyway, as the basis for drastic cuts in catch limits and days-at-sea that “…plunged our fishing industry into a downward spiral” not the Days-At Sea program structure itself. This squeezing off of product flow to our domestic markets has also invited in foreign imports to the tune of 85% of all fish consumed in the U.S. That is a “downward spiral”. Flatfish prices in the middle of a stormy winter this year were at a level seen 30 years ago. That’s not only a “downward spiral”, that’s a “death spiral” for our businesses; and you can’t blame that one on days-at-sea, that’s all NOAA/EDF’s choking an industry. Catch shares certainly cannot cure the hostile stance NOAA exhibits toward the fishing industry.
It’s not the type of management system so much as it is the intention and the goals of management that will determine whether any system fails or succeeds. It is this intention or posture that will effect how funding will be allocated, how sound the survey methods will be, whether there will be a predisposition, i.e., or if some integrity will be employed in the analyses of the data in order to ensure accurate stock assessment while setting the TAC’s. It is the way a system is used by the managers that can either enhance or obliterate a fishery.
The claim that the days-at-sea system has failed to stop overfishing, and therefore needed to be replaced by catch shares, without delay, is a false argument. This is an argument which cites outdated stock assessments based on incomplete and inaccurate science that was used to squeeze off catch limits over the years. Blaming the days-at-sea system is a cover for the mismanagement of the entire fishery for the last twenty or more years and a blatantly disingenuous oversimplification of an enormously complex eco-system and its dynamics. It is used as a selling point to impose this “new” groundfish catch share system, a system which, for an overly risk-adverse NOAA agency, is very risky.
“Underscoring the industry's deterioration, the 2009 Status of U.S. Fisheries report listed 12 of the 20 species as overfished in New England, with the fewest cod caught in New England in more than 60 years.”
NOAA's recent Stock Sustainability Survey shows that out of the 250 monitored stocks 85% are free from overfishing and no new stocks have been added to the overfishing list. The “Report Text” on the below linked web site also states that from 2000 to 2009 the Fish Stock Sustainability Index increased by 60%. Cleary stock rebuilding needs to continue; but according to NOAA’s own survey the stocks are well into the process of rebuilding and are projected to continue to improve. This progress all happened under the dastardly Days-At-Sea program. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/statusoffisheries/SOSmain.htm
If stocks are free from overfishing, they are on the way to getting off the overfished list, and catch shares had nothing at all to do with these statistics of progress from 2009. Scientists and even Eric Schwabb have declared overfishing has ended—and not because of catch shares—that would be impossible. So why is there this myopic urgent dogmatic push for an unprecedented, radical, controversial, and according to similar programs around the world, dubious management regime change?
If the “fewest cod caught in New England in 60 years” was recorded in 2009, look to the draconian catch restrictions, i.e., not allowing fish to be landed, rather than that statistic being seen as an indication that the fish aren’t there. The new Director of Scientific Programs and Chief Science Advisor for NOAA Fisheries, Dr. Douglas DeMasters states clearly “…when you’re trying to manage a fishery on catch or landing data alone, you’re in a risky position. All of the history we have in our experience suggests that catch data alone is very difficult to manage fisheries properly.” He then adds “…if you have assessment scientists who have some sense of the status of the stock: are they depleted or not depleted, are they productive or not productive, are they long lived or not, those are the features that go in, or some of the assumptions that are made, in using these catch only assessments for data poor stocks.” (My emphasis) It appears that using catch and landings data when assessing stock health invites prejudice on the part of the scientist assessor and is therefore not a trustworthy management tool.
It is disingenuous and manipulative to claim—for a catch share system in effect for a mere10 months—that "revenues have increased" and "…that the catch of healthy stocks, including haddock and redfish are up by more than 10%", implying the stocks are rebounding and the catch is up due to the implementation of catch shares? A more accurate appraisal of the statistics reveals that catch and revenues are up for only 20% of the fleet, while the rest of the boats are tied up and families are starving in the largest New England ports of New Bedford, Gloucester, Point Judith, and Montauk. The same is true for fishing ports of the Mid-Atlantic and southern states as well.
Revenues have not increased in real terms, only using the accounting “slight of hand” by hiding the cost of buying allocation are revenues up; however, when you get honest and factor in the cost of buying the necessary poundage to fish on very few operations are even paying their bills, no less profiting. In many cases this new gambling aspect, introduced by catch shares, has created more "broker trips" than ever before. Plus we’re on target to leave 70% of the “allowable” biological catch of haddock swimming in the ocean again this year due to ridiculously low allocations. That is not a “fundamentally sound strategy” or an effective intelligent management system.
It's enough of a gamble every time a fisherman leaves the dock without being forced to speculate on the fish prices paid out for poundage allocation before leaving that dock. Returning with a load of fish worth less than the price paid for the "privilege" to go catch them is not what the fishermen, I talk to, are likely to call "…significant signs of promise" or the "…flexibility to fish more efficiently" as touted by Eric Schwabb at the latest DC hearing and quoted by Sen. Snowe. They call it having the fish stolen out from under them by speculators and complicit mono-chromatic bureaucrats.
This editorial quotes one EDF lie after another, in fact, it looks like a blog straight from the EDF website. Anyone who knows anything about fishing knows that it's the Total Allowable Catch that determines the mortality of a fish stock; not the particular control valve mechanism used to administer or regulate that TAC.
The claim that ITQ’s or Catch Shares have a profound beneficial effect on the health of fish populations and therefore become a benefit to fishing communities, cannot be statistically supported. Actually the opposite seems true, most TAC’s worldwide under catch shares, some for decades, show a decline over the years. Fish populations have increased and declined over the years with apparent disregard for the management regime in place. What does have some effect on fishing mortality is TAC and trip and daily catch limits, not who owns what percentage of the TAC.
The report, "Updated Status of New Zealand's fish stocks", Sept. 2009, www.fish.govt.nz/ begins with the statement: "In New Zealand, setting and adjusting Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and/or Total Allowable Commercial Catch (TACCs) to limit annual catches is the primary mechanism for managing our fisheries. This is generally thought to be the most effective management metthod worldwide."
The basic structure of the catch share system is the destructive commodification and privatization of the public resource. In this system the fish are irreversibly separated from the fishermen and their licenses; then the allocated fishing “shares” or individual allocations of fish poundage become tradable market-capitalized entities. The “shares” will likely wind up bouncing around somewhere in the commodities cyber-trading world, perhaps bundled up into a “fishy” derivative. But after the consequent over-capitalization, as historically evidenced by other countries under existing catch share programs, and typical of these schemes, the majority of the shares definitely will not be found connected to small private fishing operations. Because of a lack of financial liquidity for most fishermen, small fishing operations are now being priced out of their own industry. See “A cautionary tale about ITQ fisheries”, “8 Lessons”, (Ecotrust Canada). www.ecotrust.ca/fisheries/cautionarytale
This catch share system has nothing to do with fish stock health. It is merely a financial ploy to make a few insiders (“winners”) rich. Why else would EDF have been hawking catch shares to The Milken Institute investors months before NMFS approved them?
Over the last 20 years or more, fishermen took the need for regulations in stride and sacrificed large portions of their livelihoods; some lost their homes and businesses. The fish are not now recovering because of a financial boondoggle called catch shares; no more so than the Days-At-Sea system caused the industry’s deterioration. The industry has problems because of unrealistic agenda-driven regulatory pressure. That miracle was accomplished by Pew, EDF, NOAA, and by everyone who failed to stand up to them; not by a particular management method.
Sen. Snowe, this March 25 Portland Press Herald editorial is not worthy of you and your clear stance as a fisheries advocate. Please turn off the EDF machine, go down to the docks and talk to some fishermen, not only in Maine (this is a national federal program, as you know, which is being foisted on all U.S. fishermen), but visit Gloucester MA, New Bedford MA, Point Judith RI, Montauk and Shinnecock NY, Point Pleasant and Cape May NJ, Hatteras NC, etc. and see how "promising" the "preliminary data" is from this catch share debacle. We need you to fight for all of us.