Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Council convenes in Kodiak with Gulf catch shares in focus

June 2, 2016 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Kodiak from June 6-14 to hear a discussion paper that has enraged the trawl industry since late 2015.

Two proposals are engineered to prevent harmful impacts such as the job losses and high cost of entry that have occurred under previous such programs in halibut and crab.

This is an official state position, and the North Pacific council holds a six-member majority of the 11-member body that governs federal Alaska waters.

Gov. Bill Walker’s administration prioritizes coastal communities’ economic prospects during the state’s oil-driven financial calamity. Part of that stance concerns keeping the fishing industry, the state’s largest private employer, in Alaskan fishermen’s hands.

“The greatest challenge facing fishery managers and communities to date has been how to adequately protect communities and working fishermen from the effects of fisheries privatization, notably excessive consolidation and concentration of fishing privileges, crew job loss, rising entry costs, absentee ownership of quota and high leasing fees, and the flight of fishing rights and wealth from fishery dependent communities,” the council’s discussion paper reads. “Collectively, these impacts are altering and in some cases severing the connection between Alaska coastal communities and fisheries.”

For years, the council has mulled over a regulations to install catch shares in the Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries. Mainly trawlers go after this fishery, which includes pollock, a midwater fish, and species such as Pacific cod and arrowtooth flounder, which are bottom, or pelagic, fish.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

DICK GRACHEK: Catch Shares

May 4, 2016 — The problem with catch shares is not in their “design”.  The problem with catch shares is in their existence.

Except for a few “winners” perhaps, it’s a problem for all concerned that this flawed and destructive privatization scheme was even considered, no less established as a management approach.

Catch Shares management has proven to be A Bad Idea:  Catch Shares have done nothing to help the fish. Catch Shares have done nothing to help the fishermen and the fishing communities. Catch Shares have done nothing to help the fish consuming public. Catch shares were not put to the referendum vote as statutorily mandated by the MSA. Catch Share Sectors were not “voluntarily” joined by the majority of the fishermen—the common pool was not a viable “option”.  The NOAA/NMFS Individual Transferable Quota initial allocation data base was admittedly flawed and inaccurate. Catch Shares had been “ramrodded” through the council process without due deliberation or adequate planning.

Finally catch Shares or ITQ’s are just a tool like any of the others that have been tried; but this one, as it fails, jeopardizes the entire independent small-boat fishery, their shoreside support businesses, and their iconic and much touted communities which could be lost permanently.

Fleet “consolidation” through ITQ’s and the consequent collapse of shore side support facilities, possible factory ship cartels, (legal under the American Fisheries Act 1998), and the transfer of fishing “rights” into the “wrong” corporate hands, are some of the irreversible consequences of this plan.  And, as is occurring wherever they have been instituted worldwide, catch shares or Individual Transferable Quotas ultimately spell the end for the independent fisherman and their communities and their shoreside support businesses.

Read the full story at the Center for Sustainable Fisheries

Kavanagh: Groundfish fishery needs ownership cap

April 14, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — In regards to state Rep. William Straus’ recent letter to the editor (“Your View: Impact of the federal fisheries arrests in New Bedford,” March 22), I appreciate his concern for the fishing industry. It doesn’t really matter how the fish are regulated — days at sea, catch shares, ITQ. Under any of these systems an ownership cap is necessary, as he pointed out.

The scallop industry has had an ownership cap for years, and it seems to be working out fairly well. The groundfish industry should follow a similar path. For some reason many members of the groundfish industry don’t seem to want a cap. They say they will have difficulty selling their permits if a cap is put into place.

Read the full letter at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Texas charter captains use loophole to get around federal red snapper limits

April 8, 2016 — The future of recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico is for sale in Texas.

While charter boats and private recreational anglers in the Gulf were only allowed to catch red snapper in federal waters on 10 days last year, two companies in Galveston, Texas have been taking recreational anglers red snapper fishing all year round.

What’s more, the companies allow the fishermen to keep as many red snapper as they want each day, blowing past the two-fish-per-day federal limit.

The only thing limiting how many snapper the customers are allowed to keep is how much they are willing to pay.

The Texas companies have been getting around the federal limits and seasons by selling the “Catch Shares Fishing Experience.” The Texas companies involved own “catch shares” of the commercial red snapper fishery that allow them to harvest a set number of pounds per year for commercial sale.

Instead of catching those fish with a professional crew and selling them to a fish house, the captains are taking recreational anglers fishing and letting them buy the fish afterward.

For the customers, the catch share experience represents the ultimate fishing trip, where they can keep many more snapper than the two per person per day allowed under federal law. Meanwhile, the boat captains running the trips are able to market the fish as “fresh fish caught that day,” which command a much higher price at the dock than most commercially caught snapper.

Read the full story at Al.com

Catch Share Programs Under Fire On Both Coasts

March 23, 2016 — This week, catch share management has come under fire on both the East and West Coasts, as articles in the New Bedford Standard-Times and Seafood News criticize key facets of regional catch share programs.

In New England, Massachusetts State Rep. Bill Straus writes about the side-effects of implementing catch shares in the New England groundfish fishery, calling the subsequent fleet consolidation “a government-created near monopoly.”

In Sacramento, Seafood News details how low quotas for critical “choke species” are preventing some boats from fishing for the entirety of 2016.

For nearly a decade, the Environmental Defense Fund’s ocean policy has been “to ensure that the world’s fisheries are restored back to health through the advancement and implementation of a transformational fisheries management approach known as catch shares.” In May 2009, while serving as Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the vice-chair of EDF’s board of trustees, enacted a national policy encouraging the consideration and use of catch shares.  Regarding its trustees, EDF notes on its website that “Fortune magazine called them one the most influential boards in the country.”

Excerpts from the two articles are provided below:

State Rep. Bill Straus: Impact of the Federal Fisheries Arrests in New Bedford

No one who supported the catch shares idea in 2009 can honestly say this concentration and its results are a surprise. The statements challenging this bad idea back then came locally from Dr. Brian Rothschild at UMass Dartmouth and many others; I added a cautionary word as well on the pages of this newspaper on June 24, 2009. It is frankly depressing to re-read this portion of what I said then about the coming catch shares program:

“Amendment 16 will send many fishermen and smaller ports to the sidelines; in other words, they will lose their jobs. There will be winners and losers, and the advocates of Amendment 16 have done little or nothing to point out that the system that is chosen for allocating catch shares will determine who will thrive in the new world of federal regulation and who will be abandoned.

“Amendment 16 will result in a concentration within the fleets of all ports; to think otherwise would be naive.”

In the coming weeks and months, more information on the way the industry runs will no doubt come to light and whether, as I believe, the catch shares system played a role in allowing the port economy to shift as it has. A discussion needs to start and soon for two reasons. First, the federal government at some point will no doubt have to consider whether serious permit holder violations have occurred such that revocation and some new system of permit availability for groundfish participants should be created. That is a major question, and it’s never too soon to get going on whether catch shares’ day (if there ever should have been one) has come and gone.

West Coast Catch Share Program Failure Keeps Vessel Off Fishing Grounds For 2016

Criticism that the West Coast catch shares program is underperforming came to the forefront recently at the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Sacramento.

West Coast trawlers have been operating in fear of a “disaster tow” or “lightning strike” of a choke species since the beginning of the individual quota program in 2011. And for the F/V Seeker, a disaster tow of 47,000 pounds of canary rockfish – a species at the time listed as overfished — in November 2015 will prevent it from fishing for all of 2016.

The Seeker’s misfortune is an extreme example of the program’s failure, particularly for those fishing in the non-whiting sector.

Jeff Lackey, who manages the vessel, testified to the PFMC the vessel is in a bind and already has made plans to fish in Alaska for most of 2016 and return to fishing off the West Coast in 2017. The Seeker fishes in both the non-whiting shoreside sector and in the whiting mothership sector.

The Seeker is a victim of several features of the current regulatory system in the West Coast individual quota program.

First, current vessel limits prohibit the Seeker from acquiring enough quota to solve its deficit.

Second, canary rockfish was listed as overfished for more than a decade but an assessment accepted by the council in 2015 shows canary rockfish has been rebuilt.

And third, the PFMC’s management process operates on a two-year cycle, with no way to change annual catch limits (ACLs) mid-cycle.

“[The F/V Seeker] is not the only one,” Pete Leipzig, director of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association, told the Council. Other trawlers have come up against vessel limits for other species that have prevented them from fishing for some time, but none have been confronted with the extremity of the Seeker’s situation.

The vessel limits were designed to prevent consolidation of the fleet. Bycatch of choke species have prevented many vessels from capturing target fish. Fear of a disaster tow — one so extreme that a quota pound deficit cannot be covered in the existing fishing year — has limited trading of quota as fishermen hoard these species to cover their fishing operations for the year.

The Seeker is a member of the Newport, OR based Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. The organization proposed a solution to the Seeker’s problem: use an alternative compliance option that was eliminated during the development of the catch shares program. It would have been available for overly restrictive events, such as the Seeker’s, but still hold fishermen accountable. The council opted not to move forward with examining that option at this time.

This is the new reality of the West Coast individual quota program: rebuilding species will be encountered more frequently and fishermen could be held to conservative annual catch limits for a year or more if they experience an infrequent disaster tow and have insufficient quota to cover their deficit.

“As the regulations are currently written, any vessel that experiences the same situation would likely have to sit out of the shoreside trawl program for several years … This seems overly punitive and raises equity concerns,” Heather Mann, executive director of the MTC, wrote in a public comment letter to the council.

STATE REP. BILL STRAUS: Impact of the federal fisheries arrests in New Bedford

March 22, 2016 — By now the local reaction to the waterfront arrests in New Bedford of one of the port’s major figures has begun to shift to inevitable questions of the role of the federal government in the regulation of commercial fishing. Operating under federal law, the current groundfish system of control, the so-called “catch shares” plan, began with Amendment 16 in 2009 by vote of the New England Fishery Management Council. This intricate system of allocating by fish species what can be caught and landed by licensed federal permit holders has clearly changed the market economics for New England fishing; a rapid concentration of fish permit holders has led to what functions as a government-created near monopoly. The fact that a single owner now controls at least 40 New England groundfish permits means that one person’s actions, whether driven by good or bad motives, reverberates through the regional economy.

We need to remember that this discussion is critical to the future of our port, and in my mind is distinct from the ultimate guilt or innocence of those charged to date. The presumption of innocence holds for anyone accused of a crime and they are entitled to a vigorous defense on their behalf. Regardless of the outcome of those proceedings, however, our port’s future depends on candidly looking at whether there has been a detrimental role played by the government’s regulations and how we got to this point. After all, the Port of New Bedford has a key role in the movement of seafood nationally; NOAA statistics for 2014 identify the port’s product value for landings at $327 million overall of which $251 million is from scallops. Using a conservative economic multiplier, the value to our local economy is over $600 million a year. By comparison, Gloucester’s seafood dollar value is only one-seventh of ours at $46 million during the same period.

The public documents now available online growing out of the New Bedford prosecutions point to a pattern of deceptive behavior where catch share quotas for specific types of fish were allegedly misreported for private economic gain. Because this type of behavior is alleged to be overseen by someone who owns and controls the most permits, the local groundfish industry in New Bedford is therefore more vulnerable and susceptible. That is a departure from history, where a diverse port economy relied on the decisions of many stakeholders. I don’t believe this concentration is a good thing for the overwhelming majority of those who look to and depend upon the seafood industry. Whatever is occurring at sea with respect to the science of habitat quality, species survival and sustainability is one thing; its quite another for a port’s success or failure to be put in jeopardy as a result of a narrow band of ownership encouraged by the Federal regulations adopted to protect the fisheries.

Read the full opinion piece at The New Bedford Standard-Times

DAVID GOETHEL: Should catch share management be indicted?

March 16, 2016 — According to accusations from Federal investigators, the seafood business run by Carlos Rafael “laundered” fish to evade quotas, sold fish for cash to evade taxes, and cheated captains and crews by paying them for lower-valued fish than what they landed. These are serious criminal accusations, but they also raise a disturbing question: Is the system known as “catch shares” at least in part responsible for what occurred?

Catch shares are a system of managing fish where fishermen are given fixed quota for each species, which they can either catch or lease. All legal fish must be retained, and the quota cannot be exceeded. According to proponents of the system, giving fishermen economic incentive not to exceed limits will promote sustainability.

Fifty-three million dollars has been spent implementing catch shares in New England. Since implementation, the NOAA regional office moved into a new four-story building with room to accommodate all the new hires and subcontractors maintaining the program, while environmental non-governmental organizations have wrung millions from their multimillionaire donors to run a relentless promotional public relations campaign. A cottage industry of companies, consultants, and academic institutions has received millions in grants to implement, monitor, and study catch shares. Meanwhile, most fishermen and their families, other than a handful of winners, have been eliminated from the fishery or reduced to near bankruptcy.

As a fisherman, you either work or you don’t eat. The people running Mr. Rafael’s boats essentially became modern-day sharecroppers. The exorbitant cost of leasing quota was deducted from their share of the catch, and, as of March 1, they are additionally responsible for the cost of government-mandated monitoring. Mr. Rafael also allegedly told the captains how to fill out their logbooks so that his fish-laundering scheme could operate. The captains, who signed the logbooks under penalty of perjury, had a choice: Sign, or do not eat.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times

Kingpins of the Gulf make millions off red snapper harvest without ever going fishing

January 25, 2016 — A little-known federal program has turned dozens of Gulf of Mexico fishermen into the lords of the sea — able to earn millions annually without even going fishing — and transformed dozens more into modern-day serfs who must pay the lords for the right to harvest red snapper.

The hold is full of market-sized red snapper, which range from 1 to 3 pounds. Captain Simms had to shell out $3,000 for the right to catch 1,000 pounds of snapper on this trip. His profit will only be about $1,500 of these fish, while a broker will earn more than twice as much.

A four-month probe by AL.com has found that roughly $60 million has been earned since 2007 by this small number of fishermen whose boats never left port. That money was collected from the labor of fishermen who have no choice but to hand over more than half of the price that their catch brings at the dock.

As it stands today, the right to catch 77 percent of the annual red snapper harvest is controlled by just 55 people, according to an AL.com analysis of hundreds of pages of federal documents, reports and websites.

The lion’s share of the commercial harvest was concentrated in the hands of a very few in 2007 when a federal program known as the Individual Fishing Quota system, or IFQ, was established. The National Marine Fisheries Service divided up the Gulf’s snapper harvest like a pie, with the largest pieces going to the fishermen who landed the most fish in the preceding years. A handful of snapper fishermen got shares as large as 5 or 6 percent of the Gulf’s total harvest, while others received shares as small as a ten thousandth of a percent, which granted the right to catch about a dozen fish a year.

“I sold my first snapper when I was 16 or 17,” said Ricky Wilson, a welder who lives in a small cottage on Mobile Bay. Commercial snapper fishing provided part of his income for 20 years.

When the IFQ portions were handed out, his share amounted to about 430 pounds, which would have taken him one or two days to catch and brought less than $1,000 at the dock.

Read the full story at the New Orleans Times-Picayune

 

On Facebook, EDF Attributes “Amazing Comeback of U.S. Fisheries” to Catch Shares

December 29, 2015 (Saving Seafood) — Yesterday, in a Facebook post, the Environmental Defense Fund attributed the “amazing comeback” of U.S. fisheries to the implementation of catch shares, stating “There’s a boatload of evidence (pun very much intended) that this approach is working.”

According to EDF:

“Just a decade ago, many commercial fisheries were something of a free for all, with little incentive to do anything but fish first, fish fast, and fish until there was nothing left. Risky for fishermen and detrimental to species abundance, this system too often corroded the health of fishing communities and fish populations alike. Since then, an alternative management approach called catch shares has transformed this dynamic in many domestic fisheries by aligning the economic interests of fishermen with long-term conservation outcomes.”

Northeastern fishermen and fishing families with Facebook accounts who would like to comment, and let EDF know what catch shares have meant to them, can access the post here.

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Electronic catch monitors would improve fishery

November 27, 2015 — Managing the decline in New England’s commercial fishery has long been a delicate dance among fishermen, regulators and scientists.

The scientists estimate how many fish are available for harvest, and regulators use those estimates to allot catch shares among various groups of fishermen, called “sectors.”

It doesn’t always work smoothly.

Fishermen question the validity of the science, saying that they see more fish than the estimates would indicate. Regulators are influenced by members of Congress, who represent fishing communities, not fish, and are concerned with the communities’ economic survival.

Scientists say that they are doing the best they can with the data available, but what they can see paints a much darker picture than what the fishermen report.

Fortunately, there may be a way to produce data that everyone can be confident in: electronic monitoring.

Currently, professional monitors go out on fishing boats about 20 percent of the time, cataloging what the boats pull up in their nets and what they throw overboard.

The information they bring back is valuable, but there are problems with the system. The fishermen have to pay for the live monitors, and they are expensive. That’s especially true for boats leaving from rural areas, where the captain has to pay the travel expenses and accommodations for a monitor who is not locally based.

Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald