Gloucester Times plays destructive role; misses chance to make fisheries work for local benefit

(The Gloucester Times published an editorial calling on the NE Council to abandon catch shares.  We thought it was an irresponsible approach, and made our own comments in reply. )

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [EDITORIAL COMMENT] by John Sackton - Aug 19, 2009 - The Gloucester Times is playing the same role in New England Fisheries Management that the Republican party is playing in the national health care debate. Both are saying essentially they dont want to participate in the proposed reforms, so they would rather see nothing done at all.

While the national debate on health care can be postponed for another year, the management of New England fisheries cannot, because there is a legally mandated timetable to implement the new standards of the Magnuson act.

In this context, the idea of blowing up the system, which is essentially what is advocated in the Times Editorial is irresponsible and does a disservice to New England fishermen.

Anyone who is pinned down in an economic vise is looking for whatever hope might be on the horizon. To argue that NMFS science be thrown out; that the council rebel, and that essentially the entire management of New England fisheries start over is just a false hope.

If that is really what the Times believes, they should have the guts to call for a total moratorium or shut down of New England fisheries while the problem is fixed, with appropriate support for fishermen.

But if they are not willing to see the fishery closed, then they have the responsibility to propose positive management measures as well.

We know fishery management can work in New England. Here is a graph of scallop landings and biomass we printed in a separate article today.



Source: NMFS

This management was done by the same agency and council that the Gloucester Times is vilifying.

There are real problems with the low biomass of pollock, and the difficulty of getting accurate measurements on a single species in a mixed stock assessment covering 19 groundfish species which share the same habitat. There are also problems with attempting to maximize the yield of all 19 species at the same time. But the most hopeful answer to this is to address the how the needed flexibility can be achieved.

Instead, the advocates in Gloucester are refusing to confront the real problem, and just calling for the system to be blown up.

This is a false hope for fishermen. We are never going back to a golden age when boat captains could fish all they wanted and were not constrained by management.

The late Jake Dykstra, a giant in New England fishing who was one of the key people responsible for the 200 mile limit knew he was making a trade-off. In return for gaining control and stewardship of the EEZ out to 200 miles, Dykstra realized that fishermen were taking on a management system as well. He strove to make it work, sometimes successfully, and sometimes less so. But he never gave up on the idea or the need for management as the price of achieving control over U.S. waters.

Now U.S. style fisheries management has been recognized by scientists (Worm-Hilborn paper) as the best single hope for achieving global sustainable fisheries, based on the successes this country has had with fisheries since 1977.

I wish the present leadership in Gloucester and the writers at the Gloucester Times had more of Dykstra's vision, and less of a feeling of anarchist nihilism.

For example, other fishery catch share programs have strong adjacency and community landing requirements. If Gloucester leaders were not so intent on blowing up the system, they might actually fight for adjacency rights to protect the inshore fleet from competition on nearby banks. They might fight to guarantee some community landing rights so that IFQs could not be concentrated in some other community and taken out of Gloucester.

Many fishing communities have prospered and become dominant owners through working within catch share systems to maximize the economic benefits to that community. Some smaller communities in Maine have been pushing hard for such protections. But such a discussion has been sorely lacking in Gloucester and Southern New England, partly because the Gloucester Times, a highly visible advocate is talking about blowing up the system, in an anarchist frenzy, rather than seriously trying to make it work for their community.