Group: Maine fishermen at risk from proposed federal rule
Portland fishermen could find themselves swamped by out-of-state competitors under a new federal system of fishing regulation, opponents to the pending rules said Tuesday at a press event.
"At this point, we have this new push toward catch shares which essentially allows larger, out-of-state interests to buy up the fishing rights of smaller Maine vessels," said Michael Love, a commercial fisherman in Portland with a 65-foot boat, who employs nine people. "Once they go out of state, they're not going to come back. Catch share also has the effect of moving fishing allocation decisions from Commercial Street to Wall Street. We saw how that worked out with some of the latest financial mess."
The media event at City Hall was organized by Food and Water Watch, a national advocacy group that unveiled 558 signed postcards to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe urging congressional hearings into Amendment 16.
"The Fair Fish Campaign is active in eight coastal cities nationally to ensure that fisheries management policies are not designed so that they will enrich a few private corporations at the expense of our ocean ecosystems and the livelihoods of small-scale fishermen — now we just need Senator Snowe to take action," the group stated.
The Fair Fish campaign wants Sen. Snowe, who serves on the Senate subcommittee that manages fisheries, to call for oversight hearings on the implementation of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act — the legislation that oversees federal fisheries management and under which the new plan is being proposed.
Catch share is a new fisheries management policy proposed by the New England Fishery Management Council to manage 12 groundfish species off the New England and Mid-Atlantic coasts. The idea is to dedicate a secure share of fish to cooperatives of fishermen, known as "sectors."
Critics say the policy dramatically changes the days-at-sea approach to fishing, creating instead an allowable catch that is subdivided into shares and distributed as guaranteed rights.
Seventeen new sectors are proposed throughout the New England region. Sectors are "self-selecting and largely self-regulating," according to a letter about this proposal, contained in an amendment to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan. This amendment was prepared by the New England Fishery Management Council In cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service.
In the Management Council's letter addressing its amendment, economic impacts of allocating fishing rights to what amounts to fishing cooperatives are weighed -- and acknowledged as dramatic.
"Sectors in particular are considered to provide economic relief for adversely impacted fishermen since they will gain the ability to make more personal business decisions," the letter stated, initially sounding an optimistic note. But then it added, "The economic impacts of this action on communities are expected to be severe and in some cases may threaten the existence of fishing businesses in some communities. Social impacts will be primarily the result of commercial effort control measures and formation of sectors. The impacts will fall most heavily on vessels and communities that are most dependent on groundfish. These tend to be the Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts ports adjacent to the Gulf of Maine, though New Bedford is also a port that will be adversely affected.
"In part, the extent to which fishery participants will join sectors will determine overall social impacts of this action," the letter continues. "Sectors provide a way for fishermen to fish more efficiently and with more control over their daily activities.
Extensive or increased sector participation may prove beneficial to important social factors as groundfish rebuilding continues. Successful rebuilding of groundfish stocks should lead to future benefits for fishermen and their communities but it is not clear that current fishery participants will reap those benefits."
Love said the basics of this plan — now under review by the National Marine Fisheries Service — would allow out-of-state interests to buy up fishing quotas of Maine anglers. Mainers could lose jobs, he said.
"It's going to disrupt the fresh fish market immensely. It took years to develop the market," Love said.
But the new management plan would make it much more likely that fresh fish would originate from out of the state, he said.
Peace Action Maine, an active local group, added its voice to opponents of the measure.
"I know that people around the world are facing this same issue of large corporations being able to purchase the catch shares that will run the small fishermen out of business," said Wells Staley-Mays, program coordinator for Peace Action Maine.
"Over 550 people and 14 local businesses have taken action to reform our fisheries management and challenge the government program called catch share," said Laura Bramley, a student at the University of Southern Maine and a volunteer with the Fair Fish campaign. "Catch shares take a public resource, our fishery, and divide it up into shares and give it to those who have fished the hardest and the fastest. They put small-scale fishermen across the country out of business."
Some speakers Tuesday likened catch share to corporate attempts to "mine" Maine's groundwater supplies or build windmills.
Lynne Williams, candidate for Maine governor on the Maine Green Independent Party ticket, said, "The way that this is written the folks who benefit from this are not the fishing families that I know and probably many of you know but rather the out-of-state industrialized fishing companies.This is one more instance of companies from Massachusetts, for example, coming in; when they come in to build industrial wind farms, they're colonizing our ridgelines, and when they come in under catch share they'll be colonizing our marine resources."
Not everybody sees catch share as a corporate broadside on small-scale fishermen, however. The national Environmental Defense Fund, for one, supports the proposal, stating on its website, "With a secure share of the catch, fishermen no longer need to race: incentives change from spurring fishermen to capture the most fish they can, to spurring them to maximize the value of their share instead. As the fishery becomes more efficient, fewer boats and gear are needed and seasons lengthen."
"In much the same way shareholders in a company want the business to excel so their shares gain value, fishermen in catch share systems need the fishery to remain sustainable," the group states.
Maggie Mooney-Seus, public affairs officer for the National Marine Fisheries Service in the Northeast, said a group of fishermen can change under the sector approach, and there aren't quotas like anglers follow with the traditional days-at-sea system.
"We've heard people voice concern over the potential of sectors to result in further consolidation in the industry," Mooney-Seus said. "I guess our response to that is there has already been a lot of consolidation in the industry becaues of the condition of fish stocks."
But sectors would not be a locked-in format, she said.
"Your sector makeup is going to be changed each year, it fluctuates," Mooney-Seus said.
"It's not like they have an ownership of a quota because their quota can change each year," she added.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is reviewing the proposal to see that it complies with the law and can approve it or disapprove it. The proposal allows fishermen to opt in or out of sectors in the first year, 2010.
"It's something that could be in place next year and everybody in a sector could say they don't want to be in it, we want to stay in the common pool," Mooney-Seus said.
The measures must be in place by May 1, she said. A formalized proposed rule should be issued in the next month or so, followed by a 30-day public comment period. Then the rule can be revised and released again as a final rule.
