Putting the industry on ice

(from the February, 2007 issue of National Fisherman)

The most recent rationale being used by the antis to explain their shocking lack of concern over the impacts of their depredations on fishermen and the fishing communities they support is that they’re focused on the “long-term.” While unfortunate, their justification goes, the short-term pain being felt in fishery after fishery is only temporary. Somewhere down the line we’ll once again have vibrant fisheries pursued by happy fishermen who will all be grateful to those ENGOs (and, of course, the foundations that sponsor them) that put their lives and their fisheries back on track. Nice story, isn’t it? Happy endings tomorrow justify inflicting pain today.

We’re all familiar with the pain these “selfless” benefactors have brought to port after port and fishery after fishery. Closed packing houses, abandoned vessels and deteriorating docks aren’t the rarities that they were a few years ago, with increasing expenses, declining catches and stable (at best) prices working together to force fishermen into bankruptcy. Acre after acre of prime waterfront property is market bound, and you can bet your bottom dollar that once it’s sold it’s not going to be developed into anything that will support the “revitalized” fisheries.

So what if you have to drive through a state or two to get to your boat? Or run a couple of hundred miles to have her hauled? Or wait for a day and a half to pack out? The fish will be back, and they’ll be back a couple of years sooner than they would have been if we had a little more flexibility in the management process. Cheer up, folks, ‘cause those good times are just around the corner, and as we’ve seen so clearly in Florida and North Carolina, there’s always a market for waterfront condos.

But who’s going to run those boats and catch those fish?

Suppose that you’re the owner/operator of a small dragger or headboat in the Mid-Atlantic, and the most recent round of fluke cutbacks was the death knell of the business you’ve spent your whole working life building up. Or, you can substitute gillnetter, New England and groundfish; or Pacific Northwest and rockfish. You get the drift.

Do you cash out a few CDs, climb into your mobile home and truck on down to Miami or Baja and hang out until the rebuilding targets are met? That doesn’t seem all that likely because you’ve spent the last twenty years pumping all of your extra bucks into the boat (and for the last ten those extra bucks have been fewer and farther between), and at this point your boat has a fair market value somewhere between nada and bupkis. Instead, I guess you check out the help wanted ads in the New York Times or at Monster.com and see who’s looking to hire commercial fishermen.

And what about the markets?

Seafood buyers are funny. They want what the want when they want it. Until a decade or so ago, back before so many species of fish and shellfish became international commodities, they sometimes couldn’t get it. But that’s no longer the case. If they can’t buy ocean-fresh local fish, they can find something similar, and probably cheaper, produced overseas. It might not taste as good, and it won’t have that “fresh caught” cachet, but it’ll be there when they need it, and how many consumers are sophisticated enough to know the difference anyway?

So they convince their customers that they have an equivalent or better product at an equivalent or better price and get them to give it a try. Sounds like another market lost to domestic seafood, and what are the chances that the domestic harvesters will get it back in those future days of plenty?

Or what about all of those anglers who give up their weekly or monthly or annual party boat trips because they aren’t interested in catch and release. They’re going to find something else to do. When the fish “come back,” will they, or will they stick with their new pastimes? And what will they have to come back to?

Nils E. Stolpe