FishNet USA Home          Printable PDF Version            FishNet USA Directory            FishNet USA Sponsors            Commercial Fishing Links           Links of Interest

Setting the stage….

On April 11, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced in the Federal Register (Volume 72, Number 69, Page 18105-18118) that it was enacting “regulations to implement the Fish and Seafood Promotion Act (FSPA) of 1986 for the establishment, organization, and operation of Seafood Marketing Councils.” NMFS will "promulgate regulations providing the foundation for the establishment, organization, and administrative practices of the Councils.” As justification, NMFS primarily cites the need for consumer education regarding seafood safety, but the Register notice goes on to say “While the role of the federal government is not to promote seafood, it does have a responsibility to the consumer to ensure that the information presented to them is accurate and scientifically valid.”

After an industry-sector referendum demonstrated that forming a Council had industry support, it would be organized by NMFS, which would also appoint its members. Again rom the Federal Register, “NMFS will initially pay all costs related to the conduct of the referendum to establish a Council. Once an application (to form a Council) has been approved, NMFS will estimate the cost of conducting the referendum, notify the applicants, and request that they post a bond or provide other applicable security, such as a cashier's check, to cover costs of the referendum. After the referendum has been conducted, NMFS will inform the applicants of the exact cost. If the referendum is approved and the proposed charter is adopted, the Council will be required to reimburse NMFS for the total actual costs of the referendum within 2 years after establishment of the Council. This amount would be paid for from assessments collected by the Council. If a referendum fails to result in establishment of a Council, NMFS would immediately recover all expenses incurred from the bond or security posted by applicants.” The Councils would be funded by the industry sectors (fisheries) they represented.

Of course, “continued operation of a Council is at the discretion of NMFS” and there are a number of conditions on the order of “the market plan should be designed to increase profits rather than increase harvest.”

This notice, as much as anything we’ve seen, represents the schizophrenic attitude that NMFS takes towards our commercial fisheries. As stated, anything that will increase the harvest in a fishery – with, evidently, no attention paid as to whether that fishery is being harvested at “maximum” levels or not – will not be tolerated. This is and for some time has been the general attitude of NMFS towards commercial fisheries. If it results in catching more fish, according to the agency charged with managing our nation’s fisheries, it categorically can’t be good and shouldn’t be permitted. If, on the other hand, it results in reduced commercial harvest, it’s right in line with agency policy.

The Council members will also be NMFS approved, affording the agency the opportunity to inordinately influence their behavior as members, and if NMFS doesn’t approve of the Council’s actions, it can be disbanded.

 Sounds like quite a bargain, doesn’t it? Particularly for NMFS, which has nothing at risk yet gains control of the entire process.

 A business is a business is a business…

A commercial fishing boat is a business. A commercial fishing dock is a business. A seafood processing plant is a business. Enterprises that depend on fishing, like welding shops, chandleries, net lofts, marine electronics suppliers, diesel repair shops, marine railways and seafood truckers, are all businesses. They face the same challenges and have the same constraints as any other businesses. They have competition (increasingly from abroad), they have constantly increasing costs and they have difficulties finding – and keeping – skilled and dependable workers. Like other businesses in other industries, those that are solid and operated in a business-like manner have proven themselves able to cope with these challenges.  

As has been drummed into the consciousness of anyone with access to the print and/or broadcast media over the past five years, fish is a good thing to eat. In fact, study after study suggests that not just any fish but marine fish in particular are a very good thing to eat, the unique omega 3 fatty acids they contain at high levels providing all sorts of benefits to our circulatory and nervous systems. It’s important to remember that the domestic commercial fishing industry is responsible for providing the lion’s share of those marine fish to the 230 million or so U.S. consumers who choose not to catch their own. Doing this would seem to be a good thing, something well worthy of governmental support.

As members of one of the oldest U.S. industries, one that can be credited with doing more to perpetuate the traditional values of our coastal communities than any other, and one that demonstrably contributes to the health and well-being of the populace, it’s hard to imagine any of these businesses not receiving the full support and encouragement of government at every level.

… and should be treated like one by the government

Unfortunately, that’s about as far from the actual case as it could possibly be. In fact, in port after port and in fishery after fishery, government intervention – in the form of increasingly stringent, unrealistic and ineffective regulations – is seen as the biggest threat to the survival of commercial and recreational fishing businesses and those businesses that are dependent on them. In fishery after fishery the feeling isn’t that the government has simply abandoned the people who are in it; it’s that the government is actively working against them. Today, government interference in the form of what now passes for fisheries management is far more detrimental to the survival of commercial fishing businesses than resource availability has ever been.

Under the guise of “conservation,” the federal government, as most prominently represented by the National Marine Fisheries Service, seems as if it couldn’t be less concerned with the impact of it’s management on the fishing businesses that are completely dependent on the fisheries it controls. And there isn’t any other federal agency that seems willing – or able – to extend any effective support to those businesses.

Massachusetts’ take on federal fisheries management

The Boston Herald reported on April 10 “Gov. Deval Patrick sought a different kind of federal disaster declaration Monday, saying it wasn’t a hurricane or other natural disaster that damaged the local fishing industry, but Washington’s heavy-handed regulation. Patrick asked U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez to designate a ”fisheries resource disaster” for Massachusetts, the first step in obtaining financial relief that could help the groundfishing fleet survive until stocks rebound.” (Patrick: Federal fishing rules create ’economic disaster,’ Associated Press.)

The article continues “Kevin Allexon, a senior policy adviser at the Commerce Department, said it’s an ‘awkward request’ because it asks the government to declare its own rules flawed. He said there’s never been a disaster declared as ‘the result of government regulation.’” Please note that Mr. Allexon didn’t say that there was never a disaster that was the result of government regulation.  

The current “crisis” in the New England groundfish fishery, a crisis that the Associated Press article demonstrates has become about as institutionalized as the federal “attempt of the year” to fix it (if funded, this will be the third multi-million dollar federal bailout of the New England groundfish industry, and there’s another one, this by the Governor of Maine, on the way), has gotten to the point where the full Massachusetts Congressional delegation is supporting Governor Patrick’s request..

********************************************

What about the “critical mass?”

It takes a complex of businesses to sustain a viable fishing port. Most obviously, docks capable of supporting the fishing vessels are required. These docks provide fuel and ice to the vessels. They generally sell the catch and provide offloading and packing. Gear shops sell nets, dredges, boots, rain gear, hydraulic hoses and all those other supplies that keep a boat – and a crew – fishing. Diesel mechanics, marine electronics technicians, welders and woodworkers are necessary to keep the vessels running. Marine railways are necessary to haul the boats out of the water for maintenance or repair. Box manufacturers, truckers and refrigeration technicians are needed to pack, store and move the fish. And marine surveyors and insurance brokers are necessary as well.

It takes a minimum amount of activity to keep these businesses in operation. When that level of activity isn’t available, the businesses leave. And they aren’t going to come back in five or ten years, when the stocks are healthier and the fishermen are once more allowed to fish, because their former premises will have been replaced with condominiums.

********************************************

Monkfish as an example

At this point there isn’t a better example of the federal government’s seeming total disregard for the economic realities of the commercial fishing industry than its monkfish management program, which will serve to demonstrate just how far beyond ineffectual a fisheries management program can get.

The domestic monkfish fishery, which extends from the waters off North Carolina to the Gulf of Maine, is one of the most valuable on the east coast. Popularized by pioneering celebrity chef Julia Child on her television series Julia Child and Company in 1979 (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/read/popdy/monkfish/), annual landings of the rather unappetizing appearing yet delectable monkfish have approached $50 million (to the fishermen). Monkfish were among the so-called underutilized species that NMFS invested a lot of effort into popularizing and more into enticing fishermen to catching back in the 1980s.

The fishery has no recreational component.

Various species of monkfish are found throughout the world’s oceans, and they are fished commercially in many other countries. The majority of the U.S. production is either marketed domestically as a fresh product or frozen and exported. In the late autumn and winter, when they are at their highest quality, there is a sizable market in Asia for fresh monkfish livers.

On the East coast there is a large directed monkfish fishery utilizing gillnets and otter trawls. Because of their broad distribution, monkfish are also taken as bycatch in a number of fisheries targeting other bottom-dwelling species. The majority of monkfish landings are seasonal, coinciding with inshore/offshore migrations.

In spite of being one of the most important/valuable edible finfish landed on the east coast, scientific knowledge of monkfish is severely limited. Most limited is knowledge of their abundance.

Monkfish Management

The Monkfish Fishery Management Plan, which is administered jointly by the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Councils, arbitrarily divides the fishery into a Northern and Southern Fishery Management Area. Monkfish abundance and the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) that is derived from it are determined each year from a running average of the monkfish catch of the three previous Autumn Trawl Surveys. The Autumn Trawl Survey and the gear and techniques it employs were designed to sample fish species that, unlike monkfish, spend most of their time up off the bottom.    

This management mechanism has been recognized by those involved in the management of the fishery as being inadequate. The Monkfish Defense Fund – an industry group representing monkfish fishermen and processors – submitted comments to NMFS on proposed management measures last year that included:

“The monkfish TAC-setting mechanism is flawed.* The Regional Administrator, the NEFSC, and the NEFMC all recognize a problem exists with the Framework #2 TAC-setting formula. The values produced by the formula are not congruent with the condition of the resource. Dr. John Boreman, Director of the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center, concluded in a February 18, 2005 memorandum to NMFS Regional Administrator Patricia Kurkul that a flaw exists in the adjustment mechanism that should be addressed in the near future. We wholeheartedly agree. In fact, the MDF opposed the implementation of the formula’s estimate of the increased trip limits for the May 2005 season – the limits were too high. The NEFMC is planning to redo the TAC-setting process during the summer of 2006 but the results will not be ready in time for the May 2006 season.

(*For an indication of how serious the need is to redesign this process, consider that without any major changes, the 2007/2008 TAC will be up about 100% to 200% from the 2006/2007 TAC, with concomitant increases in DAS and trip limits.)”

The primary problem with using an index derived from the Autumn Trawl Survey to determine the status of the monkfish stocks and to set the TAC is that the vessel/gear/crew used in the survey doesn’t catch monkfish or doesn’t catch anywhere nearly as many monkfish as commercial vessels/gear/crews catch in the same areas fishing at the same time. This fact has been conclusively demonstrated at least three times: each of the three occasions when a cooperative survey utilizing commercial fishermen fishing on commercial fishing boats with NMFS, state and university scientists on board produced far more monkfish per tow than the NMFS vessel did. The NMFS website detailing these cooperative surveys is at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/nefsc/READ/popdy/monkfish/.

Another NMFS survey, one that is designed to sample bottom-dwelling fish, has predictably caught significantly more monkfish as well.

In spite of this, the NMFS Autumn Trawl Survey has remained the foundation of the monkfish TAC setting process because it has been in use longer than any other survey. The argument seems to be that, regardless of how good – or bad - the Autumn Trawl Survey is at catching monkfish, it’s the one that NMFS is going to use because it’s been catching – or not catching – monkfish for longer than any other survey has been, and that year-to-year “consistency” in how the survey is carried out will make up for the survey’s lack of efficacy at catching monkfish.

As a measure of how unsuitable the Autumn Trawl Survey is for sampling monkfish, in the seven surveys completed from 2000 to 2006, no monkfish were taken in water less than 14 fathoms (84 feet) deep, and only 20 pounds were taken in water less than 18 fathoms (108 feet) deep. The average depth at which monkfish were first caught in the surveys was 20 fathoms (120 feet). In the autumn, at the time when the Autumn Trawl Survey is done, commercial monkfish fishermen routinely fish in water less than 120 feet deep, and routinely catch monkfish at these depths. With approximately 1/3 of the stations sampled in the Autumn Trawl Survey each year in waters less than 120 feet deep, it’s obvious that the survey is missing a large number of fish, yet it is considered to constitute the “best available science.”

Confounding the situation, the survey vessel Albatross, which has been used to conduct the various surveys including the Autumn Trawl Survey, in NMFS’ Northeast Region, is being replaced with a new vessel, the Henry B. Bigelow. It will take several years before the new vessels’ performance can be calibrated against that of the Albatross.

The federal managers seemed to be listening

Recognizing the limits of the Autumn Trawl Survey, the far different picture painted by the Monkfish Cooperative Survey and others, and the impending hiatus in meaningful survey data while the performance of the Bigelow is being calibrated, the New England and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils (because the fishery straddles both regions, monkfish is managed jointly by the two Councils), with the apparent support of the NMFS Northeast Regional Office, voted to adopt a conservative constant fishing level over the next three years. Using this approach also addressed the industry’s concerns regarding wide annual swings in landings that have been the result of the TAC setting process outlined above. In the Southern Management Area this came out to 24 Days At Sea (DAS) for each vessel.

In all of the discussions and deliberations up to that point, and in all of the data that provided the basis for those discussions and deliberations, there was no indication that the fishery was in any kind of trouble. Nor has there been any suggestion of this by the fishermen engaged in the fishery.    

Assuming that this conservative level of fishing was going to be approved and in effect for the next three years, participants in the fishery “geared up” accordingly. The fishermen made or bought new nets, installed new equipment and upgraded or replaced existing vessels. The dealers reduced their frozen inventories and began negotiating with existing or new customers. Everyone made plans, many at significant expense, because no one had any doubt of how the fishery was going to be managed for the foreseeable future.

Surprise!

Then, at the last possible moment, word was passed down from NMFS headquarters that, in spite of both Councils approving the various management measures to be put in place for three years, in spite of the seeming approval of the same measures by the Northeast Regional Office, in spite of all of the commitments made by the people in the industry, and in spite of the fact that there was still no indication of any problems in the fishery, that at best the directed fishery in the Southern Management Areas was going to be hit with a 50% reduction in allowable fishing time, at worst it was going to be shut down completely.

The only explanation offered was that without drastic reductions it was possible that the rebuilding schedule might not be maintained. There doesn’t appear to be any administrative justification for this action and I’m not aware of NMFS taking any similar action in any other fishery at such an inexcusably late date and based on such nebulous reasoning.

********************************************

What international competition means

As a trip to your neighborhood supermarket or seafood store will clearly illustrate, the seafood industry has changed dramatically over the last several decades. Not so long ago the featured fish were primarily local, with overseas production – unless your neighborhood was down South or in the Pacific Northwest - represented by shrimp and salmon and perhaps a few other “exotic” species. This had a significant impact on the relationship between fishermen and the people who bought their fish; the buyers were for the most part limited to what the fishermen had to sell when they had it to sell.

This is no longer the case. Today, with improved fish-handling techniques, easier and more reliable airfreight connections, dramatic increases in aquaculture production and the continuing reduction in trade barriers, the seafood industry is truly global. The availability of species that consumers once thought of as exotic is now taken for granted. Fresh fish can be, and often is, shipped thousands of miles in a day or so, and can arrive looking as “ocean fresh” as fish that was landed by local fishermen.

 This means that buyers can and often do demand that fish be delivered to a predetermined schedule. Aquaculturists can meet schedules. Fishermen from countries whose governments understand and support their own fishing fleets can - weather permitting – meet schedules. Fishermen from the U.S., where the government evidently feels that a fishery can be shut down at a moment’s notice without a hint of prior warning, surely can’t. And it could take years to lure a buyer back, luring him or her back is even possible, because there’s a world of fish out there, and much of it is only a day or so away

********************************************

We’re from the government and we’re here to….

Imagine, if you can, that at the government’s urging you’ve invested tens of years and tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a fishery, and that a significant amount of your and your crew’s or your employees’ income depended on that fishery. Imagine that, based on all you knew about the management process – and few people in any segment of the commercial fishing industry that is federally managed aren’t far too familiar with the process – you made business plans and sizeable commitments based on what you and everyone else who was involved believed was a sure thing. And that no one in NMFS or on the two Regional Councils in charge ever suggested that there might be a “problem” with the regulations that were wending their way through the NMFS headquarters bureaucracy.

Then imagine that, slightly more than a month before the current fishing year was to begin, all of your careful planning, all of your investment of time and money and much of your and your business credibility was shattered because the federal agency that is in charge of your industry decided, at the last possible moment, that the two Regional Councils responsible for managing your fishery were wrong. That the scientists and analysts that worked with them were wrong. And that some faceless bureaucrat(s) in Silver Springs, Maryland (NMFS Headquarters) knew more about the future of your fishery and your business than those who have been directly involved in managing it for years.

But it’s not just monkfish

The monkfish situation is far from unique, neither is the plight of the businesses dependent on the monkfish fishery. Summer flounder, another extremely important East coast fishery with a strong recreational component, was in a similar circumstance last year. It took Congressional intervention at the last minute to postpone what was, for all intents and purposes, a closure of the fishery. Ditto the West coast groundfish fishery, the Southern snapper fishery, the list goes on and on.

Once again, what are we managing our fisheries for?

We’ve been managing our fisheries under the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act for over 30 years. In that time, as attested to by the present condition of many of our fish stocks and in refutation of the doom and gloom pronouncements of the anti-fishing claque, we’ve gotten pretty good at it. One only has to look at Alaskan groundfish, East coast striped bass, Mid-Atlantic summer flounder or North Atlantic swordfish. We can manage fisheries for sustainable harvests and we can bring depleted stocks back to – or even beyond – former levels of abundance.

But what then? What is fisheries management supposed to be all about? Is the be all and end all of fisheries management an EEZ full of fish with no businesses left to harvest them? Is it the attainment of some arbitrary estimated population size, arrived at through cumbersome, complex, poorly understood and most likely inaccurate statistical manipulations, for each species under management? Considering where federal management has been heading over the last decade, with an end point articulated by NMFS in the quote at the beginning of this FishNet, the answer would seem to be in there somewhere. But should it be?

That, when taken to the bottom line, depends on whether we believe that fish are more valuable in the water or on the plate. Should the goal of fisheries management be the maximization of the number of fish in the ocean or should it be the maximization of the harvest of the fish in the ocean? And while the anti-fishing activists have been hard at work attempting to convince us otherwise, those are two very different goals.

Take the Mid-Atlantic summer flounder fishery, for example (see http://www.fishnet-usa.com/reauthor_one.html). The biomass is as high as it’s ever been, at least for as long as we’ve been measuring such things, and yet the recreational and commercial fisheries are both facing significant reductions over the next several years. What good is it doing anyone to have all of those fish out there if the recreational anglers are denied the opportunity to catch them and the non-fishing consumers are denied the opportunity to purchase them? It’s hard to imagine anyone gazing out over the Atlantic and taking pleasure in the fact that there are so many uncaught summer flounder on the bottom and out of sight (unless, of course, that person is a foundation-supported activist intent on furthering an anti-fishing agenda). Yet that’s where our summer flounder management program has taken us, and that’s where the so-called “conservationists” want us to be with all of our fisheries.

We have to ask “to what end?”

The antis have effectively confused the issue, but “sustainable” fishing doesn’t mean “no-impact” fishing. While it seems somewhat ridiculous to have to go over something that should be self-evident, you can’t remove a significant number of fish from a stock without having an impact on that stock. In fact, fisheries biologists agree that a fishery being fished at the maximum sustainable level will be at somewhere under half of the biomass of an unfished stock. To those of us that realize that fisheries resources are there to be sustainably harvested, this is acceptable. In fact, considering an ever-growing population with an ever-growing dependence on protein from fish and shellfish, it’s more than acceptable; it’s desirable. Yet the antis continue in their cynical attempts to alarm the public by lumping those fisheries being fished at the maximum rate with those being fished unsustainably, coming out with pronouncements on the order of “70% of the world’s fisheries are being harvested at or beyond sustainable levels.” While that’s much more alarming than writing “20% of the world’s fisheries are being harvested beyond and 50% at sustainable levels,” the latter gives a much more accurate picture of the world’s fisheries, particularly at a time when we can’t really afford to not harvest as much as we can at maximum sustainable levels.

And the anti-fishing activists have, with their foundation-provided buckets of cash, been successful in convincing the folks in Washington that the viability of the businesses that are dependent on recreational and commercial fishing is irrelevant when it comes to forcing fishermen to comply with arbitrary rebuilding schedules.

But if we want diverse fisheries in the future, fisheries that are able to provide fresh, locally caught seafood as well as easily accessible recreation, the viability of the thousands of fishing and fishing-related businesses is anything but irrelevant. We’ve already lost too many fishing docks to residential development, and those docks are never coming back, regardless of what the fish stocks do.

Considering some peoples’ eagerness to label anyone associated with the commercial fishing industry as being anti-conservation, effective conservation – something that every responsible commercial fishing industry member supports – can be accomplished in a manner consistent with viable business operations. All it takes is an awareness that it needs to be done and a willingness to work with the affected businesses to determine how to do it. A few more years to reach some arbitrary rebuilding “target” won’t make any difference to the fish, but in too many instances it could be the difference between surviving and failing for the involved businesses. It’s time our fisheries managers and the legislators who write the laws that control them realized this.