- (1). NOAA''S CATCH SHARE POLICY SETS A TREACHEROUS COURSE
Coastal Community Expresses Concerns Over New Federal Fisheries Agenda
(11/5/2010) - Assistant Administrator of Fisheries Eric Schwaab this week announced that recreational anglers were being completely ignored by the administration. In the National Catch Share Policy release issued by NOAA Fisheries Service, Schwaab said angler opposition to privatizing our national oceans was being disregarded, and announced that NOAA Fisheries would not be listening to individual anglers anytime soon.
While NOAA''s new federal policy of ignoring input from within the coastal communities was embraced by some members of the national fishing tackle industry, the new policy has raised serious concerns with grassroots political organizations and coastal legislators.
"I have expressed considerable concern over the impact that catch shares may have on the recreational sector," said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ). "I believe our priority should be improving the science and management of fisheries and that promoting another management tool until those issues have been fixed will only continue to hurt our coastal communities."
As a national grassroots political action organization representing the rights of sal*****er anglers, the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) is extremely frustrated by NOAA''s new direction. "Mr. Schwaab''s take on this dangerous policy is laughable at best," said RFA Executive Director Jim Donofrio. "Mr. Schwaab claimed to hear from the angling community, but I''m not sure where he was at the time he heard it, perhaps at some Environmental Defense Fund junket, certainly not anything that local anglers were invited to."
On Thursday, NOAA officially released their new national policy "encouraging the consideration and use of catch shares," a fisheries management scheme which Schwaab called "an effective tool for ending overfishing." According to Donofrio, catch shares will end overfishing primarily by eliminating fishermen. "When we testified before Congress about catch shares in April, we made it clear that our allied groups do not support catch shares in the recreational sector," Donofrio said. In testimony on behalf of RFA, Marine Retailers Association of America (MRAA), Fishing Rights Alliance, United Boatmen, United Boatmen of New York, Maryland Sal*****er Sportsmen''s Association (MSSA), National Association of Charterboat Operators (NACO), Southern Kingfish Association (SKA), Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen (CCGF), New York Sportfishing Federation, and New York Fishing Tackle Trade Association, Donofrio told a congressional committee that the use of catch shares in the recreational fishing sector "would destroy the traditional open access structure and collapse the entrance of new participants in the fishery."
"All of the aforementioned groups, including the RFA, are adamantly opposed to any catch share program in the recreational fishing sector, in any way, shape or form," Donofrio testified, adding "This is a fact that cannot be compromised. We do not want any discussion on any program that compromises traditional open access of seasons, size limits and bag limits."
"I also believe that by specifically targeting local fishing businesses for catch shares will only continue to hinder growth in our coastal economies," Pallone said, adding "overly restrictive management of fisheries is already hurting coastal businesses and we need to pursue policies that promote growth in coastal communities which is why I introduced the Coastal Jobs Creation Act and the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act."
"We''ve fought too hard and for too long to keep this catch share policy out of our sector, we cannot let NOAA continue to ramrod this policy through Councils in direct contradiction to the wishes of our fishing community," Donofrio said. "Clearly our federal bureaucracy is not listening to the will of the people."
"At a time when our retailers are suffering from reduced participation due to the struggling economy, the last thing we need is a new federal policy designed purely to reduce angler effort," said MRAA President Phil Keeter. "We need more recreational fishermen, not less."
"Obviously you''ve got a public resource which should remain public, and no one should have to pay to access it," said SKA Director Jack Holmes. "It''s been a tradition in America since before the Declaration of Independence was signed."
"MSSA remains adamantly opposed and wants no part of catch shares," said Dave Smith, President of the Maryland sportfishing group.
"When the draft Action Agenda was sent to us to review, I made it clear to Russ Dunn (NOAA National Policy Advisor for Recreational Fisheries) and Eric Schwaab that we did not want any catch share plan in the Gulf," said CCFG and NACO representative Capt. Bob Zales, II. "When we were asked to attend the Recreational Fishing Summit back in April we were told that business as usual from the past was over and there would be a new effort of cooperation between NOAA/NMFS and all recreational anglers. It is clear to me that we have been duped once again." Zales added that as a member of the federal Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee (MAFAC), he was "grossly offended" by references made to "pilot recreational catch share programs" which NOAA included in their Recreational Sal*****er Fisheries Action Agenda released last week.
RFA says the NOAA Catch Share Policy is wrought with catch phrases and flimsy definitions, some of which are especially dangerous to future sportfishing opportunities, even non-commercial gamefish species. "We''re extremely concerned about the impact the NOAA catch shares policy could have on Highly Migratory Species (HMS) fisheries and offshore tournaments," Donofrio said, explaining how the final policy includes a catch share definition that unequivocally stops all fishing once limits are met. "The way it''s written, this excessively restrictive definition could even prohibit catch and release fishing which is a major component of the nation''s recreational billfish fisheries including sailfish and marlin."
Donofrio said the idea of individual catch share privileges and fish tags in mixed commercial/recreational fisheries like red snapper, sea bass and scup were bad enough before the policy was set. "We knew that assigning privilege and charging royalties for harvested species would eliminate the average center console angler, but now the fate of offshore access is completely thrown into question when you read the whole policy."
In an article by Richard Gaines of the Gloucester Times, RFA managing director Jim Hutchinson said "When you read this release and see how Mr. Schwaab is promoting catch shares through a $2.2 million funding initiative supported by Wal-Mart and Intel Corporation, it''s hard to think how anyone in our recreational fishing industry can be anything other than outraged at this announcement."
"This is bureaucracy at its best, you have a federal law which mandates you fix the data problem, but instead of meeting the initiative in the allotted deadline, you host outreach sessions, reallocate funding toward new initiatives and send out press releases," Hutchinson told John Oswald of the Asbury Park Press.
"There''s nothing palatable about this catch share manifesto, especially the way that NOAA is jamming it down our throats," Hutchinson said.
About Recreational Fishing Alliance
The Recreational Fishing Alliance is a national, grassroots political action organization representing recreational fishermen and the recreational fishing industry on marine fisheries issues. The RFA Mission is to safeguard the rights of sal*****er anglers, protect marine, boat and tackle industry jobs, and ensure the long-term sustainability of our Nation''s sal*****er fisheries. For more information, call 888-JOIN-RFA or visit www.joinrfa.org.
WASHINGTON -- Nov. 8, 2010 - Today U.S. Congressman Walter B. Jones (R-North Carolina) sent a letter to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), opposing NOAA's recently announced National Catch Share Policy and demanding answers regarding its development. Jones called the policy "totally unnecessary for species protection." He expressed outrage over NOAA's announcement of a $2.2 million grant program to advance its catch shares agenda, which will put Americans out of work and is opposed by the vast majority of fishermen. Jones believes that "to the extent that solid science demonstrates that reductions in catch in any given fishery are necessary, there are far better options than catch shares for achieving those reductions." Jones has long opposed catch shares and is working in Congress to block funding for implementation of new catch share programs.
The Congressman asked Dr. Lubchenco to respond to the following questions:
1. What specific law does NOAA believe gives it the statutory authority to promulgate its National Catch Share policy?
2. Your staff has informed me that $1 million of the $2.2 million catch share grant program is being provided by NOAA. Exactly which account is that money coming from? The Asset Forfeiture Fund? Which specific law does NOAA believe gives it the statutory authority to spend money for this purpose? Is it the official policy of the agency to spend millions to put people out of work?
3. Is it NOAA's policy to ignore the will of fishing communities - the vast majority of whom oppose catch shares - and to rig the council process to favor implementation of new catch shares programs?
The text of the letter sent to Administrator Lubchenco follows:
"Dear Administrator Lubchenco:
On behalf of the North Carolina fishing communities I am privileged to represent, I would like to express my strong opposition to the National Catch Share Policy and the $2.2 million catch share grant program which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last week. It is astonishing that at a time of near record unemployment and exploding federal deficits, NOAA stubbornly continues its agenda to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to advance a catch share policy that is totally unnecessary for species protection and that all acknowledge will put more Americans out of work.
As you know, the Magnuson-Stevens Act sets the framework for fisheries management in this country. Under the act, fisheries management councils are given the option to use a variety of measures to manage fish stocks, only one of which is catch shares. The act does not establish a preference for catch shares. The act does not authorize the agency to promulgate a policy to encourage fishermen and councils to select catch shares over other management options. The act does not authorize the agency to spend taxpayer money to support the efforts of special interest groups seeking to petition the councils and the agency to establish more catch share programs. But yet with last week's announcement, this is exactly what NOAA is doing.
Furthermore, it appears that NOAA - through the Secretary of Commerce - is selecting fishery management council members based on their allegiance to catch shares. Collectively, these actions leave the impression that NOAA is attempting to hijack the council process in order to impose its catch shares agenda.
Therefore, I would appreciate answers to the following questions:
1. What specific law does NOAA believe gives it the statutory authority to promulgate its National Catch Share policy?
2. Your staff has informed me that $1 million of the $2.2 million catch share grant program is being provided by NOAA. Exactly which account is that money coming from? The Asset Forfeiture Fund? Which specific law does NOAA believe gives it the statutory authority to spend money for this purpose? Is it the official policy of the agency to spend millions to put people out of work?
3. Is it NOAA's policy to ignore the will of fishing communities - the vast majority of whom oppose catch shares - and to rig the council process to favor implementation of new catch shares programs?
In closing, to the extent that solid science demonstrates that reductions in catch in any given fishery are necessary, there are far better options than catch shares for achieving those reductions. The last thing the federal government should be doing in these economic times is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to expand a policy that will put even more Americans out of work.
I hope you will take these words to heart, and I look forward to your response."
(3). Here come catch shares: How NOAA and the Environmental Defense
Fund plan to destroy North Carolina’s working watermen
Capt. Dave speaking here,
When my late father was 24 years old, he returned to Hatteras from Long Island, New York. He returned because the Great Depression had left him jobless and standing in a bread line. He came back home and he moved back in with his parents. He returned so that he could have a place to sleep and a meal that he had provided for himself, a meal that he earned by commercial fishing with his father on the family-owned boat.
While fishing the family boat commercially for the meager income provided by fish prices during the depression, he did what young people in America have always done --- he dreamed of his future and he hatched a plan. The plan he hatched was crazy. The elders in the village told him so. They said it would not work. They shook their heads at his ideas.
And he did what the young in America have always done -- he put his crazy plan in motion. He started an offshore charter fishing fleet. He launched the first of three Albatross boats in 1937 with charter fishing as his top priority and with commercial fishing as Plan B.
And just how did that crazy charter fishing concept work out?
Well, in a study sanctioned by North Carolina Sea Grant and carried out by economists and a sociologist from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and North Carolina State University, the charter fishing business is now a $650 million dollar a year industry for North Carolina with two thirds of that revenue coming from visitors from out of state. Not so crazy after all.
And how much does the state of North Carolina spend promoting its charter fishing industry? The answer is zero ($0.00) dollars. That lack of government support has never been an issue or concern for North Carolina’s fishermen. Why? Because the same independent -- some would say hard-headed -- drive and determination that fueled my father’s belief in his dream continues to fuel the dreams and ambitions of the men and women who make a living by fishing both charter and commercially today.
Since the founding of this state, it has been accepted as fact that if you work hard, if you persevere, if you are determined, and if you are lucky, you can be a fisherman. You can own your boat. You can be your own boss. You can feed your family and the larger community. And you can put smiles on the faces and adventurous memories in the minds of countless charter customers who you help experience the wonder and mysteries of our waters.
The only apparent problem with this scenario of being independent, of being a self reliant contributor to society, of providing a service for others is that you do not necessarily get rich. The fishermen do not seem to find this to be a problem, but an alleged environmental group called the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) does.
That’s right, even though its employees do not live here or fish for a living, this group has decided that North Carolina’s fishing communities need to be fixed. Or, in their words, they need to be “more vibrant.â€
EDF has published an endless stream of slick brochures and publications, held numerous conferences, and attempted to enlist numerous fishermen in an attempt to explain how society -- make that the government -- can implement a plan that will “create vibrant fishing communitiesâ€.
The plan is called catch shares. If you eat fish or like to catch fish, catch shares will affect you.
Catch shares are here. They are, as you read this, being implemented by NOAA through the National Marine Fisheries Service. The goal is to reduce the number of working watermen in the United States by more than 60 percent. The propaganda “informs†fishermen that the ones left standing, after their neighbors are economically destroyed, will be able to get rich and somehow fishing towns and villages will then “be vibrant.â€
Welcome to catch shares. They are designed to kill off the fishermen. The infrastructure will then die and then somehow, according to the slick brochures produced by EDF and edited by the finest legal minds they can hire, fewer fishing boats and fewer fishermen will result in “vibrant fishing communities.â€
Just what is a catch share? A catch share is an exclusive guarantee that whoever holds the catch share has the exclusive right to harvest a certain percentage of the total allowable catch of a particular species of marine life. That’s a mouthful, and you read it correctly.
It does not grant the right to catch a certain number of fish each year. How many fish can be caught is a number that National Marine Fisheries Service already determines and has imposed on fishermen for years. So if catch shares is not about saving fish, since we already have that scientific process in place, you may be wondering just what the purpose is.
The catch share program is not about how many fish can be caught. Catch shares is only about who gets to catch fish. Catch shares can be bought, they can be sold, and they can be leased or traded.
So the logical question is what is the conservation advantage of catch shares? The answer is that there is no conservation advantage. Catch shares policy is about taking the right to fish away from the masses, from those individuals who want to become fishermen for a lifetime or for a day, and giving that right to harvest fish to a select few. Catch shares is designed to privatize the ocean. As a free American citizen, you might want to think about that one for awhile.
Who will get catch shares? Basically, it will be those with the best past history of landings. That’s right -- those who have caught the most in the past will be selected to keep on fishing -- in the name of conservation and, of course, “vibrant fishing communities.â€
But it gets a lot more interesting and complicated than the simple picture I’ve presented. You see, the Environmental Defense Fund has been the driving force behind this concept. The group has spent thousands and thousands of dollars promoting this concept. (In the name of full disclosure, I went to Vancouver, B.C., on EDF’s dime to learn about it.)
Now what did EDF do in the spring of 2009? Why they sent their second ranking employee -- a $300,000-a- year lawyer -- to a national conference of investment brokers and venture capitalists to spread the word about an investment opportunity, something called catch shares. That’s right. EDF thinks that Wall Street should own catch shares!
So if Wall Street owns catch shares, where do you think North Carolina’s small-time fishermen fit in? Seen any evidence lately that Wall Street has any concern about increasing the number of “vibrant fishing communities?†And yet apparently EDF wants Wall Street to own catch shares.
This corporate ownership of exclusive rights is not a wild guess. It is a reality.
The Alaskan king crab fishery is Exhibit A, and in the four years since the imposition of catch shares the crew member shares of the catch have dropped from 50 percent to 30 percent, while the fleet has decreased by two-thirds.
Okay, so most of you are not worried about what happens to the commercial sector of fishing.
Well, last week NOAA publically announced that it wants all professional fishermen to be controlled by catch shares. That’s right. Charter boats and headboats are the next to have catch shares. Having previously begun implementation in the commercial sector in Alaska and New England, NOAA and National Marine Fisheries have made public the plan to begin implementation in the recreational sector -- with charter boats and headboats the first targets.
Worldwide various forms of catch shares have been in place for over 25 years. Where implemented, the least amount that the local fishing fleets have been diminished is 30 percent.
I suspect that I am not the only one who thinks that what North Carolina needs right now is an economic boost rather than another economic hit. Further reducing the ability of the charter/headboat industry to produce revenue sounds like economic insanity.
Well, you may be thinking that at least that those who want catch shares are leaving the recreational fishermen who do not fish on charter boats alone. You might want to be aware that a plan has already been suggested that, in the Gulf of Mexico, recreational fishing rights should be sold to the highest bidder. First, we come after the commercials, then we get the charters, and next we go after those recreational types.
The concept of catch shares is straight forward. The exclusive right to harvest fish will be owned by the entity with the most money, period! And those individual owner/operators? Well, they are quaint and they might be good for tourism because of all that local color stuff, but they are just going to have to adjust and get a job with a corporation. After all, coastal fishing communities are just filled with job opportunities.
Catch shares policy is about ownership not conservation! We already have Total Allowable Catch (TAC). TAC already controls how many fish are caught annually. In spite of what you may have read, TAC controls are already in place. For example, North Carolina’s bluefin tuna landings in the recreational sector were completely shut down in the late ’90s during the height of our season for two years in a row because of TAC concerns. Violators were fined $25,000, and, needless to say, they were few and far between.
I’ll repeat. Catch shares is not a stock management issue. It is an ownership issue.
How soon will catch shares be coming to a marina near you? The answer is that they will be coming very soon unless our elected leaders act immediately. The head of NOAA, Dr. Janet Lubchenco, worked for and closely with the Environmental Defense Fund prior to her appointment to head NOAA by President Obama.
In recent weeks, EDF had a conference in Wyoming (yes, Wyoming) to develop final implementation plans for the recreational sector catch shares. Why an ENGO – environmental non-government organization -- is about the business of developing government policy is, to say the least, interesting.
On Nov. 4, Eric Schwabb, assistant administrator for fisheries, released the formal NOAA announcement that catch shares are coming to the recreational sector.
If we want to see coastal heritage and traditions vanish, we should simply do nothing. If we believe that the right to fish should be the exclusive right of those who have the deepest pockets, we should simply do nothing. If we believe that reducing the ability of coastal citizens to generate income and pay more taxes is good for our state’s economy, we should simply do nothing.
On a personal note, I suspect -- perhaps hope is the better word – that, as the owner of a long standing and reasonably successful charter fishing operation, I will get enough catch shares to continue in business.
However, when I went to Vancouver to learn about catch shares, I heard incessantly about their great monetary value and that raised a question. So, I asked the man who developed the Canadian plan, “How could a young person ever become an owner/operator fisherman with this additional expense?†And he answered after a long pause, “We’re still working on that!â€
There is something sadly, tragically wrong when a nation’s government deliberately creates a mechanism that denies the next generation its right to dream. I want no part of catch shares.
(Ernie Foster is a Hatteras Island native who, after a career in education, returned to Hatteras village and is now captain of the Albatross Fleet. He supports groups that fight to save the heritage of fishing, such as North Carolina Watermen United, and is also a board member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation.)
Shout NO to Catch Shares
Please contact our representatives in Washington, D.C., and tell them you support their fight against catch shares. Phone calls are the most effective means.
_________________
Capt. Dave
Continental Shelf
Morehead City, NC
910-458-3145
