Who really “destroyed a decade of law enforcement?”

In the last week of November Bloomberg Businessweek on the MSNBC website posted an article titled “The Gloucester Fish War – How a small town in Massachusetts destroyed a decade of law enforcement,” by Brendan Borrell.

Mr. Borrell’s point seemed to be that something approaching a conspiracy by Gloucester fishing interests, local, state and federal politicians, the Gloucester Daily Times and the Inspector General’s office in the US Department of Commerce victimized the entire federal fisheries enforcement process in the Northeast. Reminiscent of the horse operas of yesteryear, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration enforcement personnel, wearing the white hats à la such stalwarts as John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, gave their all to fighting the good fight; but rather than rustlers or bandits they were fighting fishermen from a community where cheating was an accepted way of life.

Given the title of his article, it will come as no surprise to anyone that Mr. Borrell painted the hats that the fisher-men – and their supporters – wear a pretty unequivocal black.

Did Mr. Borrell get the right hats on the right heads? Having been a fairly close observer of the situation as it unfolded, I would have to answer that he wasn’t even close. And putting together the observations of a number of eminently qualified people and organizations who were directly involved in several connected investigations, people with no particular ax to grind, I’d suggest that they would agree with me. My purpose here is to lay out all of the information that seems to have escaped Mr. Borrell’s notice and let the folks who read this decide for themselves.

(For the rest of this FishNet article, which at 4,500 words is pretty long - go to http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Decade_of_law_enforcement.pdf.

Another idea whose time has come

Another idea whose time has come -

(A .pdf version will be available via the FishNet USA home page at http://www.fishnet-usa.com)

NOTE: Bob Vanasse at SavingSeafood.org and Phil Paleologos at Boston radio station WBSM covered Congressman Jones' legislation on their Saving Seafood Radio show (available at http://www.savingseafood.org/wbsm/WBSM_2011-08-04.html) on August 4. In listening to the show I discovered that several Councils in addition to the Mid-Atlantic, including the New England Council, are already webcasting their meetings and that NOAA/NMFS in general supports the goals of the Congressman's legislation.

It's generally agreed that traveling has become one of the less agreeable afflictions that people have to deal with. Whether by automobile or airplane (and I assume by train, but I can't conveniently get anywhere from here via Amtrak), it's increasingly expensive, it's increasingly time-consuming, and it's increasingly uncomfortable.

And, while I can't document it, it sure seems like there are an increasing number of fisheries management meetings, and those meetings are dealing with increasingly important - and increasingly complex - issues.

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a council, monitoring committee, advisory committee, plan development team or other meeting an easy commute away, if you want to be there you're going to spend at least a day and at least a couple of hundred bucks every time something comes up that could affect your fishery. If you are in one of the fisheries that is so blessed, you get to do it not just for the appropriate regional management council but for the appropriate regional commission as well - and in that case you'll have to travel even farther. And I can't leave out the various stock assessment exercises, which are possibly the most important meetings for any fishery, because that's where everything starts and where informed input can be invaluable.

Thanks to the diligence of the leadership at NOAA/NMFS, just about everybody in the fishing industry - at least anybody whose job involves catching fish - now has extra time to attend this myriad of meetings. But, thanks to that same diligence by those same people, few can afford to.

However, North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones is once again coming to the rescue of - or at least trying to make as good a deal as he can for - fishermen and people in fishing dependent businesses.

He has introduced the Fishery Management Transparency and Accountability Act (H.R.2753), an amendment to the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act that will require that each regional management council will make available on the Internet website of the Council "a live broadcast of each meeting of the Council, of the science and statistical committee of the Council, and of the Council coordination committee" and "complete audio, complete video if the meeting was in person or by video conference, and a complete transcript of each such meeting" within 30 days of the meeting and maintain it there for three years.

While I haven't surveyed the others, the Mid-Atlantic Council has started to webcast their full Council meetings. Last week I listened "live" to the monkfish discussion at the meeting in Wilmington, Delaware. Video wasn't available, but audio and an accompanying Power Point presentation were. Obviously it wasn't the same as attending in person, but it cost nothing and took half an hour instead of a big chunk of two days. At this point there isn't any provision for direct live feedback - questions and/or comments - but this could prove particularly valuable, and I hope the Council staff will include it at some point in the future.

The people at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center - and perhaps the other Centers as well - are quite a bit ahead of the Councils on this with their webcasts of stock assessments. These are exercises that demand as much information, anecdotal and otherwise, as possible. Having fishermen attend in person is asking an awful lot, but having several who are knowledgeable about the fishery - and particularly about the interactions with other fisheries - could be extremely important. With the system in use for assessments, people participate from remote locations via voice and/or keyboard, and this adds another valuable dimension to the discussions.

Having the meeting records archived for three years will be useful. Having full transcripts available will be even more useful and more convenient as well, and having a detailed index of the contents would make them much more user friendly.
It's obvious from the title of his proposed legislation that Congressman Jones is interested in increasing the transparency of the federal fisheries management process. The need for more transparency was made more than obvious in an article by Richard Gaines in the Gloucester Times on 12/14/2010. He wrote "also figuring in the legal tussle (surrounding a suit brought by the cities of New Bedford and Gloucester, MA against the Secretary of Commerce over Groundfish Amendment 16) is the Conservation Law Foundation, which has filed a brief against a request — still pending before (Judge) Zobel — by the cities and fishing interests for the right to conduct discovery into possible improper influence by environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Pew Environment Group on federal policy" (http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x1666503922/New-suit-targets-need-for-catch-share-referendum/print).

I'll note here that the Conservation Law Foundation is another of the environmental groups that has been deeply involved in groundfish management in New England. I'll also note that Judge Zobel denied the request. Whatever improper influence did or did not take place affecting Amendment 16 has yet to be discovered.

While Congressman Jones' Fishery Management Transparency and Accountability Act is a giant step forward in making the public portions of the regional management council process more accessible to more people - particularly to fishermen who can ill afford either the time or the expense of attending the meetings in person - it isn't going to shine a light on every area of federal fisheries management that is screaming out for more illumination. Why, for example, would a federal agency - or the people running that agency - resist a request for copies of communications pertaining to how a fisheries management plan affecting the lives of tens of thousands of people as Amendment 16 is doing was created? And why would an environmental group support that resistance?

In a press release issued by the Obama White House on July 28, barely a month ago, Vice President Biden was quoted as saying "we are tapping the top leaders across government who have been most aggressive in cracking down on waste to drive change and make the government work for our nation’s families. With our nation’s top watchdogs at the helm, we will deliver the kind of transparency and accountability for Federal spending that the public deserves and expects.” Unless fishermen, people in fishing dependent jobs, their families and their communities are somehow exempted from the "public" that the Vice President was referring to, the members of the Administration's newly launched Government Accountability and Transparency Board aren't going to have to look very much beyond the Department of Commerce - which we assume is already on the radar screen because of the still continuing NOAA enforcement mess - for ideas on where to start.

But assuming that doesn't happen, and when it comes to fisheries issues that seems to be a fairly safe assumption, lets hope that Congressman Jones is looking at H.R. 2753 as a well thought out and necessary starting point, because it is. But it's not going to solve any of the problems at NOAA, a federal agency that is increasingly being described as "out of control" by the media and on Capitol Hill.

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If it's going to save a few sharks and, more importantly, punish a bunch of fishermen, so what if your nose grows a bit?

Any of us who have interacted with elected officials know that those officials divide their interactions with the public into one of three categories. The first is with constituents, and the officials pay attention to them. The second is with donors, and the officials also pay attention to them. The third is with non-constituents/non-donors, and it would be accurate to suggest that their contacts tend to not garner as much attention as the other two.

The most simple way for the officials and/or their staffers to determine whether people contacting them are constituents or not is by asking for their zip codes, and on their websites just about all of them do this. Needless to say, accurate residential zip code information is important not just to the office holder, but to the entire legislative process.

There's an organization in Princeton, New Jersey called the Shark Research Institute that is interested in the passage of a bill by the California Legislature which would ban the sale, trade or possession of shark fins. In a member newsletter, Marie Levine, the executive director of this "research institute" urges members to contact California state senators to urge the bill's passage. She continues "because the senators are most likely to heed the wishes of constituents, if asked for your zip code remember that SRI has an office in Malibu, California; as an SRI member, you are entitled to use our Malibu zip code - 90265. Phone as many Senators as you can - the Senate is in session right now."

Now I'm not up on the finer points of dealing with elected officials and/or their staffers, but I'm pretty sure that if one of them asks you for a zip code when you contact them, that what they are asking for is the zip code where you live so they can determine how important your comments are to them and to the legislation in question - remember that we're dealing with representative democracy here. Giving them instead the zip code of an office of an organization that you belong to, or your second cousin's mother-in-law's summer house, or the store where you bought your new toaster oven, or any zip code other than where you reside and vote doesn't seem to be playing by the right set of rules.

Ms. Levine ends her newsletter with the words "If ever there has been a time to stand up and be counted, it is right NOW. It is time to stop those who are pillaging the oceans and its resources - resources that belong to you, to be inherited by your children and future generations." It appears as if she wants her members, and anyone else that she can convince, to "be counted" by California's legislators whether they should really be counted or not, and she wants this regardless of the intent of the people who established our system of representative democracy way back when.

Perhaps she believes that the nobility of her end justifies the means that she is suggesting. I'm of the opinion that protecting the foundations of our government - whether at the local, the state or the national level - is far more important than protecting illegally harvested sharks (and I note here that it is already illegal to possess or to sell illegally harvested sharks, their fins or any of their other parts in California or anywhere else in the U.S.)

Anyway, if real California residents take the trouble to forward Ms. Levine's newsletter (linked below, but if the link becomes inactive, contact me and I'll send you a copy), it might contribute somewhat to having California legislation reflecting the wishes of actual Californians.

Finally, the big question remains; how widespread are such efforts in the radical environmentalist community? It should be pretty simple to make it appear as if what is an infinitesimally small group of activists from a national perspective represented a relatively much larger block of a legislator's constituents if those activists were willing to purposely mislead that legislator. What are the odds of that, do you think?

Link to the newsletter: http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=7v9p5un6&v=001qGZo6GH_pRSmXH3zQj04JHrwDCUOH2TzAAVs4Gf8ruNrLKO2CYmzI_LGyFZULcHLMTKRdkbnh5bzsVAuTogEHwr03gsJz7VEydqZ1RDYZBVFsvaATK4hVZqguzcqlDGcyY9a2kcIoak5gcpN6MFQt_t7_cG4w2jsrSlsDg0U9hFcN55oKh6c1uYCZiD0eIMb7sxeZneUjp3XF0Bu_U0trBkGssOUXJJegm7mnOOpFWlsZoqdqHDJ2w%3D%3D

ps - I in no way endorse the illegal - in U.S. waters - practice of "shark finning." I do, however, fully support responsibly managed and sustainable shark fisheries. The fins from legally harvested sharks can account for a significant part of the revenue from a shark fishing trip and arbitrarily destroying the market for the fins would do nothing more than reduce the value of the sharks to the fishermen. That sounds much more like prosecution than conservation to me.

Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 - what's there to argue about?

(A .pdf version is available via the FishNet USA home page at http://www.fishnet-usa.com)

New Jersey freshman Congressman Jon Runyan, along with North Carolina Congressman Walter Jone's and Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has introduced the “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011.” It is another weapon in the growing arsenal which is being provided by Members of Congress who are intent on re-establishing the role working fishermen once had in managing their fisheries.

Participation by fishermen was a central part of federal fisheries management following passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 1976. It is a role that has in recent years been usurped by a handful of agenda-driven ENGOs, the multi-billion dollar mega-foundations that support them, and the anti-fishing activists that have been put in charge of our Nation's fisheries in the U.S. Department of Congress (for more on this, see "Obama Ocean Priorities" at http://www.fishtruth.net/ObamaPriorities.htm).

The pro-catch shares ENGOs and the fishermen, fishermen's organizations and fishermen's publications that they have bought have already started another foundation-funded PR campaign aimed at convincing Congress that the Runyan/Jones/Ros-Lehtinen legislation will sound the latest death knell for U.S. fisheries, but in reality it is far from that. Rather, it's an attempt to save fishing jobs - a supposed priority of the Obama Administration, but obviously not when it applies to fishermen - and to give back some of the control of their fisheries that fishermen used to enjoy.

It doesn't prohibit the establishment of catch shares or any other form of management in any fishery, it merely prevents the federal fisheries management establishment from being able to unilaterally force catch shares on a fishery without the approval of the participants in that fishery. This approval would be expressed first by a simple majority of the participants, allowing the managers to proceed with the design of a catch share program. Then, a two-thirds majority of the participants would have to vote to adopt the resultant program.

Approval of a catch shares program by the affected fishermen is supposed to be federal policy already. Unfortunately, Ms. Lubchenco and her cadre at NOAA/NMFS have bureaucratically "finessed" their way around this in forcing catch shares on the New England groundfish fishermen.

The legislation also provides for the rejection of any catch shares program by the Secretary of Commerce if, once it is in place, it results in a job loss greater than 15% in the fishery. If that isn't a legislative provision fully in keeping with the will of the U.S. people today, it's hard to imagine what is - but when the head of the U.S. Department of Commerce must be told by Congress that a federal program in place that is putting people out of work must stop, Washington is far ahead of Denmark in the "something's rotten" department.

Of course the ENGOs, the Obama Administration, the compromised fishermen, fishing organizations and publications and the foundations behind them will be providing specious arguments for why the Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 will be bad for the fish and bad for the fishermen, but as is being demonstrated in more domestic fisheries every year, conservation and sustainability can be accomplished quite effectively without destroying fishing jobs, fishing lives, fishing families and fishing communities by imposing catch shares against the will of the people dependent on those fisheries.

So why are the people in the catch shares claque so hard at work voicing their objections and exercising their political muscles? It's impossible to think that they believe that the fish need it. We have hundreds of domestic fisheries that aren't classified as overfished today that have gotten there without the supposed benefit of catch shares. We have perhaps a dozen in which catch shares have been in place long enough to consider them successful - and that's successful from a biological, not a socio-economic, perspective. So if the fish don't benefit from catch shares, who does?

If the fishermen feel that they can benefit from catch shares, the Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 will allow them to have them, but why should anyone from outside the particular fishery care?

I quoted from a 2011 report commissioned by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation "foundations in the field are now looking to support this transition from fisheries conservation as a purely philanthropic investment to a blended conservation and business investment by encouraging non-profits, social change leaders and business entrepreneurs to create innovatively structured projects that can both build value for private investors and improve the speed and scale of fisheries conservation impacts” (see Is this the future of fishing? at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/All%20Stolpe%20Columns.htm#Future%20of%20fishing). The enthusiasm with which the ENGO community, the foundations that support the ENGOs, and the federal bureaucrats who very likely consider themselves only temporarily "on leave" from the ENGO world could easily see catch shares as a way to not only impose their distorted idea of what fisheries management is on fishermen, but to pick up a bunch of dollars in the process.

Of course, the price of seafood in the U.S. now being controlled by imports, there's only so much money to be made from every domestically harvested fish. With some of that money being funneled off by billion-dollar foundations and the people and organizations that they are subsidizing, it's easy to see fisherman after fisherman "owing his (or her) soul to the company store." And, according to Packard's consultants, that's exactly where the foundations, the ENGOs and the temporary bureaucrats want them. Otherwise, why would Packard have allowed the report to see the light of day?

(I have to note here that Fishery Management Plans that implement catch share programs may have provisions to limit the ownership of quota. This is to limit concentration of catching capacity in the fishery, and is certainly laudable. However, there is no way that control of quota - or more accurately, control of the individuals who own the quota - can even be determined, let alone regulated.)
It was the intent of Congress to allow fishermen a significant role in how their fisheries are managed and to prevent the impacts of top-down, out-of-touch management from destroying fishing communities, one of the most significant segments of our coastal heritage. This legislation by Representatives Runyan, Jones and Ros-Lehtinen recognizes that, and recognizes as well that in no way, shape or form should our federal bureaucracy be purposely and unnecessarily putting our citizens out of work. That obviously means nothing in the plush board rooms where the marching orders for the people at NOAA/NMFS are apparently originating, but it does on main street America, and the People's Representatives in Congress, or at least the ones who are listening, are hearing that loudly and clearly. Thank you, Congressman Runyan, Congressman Jones and Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen. Every independent fisherman, anyone in a fishing-dependent job, their families and their communities all are deeply indebted to you, as is every seafood lover who would like to see more than imported basa, tilapia and shrimp in their fish markets and restaurants.

Underfishing in New England: have things really changed?

Note - I stated below that "previously used Target TACs had been replaced with Annual Catch Limits or ACLs, which are essentially the same measure." This is not quite accurate. In fact, the Target TAC is equivalent to a measure called the Overfishing Limit (OFL), the level of harvest that can't be exceeded without risking being in an overfishing condition (exceeding the natural productive capacity of the fishery). The ACL is set lower than the OFL to protect the fish from additional risk caused by imprecision in the management process. In the case of the New England groundfish stocks, the ACL is 75% of the OFL. This introducing another level of complexity into an already far too complex a subject, I treated the ACL and the TAC as equivalent when the ACL is actually 25% lower. Hence the level of underfishing in FY 2010-11 was significantly higher than reported below.

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Back in April NOAA/NMFS was trumpeting "good news" about increased catch limits in the New England groundfish fishery (see NOAA/NMFS press release dated 04/08/11 titled New England fishing season to open with higher catch limits). The total amount of groundfish available for harvest was 39% lower in FY '10/11 than it was in FY '08/09, and the amount of groundfish excluding haddock was 24% lower. From the release:

“The increase in catch limits is a result of the rebuilding process underway and is one of many steps we are taking to grow economic opportunity in diverse, working waterfronts that support fishing jobs in the Northeast,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. This year’s higher catch limits will affect 12 groundfish stocks. These stocks include: Georges Bank cod, Gulf of Maine cod, Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail flounder, Cape Cod/Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder, American plaice, witch flounder, Georges Bank winter flounder, Southern New England winter flounder, redfish, white hake, halibut."

Several years back I wrote Chronic Underfishing - The Real New England Groundfish Crisis (here). In it I examined the Target Total Allowable Catch (Target TAC) and the actual landings of the various species for Fishing Year (FY) 2008-09 in the New England groundfish (multispecies) fishery. Using NOAA/NMFS data, I determined that the mostly New England fleet, because of an overabundance of management-demanded restrictions, had landed only 20% of the total groundfish that it could have caught sustainably.

Accordingly, when the same data was passed out for FY 2010-11 at the New England Fishery Management Council's most recent meeting (NMFS Preliminary Catch and Landings information for NEFMC FMPs for Fishing Year 2010-11), I was most interested in comparing the underfishing performance pre- and post-catch shares in the groundfish fishery.

A very preliminary analysis seemed to indicate that the New England fleet had indeed performed better, landing 35% of the groundfish that it could have sustainably landed (note that the previously used Target TACs had been replaced with Annual Catch Limits or ACLs, which are essentially the same measure). This appeared to be quite an improvement and quite a recommendation for catch shares in this and every fishery.

But is it really an improvement? In FY 2008-09 the Target Total Allowable Catch (Target TAC) for the groundfish species was 162 thousand metric tons and total landings were 32 thousand tons. Haddock made up 66% of the target TAC (108 thousand tons). Less than 7 thousand tons of haddock were landed. The non-haddock target TAC was 54 thousand tons and the non-haddock landings were 25 thousand tons (46% of the non-haddock TAC).

Then in FY 2009-10 the Target TAC was 135 thousand tons and total landings were 33 thousand tons. Haddock made up 67% of the Target TAC (91 thousand tons). A bit more than 7 thousand tons of haddock were landed. The non-haddock Target TAC was 44 thousand tons and the non-haddock landings were 26 thousand tons (59% of the non-haddock TAC).

In FY 2010-11 the Annual Catch Limit was 95 thousand tons and landings were 33 thousand tons. The ACL for haddock was 53 thousand tons (56% of the total ACL) and haddock landings were under 9 thousand tons. The non-haddock ACL was 42 thousand tons and non-haddock landings were 23 thousand tons (55% of the non-haddock TAC).

For FY 2011-12 the overall ACL is 86 thousand tons, with 34 thousand tons (40%) of that being haddock. This leaves a non-haddock ACL of 52 thousand tons.

According to NMFS/NOAA, in four years the amount of sustainably harvestable haddock has decreased by 68% (76 thousand tons). It went from 108 thousand tons to 90 thousand tons from 2008 to 2009 - a drop of 17% - then plummeted to 53 thousand tons in the following year and to 34 thousand tons in 2011-12, drops of 42% and 36%. As the lack of any trend in the level of underfishing in the non-haddock stocks (45% to 59% to 55%) clearly demonstrate, this decrease in the haddoick TAC/ACL is what has driven the level of underfishing in the groundfish fishery lower.

It's kind of difficult to imagine such a decrease in the acceptable haddock harvest being implemented without there being a really noticeable decrease in the haddock biomass.

But, as the chart below demonstrates (to see the chart, view the pdf version of this FishNet here , the Northeastern Fisheries Science Center Spring and Autumn Bottom Trawl Surveys don't reflect any precipitous decline in the haddock population. The survey data hints at nothing approaching a crash of the haddock stocks, yet what else could account for such a drastic cut in the TAC/ACL?

(Note that in the 2007 Autumn Trawl Survey, 2 adjacent stations yielded over 11,000 pounds of the total of 15,000 pounds for the entire survey. In the series of 23 surveys extending over 12 years - involving well over 7,000 sample tows, only about a dozen tows yielded over 2,000 pounds of haddock.)

If haddock were removed from the calculations, or if the haddock stocks weren't represented as declining precipitously over such a short time, the underfishing situation would appear to be significantly different.

Let's assume, solely for illustrative purposes, that the haddock TAC/ACL was reduced only half as much as it actually was, and that the decline was spread out evenly over the three years post 2007. A 34% total decrease would equal a haddock ACL of 108 thousand tons in 2008-09, 96 thousand tons in 2009-10, 84 thousand tons in 2010-11 and 72 thousand tons in 2011-12. In that case total landings would have been 20, 24 and 26% of the total TAC/ACL in FY2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively. Or, if the haddock TAC/ACL had remained constant at 108 thousand tons, 20%, 22% and 22% would have been landed in each of the three years respectively. The only thing that makes the efficiency of the groundfish fleet (efficiency here meaning the percentage of the TAC/ACL that is actually landed) appear to be improved under the current catch shares regime is a drastic decrease in the haddock TAC/ACL. That decrease doesn't appear to be warranted by the haddock caught in the Autumn and Spring Bottom Trawl Surveys extending back over ten years.

In FY 2008-09, 56% of the Target TAC of all of the sustainably harvestable groundfish species minus haddock were harvested. In FY 2010-11 this figure was 59% - considering the precision of the data involved, I think we can consider them identical.

So what happened to those missing hundreds of thousands of tons of haddock (assuming that, like other species, 25% or so of the total biomass can be sustainably harvested every year)? Were they conveniently swallowed up by the same statistical black hole that all of those pollock that were responsible for increasing the pollock ACL by 500% were pulled out of last year? One of the nice things about dealing in highly complicated statistical manipulations and esoteric computer modeling is that no one "on the outside" really has much of an idea of what you are doing.

But in this instance at least, the why it's being done seems obvious.

NOAA head Jane Lubchenco, the people who work for her and the ENGOs and the foundations that are behind them are committed to their catch shares revolution, arguably to make the fisheries more efficient but unquestionably to get rid of boats, to get rid of fishermen, and to get rid of the influence on fishing and ocean-use policies that fishermen have rightfully had for generations. Of course the best way to demonstrate that catch shares actually work would be to have the fishermen in a fishery catch more fish, but it just seems as if this idea is anathema to Ms. Lubchenco and everyone behind her. You certainly don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars convincing the world that fishermen are and have been the ruination of the world's oceans and then tell them - those few who you've allowed to survive - to go ahead and catch more fish. But you can tell them that the proportion of the fish they could catch relative to the fish that they are catching is improving, and considering that you've effectively whittled down the number of them who are still fishing, their individual catches are improving as well. Those "black holes" can sure come in handy.

But regardless of all of that, the big question is - or should be - why is so little being done by NOAA/NMFS and the ENGO community to increase the proportion of the TAC that is landed in the groundfish fishery? In FY 2010-11 only 16% of the haddock ACL was landed. While it could be argued that this was significantly better than the 6% taken in FY 2008-09, the difference is only 2 thousand tons. With at least 50 thousand more tons of haddock out there to catch and with boat after boat and fisherman after fisherman leaving the fishery, that's inarguably not enough of an increase - unless, of course, you're intent on getting rid of boats and fishermen.

What of foundation-supported programs like World Wildlife Fund's Smart Gear contest? I used to be impressed with WWF's efforts there until I did a little research into the dollars behind it. WWF received $400,000 from the Moore Foundation in 2005 to fund the Smart Gear competition in 2006 and 2007. In 2006 the awards amounted to $35,000. In 2007 they totaled $55,000. It seems like WWF raked in at least $310,000 to give away (someone else's) $90,000. They're sure doing their bit, aren't they? WWF has a PR bonanza playing ocean savior (WWF even won the NOAA Sustainable Fisheries Leadership Award in 2007) while making 340% "overhead" on the bucks handed out. Do you think anyone there ever considered that if they only kept 200% they could more than double their awards to fishermen?

The fish are out there and they're out there in numbers that are large enough so that their harvest could be substantially increased yet still be sustainable. If Ms. Lubchenco would implement a crash program to decrease the level of underfishing, not just in New England and not just in the groundfish fishery, with the same zeal that she has put into her catch share revolution, I doubt if that or any other revolution in how we run our fisheries would be necessary. Could there be a connection in there somewhere.

Nils E. Stolpe
FishNet USA - http://www.fishnet-usa.com

When it comes to the NOAA Law Enforcement scandal, “we’re sorry” doesn’t cut it

(A printable Adobe Acrobat version of this is available here.)

“An environment with poor internal controls, a lack of standards, contradictory regulations, and it creates a circumstance that’s ripe for exploitations. It’s what you would see in embezzlement cases, where no one’s watching the store. And if someone’s predisposed to take advantage, they do” (Gloucester mayor Carolyn Kirk in an interview with Gloucester Daily Times reporter Richard Gaines addressing the Special Master’s report on NOAA fisheries enforcement – the interview is available here).

Much has been made of the coordinated apologies and associated media machinations of Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco for specific enforcement abuses targeting mid-Atlantic and New England fishermen and associated businesses. Ditto for the return of some fines wrongfully levied as a result of these abuses. I was left with the distinct impression that they felt that after their not quite mea culpas they would be able to move on, leaving a whole bunch of satisfied fishing industry folks in their wake.

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, particularly that of the DOC/NOAA/NMFS spin masters, but they weren’t even off to a good start. Sure, some of the industry people who were most egregiously impacted by what it now appears were nothing more than agency encouraged goon squads - both on the streets and behind the desks - got something back, but are they whole after their individual ordeals? Not hardly. What of their legal fees? Their loss of business? Their personal suffering and that of their families and their employees? For a first-hand grasp of how well they have fared through the ministrations of Secretary Locke and Ms. Lubchenco, invest 27 minutes into listening to the interview of NOAA victims Larry Ciulla and Larry Yacubian by Saving Seafood’s Bob Vanasse and radio station WBSM’s Phil Paleologos (here). I can only hope that the aggrieved fishermen and business people find what Secretary Locke and Ms. Lubchenco have offered them as inadequate as I do and have the wherewithal to seek full compensation for what they’ve suffered.

But significant as these federal agency depredations were to the 11 people and/or businesses that were singled out by the Special Master for at least partial payback, they were and are only a small part of a sordid and shameful story that continues to affect the entire domestic fishing industry and the hundreds of millions of consumers who do or should depend on it for fresh local seafood.

These out-of-control agents, attorneys and judges didn’t just arise spontaneously; they were all products of a still ongoing devolution of NOAA/NMFS from an agency primarily concerned with supporting fishermen in catching fish into one that is focused on nothing beyond protecting the fish from fishermen. It’s true that this devolution has peaked with the current leadership at NOAA/NMFS. Ms. Lubchenco is on the record (on April 7 on the website Takepart.com) with “at the global scale, probably the one thing currently having the most impact (on the oceans) is overfishing and destructive fishing gear,” and her oft-stated goal is fewer boats and fewer fishermen. But, sadly, this devolution has been going on for most of two decades.

It’s impossible to believe that the cops and robbers mentality that was behind law enforcement behavior so repugnant that it occasioned a public apology from a member of President Obama’s cabinet could have developed and so blatantly flourished in anything other than a “fishing and fishermen are bad” culture that percolated down from the leadership cadre at NOAA/NMFS. An apology and the return of a few hundreds of thousands of ill-gotten dollars out of a slush fund a couple of hundred times larger isn’t going to change that.

How many press releases in the same vein as one dated June 19, 2009 titled “NOAA Notifies Gloucester Seafood Display Auction of 10-day Sanction” by NOAA/NMFS have bombarded fishermen over the last decade (here)? The fact is that the trumpeting of these discredited NOAA enforcement actions by NOAA/NMFS press offices, actions judged as unacceptable by the Department of Commerce’s own Inspector General and a Special Master brought in from outside the agency, have done incalculable harm to the public perceptions of fishermen and fishing. Given the anti-fishing agency attitude necessary to allow this disgraceful situation to evolve, should we assume that this was also unintentional and spontaneous?

And what about “research” such as that carried out by Professors Jon Sutinen and Dennis King and funded by Pew/Lenfest? The inescapable conclusion of their article, Rational noncompliance and the liquidation of Northeast groundfish resources is that the supposed sorry state in the New England groundfish fishery was in large part due to fishermen and those running fishing businesses breaking the law. I did a critique of Sutinen’s and King’s efforts in a column for the Saving Seafood website (here), but in it I hadn’t mentioned that their “special thanks” went to “the staff of the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement and NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service regional offices who provided researchers with enforcement data.” That’s not data that I or anyone else should be willing to hang a mortarboard on, but is this research going to be redone in view of the shambles that NOAA law enforcement in New England was in at the time? Is anyone at Pew or Lenfest going to correct the public record?

And how much in unnecessary and/or duplicative regulatory overkill did this institutionalized (in NOAA/NMFS and a handful of universities, ENGOs and the foundations that enabled them) “you can’t trust fishermen” myth cost those fishermen, the businesses they supported, the consumers they supplied and the U.S. taxpayers? The people who and the organizations that manufactured and perpetuated the myth all profited handsomely, and those profits came out of the holds of U.S. fishing boats and the pockets of U.S. seafood consumers.

“Fishermen and fish dealers believe that they are treated like criminals. It is an “us against them” mentality. The regulations are complex, complicated, constantly changing, and in some cases, contradictory. Fishermen are paranoid every time they come ashore to offload their catch that they will be met at the dock by a Special Agent who will look for and find a violation of some obscure or even well known regulation. They feel that the offloading of their catch is fraught with peril. Fish dealers who daily offload volumes of fish are always apprehensive that they would be charged with a violation committed by a fisherman, over whom they have little or no control or that the daily requirement of reporting substantial volumes of fish may inadvertently be in error. All of these occurrences can result in a violation, which in turn, can result in a substantial monetary penalty or permit sanction. Either may be enough to put a fisherman or fish dealer out of business. There are cases reviewed in this Report that support this conclusion. This is the plight of the regulated.”

“I have noticed in practically every case a pattern of assessing high monetary penalties in order to force a settlement of approximately half of the assessed penalty. The fisherman or fish dealer has no option but to settle because as previously pointed out in this Report and discussed later, they have no confidence that they could get a fair de novo hearing before an ALJ. The choice is simple. Settle with the Enforcement attorney for a coerced amount or run the substantial risk that the ALJ will uphold the original assessment which could force the fisherman out of business. This scenario becomes even more egregious because of the constant use of permit sanctions as a substantial bargaining chip and advantage to the Enforcement Attorneys in negotiating a settlement.” Hon. Charles B. Swartwood,_III ret., Report and recommendation of the Special Master concerning NOAA enforcement action of certain designated cases. April, 2011 – available here.

There were people in charge at NOAA/NMFS who had to know that the judges who were presiding over their in-house courts were in the position of benefiting from the penalties they assessed. They had to know that their in-house enforcement agents – and judges - were acquiring luxurious yachts, personal automobiles and exotic foreign travel much more easily and with far less oversight than should be acceptable for federal employees, that they were overseeing a force that consisted almost entirely of highly paid criminal agents who were involved almost entirely in civil violations, that data being supplied to researchers with the intention of indicting fishermen was, in the most charitable way I can phrase it, suspect. Or if they didn’t know, they were more grossly incompetent than anyone who is getting paid with public dollars has any right to be. But it was all ok at NOAA/NMFS because they were catching those bad guys who thought fish were there to be caught. In fact, if they were good enough at catching those fishermen, the NOAA enforcement people were given bonuses – sort of like bounty hunters, only with federally issued “get out of jail free” cards.

If Ms. Lubchenco and Secretary Locke are really interested in changing things at NOAA/NMFS, or if Congress is really interested in seeing that things are changed, the job has to begin with changing this increasingly pervasive agency attitude. Could you imagine the condition our agriculture industry would be in if the Department of Agriculture looked at farmers the same way the NOAA/NMFS leadership so obviously looks at fishermen? Along with importing 80% of our seafood we’d be importing 80% of everything else that we eat as well. If the Secretary of Agriculture announced that his goal was to get rid of farms and farmers do you think it would be more than a week or so before we had a new Secretary?

Ask a farmer if the federal government is on his or her side and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that you’ll get an unqualified yes as an answer. What are the odds of getting the same answer from a fisherman?

But we’ve got someone in charge of NOAA, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service, who has publicly acknowledged that fishermen are on her hit list. And we’ve got someone in charge of the Department of Commerce, her boss, who is willing to apologize to a handful of fishermen when a bunch of his fish cops get caught with their hands in the cookie jar up to their waists, but has yet to say anything on the record about Ms. Lubchenco’s “get rid of fishermen” fixation. And need I write yet again that we’ve reached the point of no overfishing and rebounding stocks with all of those boats and all of those fishermen that she’s committed to getting rid of?

So how much do you think the in-house attitude towards fishermen has changed at NOAA/NMFS? Using a Titanic analogy, something that I try to do at least once a year and that’s become increasingly easy of late, we’ve heard the captain and first mate telling us that they are shifting crew from job to job, messing with the paperwork that keeps everything running about the way it has been, and giving new fake books to the orchestra, but their ship is still unsinkable. They would be telling us this on April 16, 1912.*

“It had the tone of a renegade law enforcement agency that felt it was above the law…. That’s a complete breakdown in checks and balances that we have in our responsibility as government officials in protecting the public but also in protecting the accused…. They used their enforcement power as an adhesion type of relationship where they would lay out what they thought the penalty would be and if you don’t comply with what we’ve indicated, it’s going to be a lot tougher on you. They completely took due process out of law enforcement…. It was completely Un-American.” (New Bedford mayor Scott Lang in the same interview with Gloucester Daily Times reporter Richard Gaines referenced above).

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*The Titanic sunk on April 15

Call it conspiracy, cooperation or coincidence...

but no matter what you call it, the public record isn’t going to change

In his latest column in Saltwater Sportsman magazine, New England Fishery Management Council member and chairman of the Council’s Groundfish Committee Rip Cunningham devoted almost a thousand words to refuting the existence of a catch shares “conspiracy” that, he leaned towards thinking, was “a bunch of BS conjured up by anti-regulation crackpots with too much time on their hands and too little brainpower to figure out something constructive to do.”

I’ve been chronicling – and documenting – the push for catch share management for several years, and in doing that I haven’t come in contact with any fishermen who I would describe as anything close to anti-regulation, as crack-pots, with too much time on their hands, or with too little brainpower to figure out something constructive to do. Rather, I’ve found virtually all of them to be hard working, hard fishing individuals who are concerned about a multi-million dollar taxpayer funded campaign to transfer ownership and/or control of what are now public fisheries resources into private hands (see my article The Catch Share Choo Choo is leaving the Station here). And at a national level I suspect I’m at least as well connected to recreational, commercial and party/charter fishing circles as he is.

So why is he using such a derogatory and grossly inaccurate description of fishermen concerned about catch shares and the future of fishing? Perhaps for the same reason that his column is accompanied by a half-page illustration of three hovering helicopters in silhouette: a transparent attempt to paint all of the fishermen – and the people in fishing-dependent businesses – who are opposed to any unilateral, top-down imposition of any form of management on their fisheries as over-the-edge extremists and therefore not worthy of anything other than ridicule. That’s called marginalization, and it’s something that the anti-fishing activists, the foundations that support them and the fisher-men – and perhaps even the journalists - who they’ve bought off have become very effective at doing.

And then Mr. Cunningham gets into funding by the Pew Charitable Trusts of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and other ENGOs that advocate for catch shares, writing “don't confuse the conspiracy with the truth; we have learned that the last funding happened 10 years ago.” While I find it admirable when anyone admits to learning anything at all, in this instance Mr. Cunningham didn’t learn anything approaching enough. All told EDF got less than $2 million from Pew - minimal dollars in the mega-foundation world (here ) - and that funding appears to have stopped in 2004. That’s not quite ten years, but I guess it’s close enough for Saltwater Sportsman. However, EDF has received over $20 million from the Marine Conservation program of the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart) from 2007 to 2009, over $9 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Intel) since 2005 (all of which was for the EDF catch shares campaign), and $1.5 million from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation since 2008.

Further, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), a federal quasi-agency, just announced that it will fund 18 new projects totaling over $2 million that “will engage fishermen around the country in the design and implementation of effective catch-share fisheries.” The funds for this were provided by the Walton and Moore Foundations, two of NFWF’s “foundation partners,” which are described as “supporting NFWF's National Fisheries Innovation Fund, which will assist the transition of United States fisheries to catch share programs by encouraging fishermen to pursue innovative management strategies through a competitive grant award process.”

The NFWF lists among its corporate partners Exxon/Mobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, Conoco Phillips and Walmart.

That’s either a pretty big bundle of truth that Mr. Cunningham seems to have overlooked or a trophy-sized red herring that he wanted his readers to swallow. While he zeroed right in on the relatively paltry funding of EDF by Pew from way back when, in his zeal to further discredit the “crackpots” completely missed the boat on $30 million plus in funding for promoting catch shares by other foundations which are apparently working in close coordination with government agencies (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, parent agency to the National Marine Fisheries Service, is one of the NFWF’s Federal partners).

On top of this, NOAA head Jane Lubchenco has transferred tens of millions of sorely needed research dollars from the National Marine Fisheries Service research budget into her catch shares program, and many of these millions are available to the regional fisheries management councils for instituting catch shares programs.

I’ve been directly and indirectly involved with the federal fisheries management process since its inception in 1976, and one of the most noticeable changes that it has undergone in the intervening three plus decades is its enthusiastic embracing of rampant bureaucratization. Both NMFS and the regional councils have become administrative empires and are accordingly subject to all of the bureaucratic pressures that entails. Chief among these, particularly over the last several years, are budgetary pressures. Quite simply, the money isn’t flowing from the taxpayers the way it used to. So what impact on the regional council system do you think the availability of millions of dollars to establish catch share programs is going to have? If you are on a regional fishery management council, if you work for a regional fishery management council or if your job depends on the workings of a fishery management council, should you be expected to think anything is more important than swelling the coffers of that council? And, considering today’s economic realities, what’s the only way to do that? Push catch shares, of course.

With an arrangement like that, it doesn’t take an edict from on high to make catch shares management the rule. All it takes is an under-standing of how bureaucracies work and a cynical willingness to take advantage of that.

And we can add to this the fact that, besides providing transportation to and bed and bread in what tend to be fairly nice digs in fairly pleasant locales at least several times a year, serving on a regional fishery management council can contribute significantly to one’s bank account. Because of this, some council members (though definitely not all of them) put a high premium on being reappointed to their council seats when their terms expire.

The governors of each coastal state recommend several people for each council seat as it becomes available. The final decision on who is appointed is made by Ms. Lubchenco’s agency. Speaking in Boston in May, 2009, she said “the scientific evidence is compelling that catch shares can also help restore the health of ecosystems and get fisheries on a path to profitability and sustainability. These results, … these scientific analyses, … are why moving forward to implement more catch share programs is a high priority for me. I see catch shares as the best way for many fisheries to both meet the Magnuson mandates and have healthy, profitable fisheries that are sustainable.” How far do you think being a catch share proponent will go in getting someone appointed or reappointed to a council? How far do you think not being a catch share supporter will go in the other direction?

And then we have the following three paragraphs taken from the Alex C. Walker Foundation website (here - emphasis added). The Walker Foundation is a strong supporter of catch shares and other such market manipulations as a way to regulate us and effect social change.

EDF staff continues to support managers and industry leaders in an increasingly broad and rapid transition to catch shares in many different New England fisheries. We coordinate our policy change efforts with allies including the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fisherman's Association, Oceana, Earth Justice, Conservation Law Foundation, the New England Aquarium, and The Nature Conservancy.

New NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco played a leadership role in securing $35 million in combined FY09 and FY10 federal appropriations to help the groundfish industry transition to sectors. EDF staff played key roles in broadening consensus support for her leadership. We continue to coordinate closely with NGO, fishing industry and agency allies to work through priority issues critical to the successful implementation of sectors by May 1, 2010.

In the months leading up to the sector vote, support for catch shares far outweighed opposition in the regional media. As fishermen come to grips with low catch limits and a new management system, however, opponents have been more vocal than supporters. In response, we have had to increase our regional me-dia focus and sophistication, including online media tools such as fishermen's forums, blogs, and news aggregation websites. Our goals include identifying and amplifying pro-catch share fishermen's voices, answering misinformation about catch shares and addressing genuine concerns about catch share design.

Whether this is evidence of a conspiracy or not, it’s obvious that the people in charge at Saltwater Sportsman want their readers to believe that there’s neither cooperation nor coordination involved in the national drive to implement catch shares. By the use of black helicopter imagery and demeaning descriptions of people who recognize what’s really happening, they’re trying to manipulate their readers into writing off people who recognize the extent of the push by mega-foundations, ENGOs and federal agencies working together to “revolutionize” fishery management. These organizations want, and are still campaigning for, this in spite of the fact that our most credible fisheries scientists agree that this year, for the very time, we’ll be free of overfishing in U.S. waters. (I have to add that we’ve gotten here with catch share management in place for a meaningful time in less than 5% of our fisheries.)

The evidence that this coordination and cooperation, or whatever it’s called, exists is overwhelming, even without the on-the-record recognition of it by the very same groups that are involved in coordinating and cooperating. Arguing that it doesn’t seems an awfully strange role for a publication that claims to be “the fishing authority since 1939.” Perhaps Saltwater Sportsman should stick to fishing.

And I would strongly suggest that you etch indelibly into your memory the use of the phrase “anti-regulation crackpots with too much time on their hands and too little brainpower” by someone who serves – and is well paid to serve – on a federal regional fisheries management council. Whether we see the future of fisheries management the way they do or not, don’t we all deserve better from council members than that?

Is this the future of fishing?

The Catch Shares Choo Choo’s Leaving the Station

When you hear her whistle blowing, then it’s too late
Getting rid of “fishers” is number 1 on her slate
Billionaires for competition
Controlling how you’re fishin’
Jane Lubechenco’s catch shares program, isn’t it great?
(With more apologies to the memory and the art of Glenn Miller)

February 2, 2011

What’s the probability of a federal agency becoming involved in an attempt to wrest control of a public resource-based industry away from the communities that have built up around it since colonial times - an industry with a Congressionally mandated role in the management of the resources it depends on - and turn it over to private “charitable” foundations and the business entities they are linked to? If your answer is “pretty low,” give some serious consideration to the following.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation commissioned a study, Financing Fisheries Change: Learning from Case Studies, by Manta Consulting, Inc. that was completed last month (January, 2011). The report, which is available as of this writing here (if it disappears, contact me and I’ll provide you with the file) lays out in 119 pages how foundation supported ENGOs and the “green” businesses they support can take over recreational and commercial fisheries. This could have the effect of reducing people who were previously independent vessel or fishing-related business owners/operators to wage slaves working for the environmentally correct “company store,” being forced to adapt their methods, their technologies and ultimately their lifestyles to what billionaire industrialists and their heirs deem they should be. Is this anything but elitist social engineering at its worst?

“The expectation is that the lessons from each (of the presented case studies) will help new innovators and entrepreneurs to adapt and design their own investment and governance structures to achieve significant change on the water.” (Packard/Manta report, pg 7)

How is this to be accomplished? According to Packard/Manta, “foundations in the field are now looking to support this transition from fisheries conservation as a purely philanthropic investment to a blended conservation and business investment by encouraging non-profits, social change leaders and business entrepreneurs to create innovatively structured projects that can both build value for private investors and improve the speed and scale of fisheries conservation impacts.”

In the report, several examples of “sustainable” seafood marketing companies are cited. They got an initial boost from the Sea Change Investment Fund, launched by Packard and California Environmental Associates. It “is funded equally from low-interest Program Related Investment debt from the Packard Foundation and private equity from independent investors.” How would you like to be an owner of a truly independent business and have to compete with a business on the next block that has the Packard Foundation behind it?

It’s glaringly obvious that when foundations have billions of dollars in assets, an unprecedented amount of political clout and highly effective PR machines, the potential “encouragement” they are able to offer to what they have decided are acceptable businesses is going to be staggering. It’s going to be particularly staggering if you’re the owner of or if you’re dependent on one of the businesses that is about to find itself with a competitor of such Brobdingnagian proportions.

Mega-foundations whose directors in their ivory towers are convinced that they know more than the hundreds of thousands of people who depend on fishing and on healthy fisheries to support their families and their way of life is an issue that’s been studiously ignored by the main stream media. A handful of these foundations have spent tens of millions of dollars pushing their dream of catch shares, the form of fisheries management that is most amenable to this kind of “encouragement,” with no apparent thought given to the human repercussions.

Then there’s the role being played by ex ENGO super-star Jane Lubchenco and her no-holds-barred campaign as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to convert every US fishery she can to catch shares, whether the conditions of the fishery warrant such a cataclysmic change – or any change, for that matter - or not. (Relative to any so-called necessity for massive changes in how we manage our fisheries, I recommend reading an interview with recently retired NOAA/NMFS head scientist Steve Murawski. In it he announced that by the end of this year overfishing would be a thing of the past in U.S. fisheries. It’s here.)

But is that all there is? Not hardly.

You’re probably aware that some of these “charitable” foundations, generally characterized as anti-fishing by fishermen, are associated with what they call sustainability guides rating various fish and seafood species. Packard is one of them, through the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. These guides are compiled with seemingly scant consideration given to whether the fishery is pursued in compliance with the appropriate fisheries management plans, whether it is free of overfishing, or whether it is anything else, apparently, other than what the whims of the people doing the rating dictate. If they like the way the fish are harvested – or perhaps if they like the people who are doing the harvesting – they’ll stamp the products of that fishery as acceptable. If they don’t, they’ll give them the thumbs down.

With the increasing market focus on the sustainability of fish and shellfish, itself the response to a huge investment in PR by the same foundations, these “thumbs down” ratings have a significant influence on the demand for the seafood products being rated. This is reflected in the prices that are paid for those products from the boat all the way up the chain.

So we have huge foundations spending millions of dollars to convince the public that what they’ve decided is “sustainability” should be the critical criterion when buying seafood and spending other millions of dollars on supporting rating programs that grade whether seafood products should be embraced or avoided by seafood consumers, we have fishermen who are fishing well within the letter of the world’s most stringent array of fishing laws here in the U.S., and there is no connection between the two. The fish labelers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium are ready, willing and able to brand a product “avoid” simply because they don’t like how it’s caught.

Take monkfish as a case in point. The National Marine Fisheries Service monkfish page on its own seafood rating website, Fish Watch, states “monkfish are primarily caught with bottom trawls and gillnets. Dredges also account for a small percentage of landings. Monkfish habitat has been determined to be only minimally vulnerable to these fishing gears,” and continues regarding bycatch in the monkfish fishery “measures have been implemented to reduce any impact.” Yet the Monterey Bay Aquarium warns consumers against eating monkfish “due to high bycatch concerns and severe habitat impacts.”

Needless to say, the National Marine Fisheries Service doesn’t have anything approaching the dollars that the Monterey Bay Aquarium, with its connection to the Packard Foundation (in 2010 the Aquarium received $36 million from the Foundation) has. So the federal agency with the responsibility to manage our marine fisheries is saying to go ahead and buy and enjoy monkfish with a clear conscience and the Monterey Bay Aquarium is saying don’t you dare. Guess which message is reaching more consumers?

Why the discrepancy?

To collect its own data, the aquarium could have a fleet of research vessels manned by a crew of scientists that no one knows anything about, but operating in a low-profile stealth mode is uncharacteristic of the foundation funded crowd. As the Pew/Oceana folks showed us in the Gulf of Mexico during the BP disaster, when going down to the sea in ships they want their creature comforts with them and they want everyone to know – see The Oil Slick – Oceana scientists “roughing it” in the Gulf at the bottom of this page. Minus collecting their own data, the Monterey Bay Aquarium fish raters must be using the same information that NMFS is using. They’re sure coming to different conclusions. So having their own, independently gathered information is probably out.

Is it because they don’t like gill nets and otter trawls? They rate black sea bass as a “good alternative,” and they’re caught with otter trawls, as are silver hake (“good”), Alaskan pollock (used in surimi and rated “good”), sand dabs (“good”) and lingcod (“good”). They rate Atlantic croaker a “best choice,” and they’re caught with gillnets, as are bluefish (“good”), Spanish mackerel (“good”) and salmon (“good” to “best”). It’s apparently not the gear being used.

Whatever their reasons for this rating, it puts a dent in the demand for monkfish. That’s why they are doing it. This dent in demand is translated into a lower price for the fish that is felt by everyone from the fishermen to the retailers.

The monkfish fishery is one of the initial candidates for Jane Lubchenco’s catch shares revolution. As I’m writing this, a series of public hearings are being held from Maine to North Carolina so that federal regulators can gauge the interest in catch shares in the fishery. If she is successful, rights to the annual monkfish harvest will be divided among some of the “historic” participants. Fitting in with the Packard Foundation’s grand plan for “saving the fisheries” while at the same time turning a profit, this could open the door for green organizations and individuals to start buying control of the fishery. The Packard Foundation has now provided them with a roadmap of how to do this and, based on past actions, might well be willing to provide them with financing as well.

The lower the consumer demand for monkfish, the lower the cost for outsiders to “buy” into the fishery.

Putting the icing on this particular cake, monkfish are classified as a data poor stock. In other words, the fisheries scientists claim they don’t know as much about the condition of the monkfish population as is necessary to manage them adequately. This being the case, the monkfish quotas are set extremely conservatively. If the scientists were more comfortable with the condition of the stock, if the uncertainty was less, the quotas would be increased, and they’d probably be increased significantly.

The level of knowledge that scientists have about any fish stock is determined by the amount of money available to collect and analyze data about that stock. Given adequate funding, monkfish could be taken off the data poor list in fairly short order. What would result? It’s impossible to believe it would be anything other than a significant increase in the quota. Ms. Lubechenco has taken millions out of the NMFS research budget and put it into her catch shares campaign. At least for the time being, it’s apparent that monkfish are going to continue as a data poor stock. (Note that I work for the Monkfish Defense Fund, an industry trade group.)

It’s safe to say that less data = lower quotas = less income to the fishery participants = lower price for acquiring catch shares in the fishery.

But is it possible for a foundation – or an ENGO that it supports – to decide to start supporting a massive monkfish survey effort as soon as it becomes a catch share fishery and a bunch of those shares have been acquired by the “right” kind of people, businesses and organizations? Why not? And then monkfish could be taken from the data-poor category, the allowable catch could be increased significantly, monkfish could be promoted to a “best choice” by the fish labelers, the value of the catch shares could increase dramatically, and everyone would be happy – except for the fishermen and the other folks who would be casualties of this green takeover of their fishery.

So we’re looking at a possible scenario where the value of the shares in a fishery can easily be driven down by a combination of government and foundation efforts and where the value of those shares can just as easily be increased by making a few adjustments in consumer ratings and research funding levels.

It’s not just monkfish.

In spite of formidable and totally justified political pressure to do so, the Secretary of Commerce has just refused to allow Northeast groundfish fishermen to catch significantly more of the uncaught 80% or so of the target Total Allowable Catch that a complicated web of extremely harsh regulations presently prevents them from catching. The groundfish fishery is in a tailspin because of this government mandated underfishing, and thanks to a catch share system instituted at Ms. Lubchenco’s insistence last year, quota can be acquired at bargain basement rates. (See Chronic Underfishing - The Real New England Groundfish Crisis here.)

These regulations resulted from successful lobbying by the foundation-funded ENGOs, and their heavy-handed implementation has been guaranteed by a series of lawsuits brought by those same ENGOs. Several of the projects detailed in the Packard report focus on this fishery, and its current dismal condition and future promise (a harvest with the potential to increase at least 400%) would seem to make it a natural for investment. But to allow that investment to be made, guided or encouraged by members of the same complex of foundations, ENGOs, investors and bureaucrats who are responsible for the dismal conditions that exist in the fishery today (and the attendant human suffering) is, or should be, far beyond the pale.
As of now, it isn’t.

It would seem that a couple of amendments to the Magnuson Act could forestall some serious potential problems. The Act already requires that before any individual quota system is put in place by either the Gulf of Mexico or New England Fishery Management Council it has to be approved by two-thirds of the permit holders in a fishery-wide referendum. This should be expanded to apply to all of the Councils, all of EEZ fisheries and all proposed Catch Share programs, not just those dealing with individual quotas. And any quota acquisition by a non-fishing entity should only be allowed with the express approval of a certain percentage (20%?) of the permit holders in that fishery. Without these provisions at the least, it’s very possible that the type of speculation that destroyed the U.S. housing market could be inflicted on our commercial and recreational fisheries.

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Trouble in the catch share paradise or something else entirely?

The Alaskan halibut fishery, which has been operating on a catch shares basis for several years, has been held up as one of the examples of what a superior form of management it is; in fact, the only system that guarantees sustainability. On December 10 Craig Medred wrote in 2011 halibut quota cut nearly in half:

"Fishermen who borrowed money to finance the purchase of "shares" of the allotted halibut harvest are struggling to make payments as the value of those shares goes down along with the harvest.
Everything was rosy in the commercial halibut fisheries off Alaska's shores as long as it was rosy. Now the dark side of what is called "privatization" has begun to emerge.
Commercial fishermen who borrowed money to finance the purchase of "shares" of the allotted halibut harvest find themselves struggling to make payments as the value of those shares goes down along with the harvest.
Shares looked like a good investment in 2005 when the International Pacific Halibut Commission, which sets catch quotas for the water off Alaska and Canada, set a limit of 10.93 million pounds for Area 2C in the Gulf of Alaska off the panhandle. Catch quotes, however, have been going doing down ever since. The commission is recommending a catch of only 2.33 million pounds for next year. The area had a 2010 quota of 4.4 million pounds this year”
(Alaska Dispatch here).