Created: 12/28/2009 6:24:26 PM Updated: 12/28/2009 6:46:40 PM It’s been a long time coming, but it appears as if a critical number of fishermen have finally reached the conclusion that the way things are heading, there’s not going to be an acceptable fishing future for any of us, that it’s time for some long overdue changes, and that the place to effect those changes is in Congress.
|
To millions of Americans it’s the ability to go to the beach or get on a boat, enjoy a day on the water and maybe keep a few fish for the table within the limits of current regulations. What makes fishing such a universal pastime is its availability to everyone regardless of age, race and wealth, but open access is being challenged from a very unlikely source.
At the April meeting of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, Dr. Russell Nelson, on behalf of the Coastal Conservation Association, presented a paper outlining a new scheme for managing fisheries that, if put into practice, would change recreational fishing into something unrecognizable. It is an attempt to bring recreational fishermen into a system that the Environmental Defense Fund calls “catch shares” and federal fishery managers call Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs).
After reading this paper I was struck by the realization that there are some among us who believe recreational anglers aren’t already paying enough for the “privilege” of fishing. In case you’re not keeping score we’re already required to purchase a saltwater fishing license and if you’re a nonresident the fees are becoming usurious. We not only pay sales tax on every piece of tackle we purchase, we also pay a 10-percent excise tax that goes to the Wallop-Breaux Fund. If you purchase fuel for your boat at a marina or other waterfront location you pay an 18.5-percent federal excise tax on that, too. As a group, anglers pay hundreds of millions of dollars each year in user fees and special taxes to support conservation, management, enforcement, restoration and access projects…but apparently that’s not enough.
Under this proposal recreational anglers would be required to enter a competitive bidding process for the opportunity to purchase tags for the fish they want to catch. Tag auctions will be open to anyone – commercial and recreational harvesters, fish brokers, environmental groups – and the tags would be sold to the highest bidders. According to the paper, tag holders can take the fish home and eat it, give them as Christmas presents, or take their fish to a market, effectively wiping out the distinction between the commercial and recreational sector. The proceeds from the auction would be earmarked for management and enforcement because, obviously, we aren’t paying enough already.
The paper, titled A Free Market Based Approach to Managing Red Snapper and Other Marine Fishes, provides a framework that limits access to only those with the time to enter the auction and the financial means to make a high enough bid to obtain tags. In case you’re wondering how much that might be, since the quota system was introduced the price that commercial anglers get for red snapper has increased from $2.75 per pound to over $4 per pound, while the National Marine Fisheries Service reports IFQ shares selling for between $10 and $20 per pound.
This paper was presented as a formal response to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s question “Is there a better way to manage U.S. shared commercial and recreational fisheries?” The formula it contains goes against the very grain of what sport fishing has been and most anglers hope it will be in the future. While there are provisions in the MSA reauthorization that have caused significant socioeconomic harm to recreational fisheries, the law has and can continue to work in the future by addressing those provisions.
In a recent press release the RFA called the scheme the “pay to play” version of fisheries management. In many ways it mirrors a management approach being espoused by the Environmental Defense Fund and other Pew Charitable Trust funded organizations, yet the paper claims this program “is simple and arguably the most fair and equitable approach.” The operative word is “arguably” because the fairness is an illusion where recreational fishermen are concerned!
“With the changes to the MSA endorsed by the RFA and found in proposed legislation currently introduced in Congress the MSA can not only rebuild fisheries but provide for equitable distribution of allowable harvest,” said Jim Donofrio, RFA Executive Director.
“Most of the problems currently encountered by managers are the result of arbitrary rebuilding deadlines and a lack of flexibility as dictated in the most recent reauthorization,” Donofrio explained, adding “with these corrections we can continue to see stocks increase, as Gulf of Mexico red snapper have in recent years, without losing the open access process that has been inherent in recreational fishing.”
National fishermen's protest set for Feb. 24
By Richard GainesThe date of a national demonstration by fishing interests in Washington, D.C., has been set for Wednesday, Feb. 24.
Originally scheduled for Feb. 17, the announcement of the changed date was made Monday by the Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen, one of the organizers of the event.
CCGF spokesman Capt. Bob Zales said the change was made because Feb. 17 was discovered to fall during a congressional recess.
The protest has drawn national interest. Along with Zales' organization, the Recreational Fishing Alliance, an umbrella group representing states' recreational fishing organizations, United Boatsmen of New York and New Jersey as well as the organizers of the commercial fishermen's protest held in Gloucester in October at the regional offices of the National Marine Fisheries Service are expected to attend.
The target of the protest is Congress at a time when efforts are under way to modify the reauthorized Magnuson-Stevens Act to allow more flexibility in the setting of rebuilding deadlines for overfished stocks. In its reauthorization in 2006, Congress required most stocks to be restored by 2014.
Congressman Barney Frank, whose House district includes New Bedford, has scheduled a caucus of East Coast congressmen and -women for tomorrow to consider how best to proceed.
Frank voted against the Magnuson-Stevens' reauthorization, which among things, shifted the authority to establish maximum allowable catches from the regional management councils, made up of gubernatorial appointees and statutory members, to their science and statistical committees.
In practice, the shift of authority has produced more conservative catch limits, according to Frank and industry figures. And Frank has questioned the wisdom of such rigid deadlines for the completion of rebuilding programs.
"The protest is about flexibility and upholding National Standard 8," said Amanda Odlin, who, with her husband owns and operates two commercial boats out of Boston. Odlin was the lead organizer of the protest that, in October, drew more than 300 fishermen and their supporters to NMFS' regional offices in Gloucester's Blackburn Industrial Park.
The Magnuson-Stevens Act contains 10 national standards or goals.
The text makes clear that rebuilding takes precedence.
But Standard No. 8 states that "conservation and management measures shall, consistent with the conservation requirements of this Act — including the prevention of overfishing and rebuilding of overfished stocks — take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities in order to provide for the sustained participation of such communities, and to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts."
That economic impact is being raised by a number of fishing industry backers, and fishing community leaders.
"The overly restrictive management requirements created by the reauthorized Magnuson Act based on non-scientific arbitrary deadlines are forcing anglers off the water, eliminating commercial fishing, preventing consumers from purchasing locally caught fresh seafood, destroying small family businesses, increasing unemployment and adversely affecting coastal communities," Zales wrote in his announcement of the change in the demonstration date.
Along with Frank, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe has also initiated action to free up more fish for New England's commercial fleet. The Maine Republican's approach is legislation to recognize that a U.S.-Canadian management arrangement along the ocean border through Georges Bank is an "agreement," a structure with higher legal impact than the current "understanding," and in the process exempts the effort from Magnuson-Stevens
The impact of that measure would be to allow more yellowtail flounder caught on the U.S. side of the boundary.
Losses from the more conservative catch limits on yellowtail flounder have been projected to reach $100 million because the control of yellowtail by the New England Fishery Management Council also indirectly limits the harvest of scallops, the premier cash stock that yellowtail lives among on the ocean floor.
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or via em-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
| NOAA "Champions" another closure. No red snapper fishing until ... Soon after NOAA's announcement about the red snapper closure, Holly Binns, manager of the Pew Environment Group's Campaign to End Overfishing in the ... | |||||||||
| Recreational Fishing Alliance Administrator, the former Pew Fellowship Award winner has championed the complete recreational closure of black sea bass, amberjack and red snapper. ... | |||||||||
| Jacksonville Mobile Edition Recreational Fishing Alliance challenges red snapper closure ... Lubchenco “the former Pew Fellowship Award winner ¦ has championed the complete ... | |||||||||
| Anglers Are Lawyering-up - www.ifish.net Dec 4, 2009 ... Soon after NOAA's announcement about the red snapper closure, Holly Binns, manager of the Pew Environment Group's Campaign to End ... | |||||||||
| Red Snapper News - Spearboard Spearfishing Community Red Snapper News Upper Gulfcoast. ... The PEW people and the fish huggers don't pull this crap and it makes them look more reasonable, plus they want to ... | |||||||||
| Interview: Pew talks to Sport Fishing - Page 2 - Saltwater Fishing ... PEW is pushing in favor of this proposed 35year closure on both red snapper and shallow water grouper in the southern atlantic (South ... | |||||||||
| InTheBite - Dec 15, 2009 ... "The current management of red snapper in the South Atlantic and Gulf ... to greater populations of red snapper, the Pew letter calls these ... | |||||||||
| Interview: Pew talks to Sport Fishing - Page 2 - Saltwater Fishing ... PEW is pushing in favor of this proposed 35year closure on both red snapper and shallow water grouper in the southern atlantic (South Carolina through the ... | |||||||||
| Feds ban fishing for red snapper for six months | StAugustine.com Dec 4, 2009 ... Most red snapper are caught by sportsmen, government regulators say. ... An endorsement of the ban came quickly Thursday from the Pew ... | |||||||||
| United We Fish: Interview: Pew talks to Sport Fishing Interesting views and comments posted here about Pew Charitable Trusts. ... Gulf Council to Convene on Red Snapper · Too many catches with Catch Shares ... | |||||||||
| North Carolina Fishing Reports - - It's Official.. Red Snapper Ban ... Red Snapper Ban - But Jane Lubchanco was nonimated by Obama to head NOAA. And she recently recieved a big recognition/award from the PEW people. ... | |||||||||
| EDFish » South Atlantic Council Carefully Considers All Impacts of ... Dec 16, 2009 ... Red snapper in the Southeast is said to have been overfished since ... There is no magic answer for red snapper and other fish in trouble ...
|
We now have bumper stickers available at the following locations and are asking for a $2 donation to help with printing costs:A group suing to stop a federal ban on red snapper fishing will use testimony from Northeast Florida’s fishing industry to help make its case.
Business owners from the Jacksonville area, Cape Canaveral and elsewhere are being asked this week for affidavits describing how the six-month ban scheduled to start Jan. 4 will hurt them, said David Heil, a lawyer representing the Recreational Fishing Alliance.
The New Jersey-based group filed a complaint in Jacksonville federal court Friday, asking for an injunction to keep the National Marine Fisheries Service from carrying out the ban announced last week. That would be followed by a lawsuit over whether the ban was justified
Dear Citizens,
In January 2007, President Bush signed into law the reauthorization of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery and Conservation and Management Act. Among many new requirements, the act established new regulatory mandates based on a required timeline. Congress mandated that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) implement an improved Marine Recreational Fishing Statistical Survey by January 2009; they also mandated that the NMFS stop over fishing of all fish species undergoing over fishing by 2010 and all other fisheries undergoing over fishing by 2011.
The NMFS has failed to comply with the mandate for an improved MRFSS data system by January 2009 and still does not have an improved recreational data system. However, the NMFS is working to comply with the mandate for stopping overfishing of all fish species by 2010—without an improved data system. The unintended impacts of the Congressional mandates has caused severe economic and social harm to small family fishing businesses, anglers, support businesses, local fishing communities, and the coastal states. In the
Obviously, this is going to devastate the City of Mexico Beach and our local economy.
This is why we need your help. Please contact your State representatives (even if you don’t live in
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the reef fish fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic shall not be required to be rebuilt, and over-fishing ended, by a specific date provided that the annual level of fishing does not exceed the net reproduction rate for that fishery such that the fishery is rebuilding each year. If the objective set forth in this section is not met for any of the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic reef fish fisheries in one year, the Secretary of Commerce shall adjust the fishing rate in that specific fishery in subsequent years to compensate for any overage.”
If you are interested in remaining informed on this issue, the following website has been created for that purpose: www.unitedwefish.blogspot.com . Thank you in advance for your support regarding this issue!
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND, BULLYING FISHERMEN AND COMMUNITIES OVER CATCH SHARES
Gulf of Mexico, November 24, 2009:
A radical environmental group is trying to influence fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. All five Gulf Governors sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Locke objecting to catch shares for the recreational sector and expressing concern over the red snapper commercial IFQ (catch share) that is in place in the Gulf. They did this out of concern for their constituents and small businesses.
The Governors wrote, “We are concerned that in the desire to adopt and implement catch share systems NOAA has forgotten its most fundamental responsibility under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to maximize the net economic value from the use of a public resource. Recreational fishing is an important activity in all of our states, and one that we would like to see continue to grow as a healthy activity for the public. However, we are concerned that NOAA policies could frustrate our ability to do that.
They also asked Secretary Locke to allow them the ability to protect their citizen’s access to public fishery resources and assure proper allocation of the resource in advance of implementing any catch share program. This was in regard to the grouper commercial IFQ program that is in line to be implemented in January of next year.
The Environmental Defense Fund is anti fishing and have become the bullies on the water with their seemingly unlimited budget. They continue to eliminate people from fisheries and by further dividing sectors it allows them to herd out the weakest sub-sector and then eliminate them bit by bit. In the Gulf they have convinced a small minority (less than 7%) of the federally permitted recreational charter boats to support separating from the recreational anglers who fish on their back decks.
Now radical activists of Environmental Defense are bullying people and trying to get them to sign an EDF petition stating that the five Governors made a mistake in writing this letter to the Secretary. The Governor’s stood up on behalf of their constituents and coastal communities in a public forum through proper channels. EDF continues back door under the table tactics that ultimately takes away anglers rights to their resources.
On November 15, 2009 Dr. Damon Cummings had a letter to the editor published in the Gloucester Daily Times that spotlighted flaws in forcing catch shares on fishermen. It follows this text. Read it and pay close attention to what he says. This is just more info on the tactics used by the bullies at the EDF. If you are approached to sign such a petition, read it carefully, do not be BULLIED to sign away your ability to fish!
If you would like to add your name to the list of local sponsors please call Tom Adams at 850-381-1313 or Chip Blackburn at 850-527-6272. The banners we ask that you purchase at our cost. The banners are $59 each and are two by eight feet. The signs are free! We hope to start delivery on Tuesday 1 December. We will also be providing a brochure for you to circulate to your customers. Date
Your address here
Senator/Representative______
Address
Dear Senator___________________:
Dear Representative_______________:
My family and I enjoy our natural resources and saltwater fishing is an important part of that enjoyment. We spend money to participate in fishing which helps to support our community, state, and country. We are very disturbed to hear that congress passed a law which is so restrictive that the National Marine Fisheries Service is required to implement severe reductions in our seasons and bag limits for several of the important fish we fish for. These restrictions are causing serious negative economic and social problems to our communities and people who depend on fishing activities.
Congressman Pallone from
We encourage you to support the draft legislative language that has been suggested by the Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen (CCGF) and several other associations that will allow for flexibility in the law which will allow the NMFS to ease up on their restrictions and allow us to fish and our communities to not be so severely impacted, while also working to rebuild and maintain fish stocks.
United We Fish
Get the fishing data right
Give Amberjack Back
No more MRFSS' data
We Fish for Food
We want our Red Snapper back
Pass HR 1584 & S-1255'
Rebuild the Fishery AND Save the Fishermen
Say NO to Catch Shares
Since at least the 1990s, EDF has been pushing globally to have commonly owned ocean fish stocks converted into catch quotas that could be assigned as rights, creating tradeable market products that attract capital investment. New England has become the primary battleground.
In a paper an EDF official described as a grant proposal not meant for public distribution, the New York-based nonprofit environmental giant indicated four years ago that the appointment of "ocean program senior staff" member Sally McGee to the council in 2003 would allow EDF to "work the regulatory process from the inside."
Matched to McGee's strategic activities at the council and grassroots level, the paper suggested, were the continuing activities of David Festa, the oceans program administrator and a former policy director in the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration, at the pinnacle of power in Washington, the EDF document stated.
Festa, now an EDF vice president on the West Coast, would "bring pressure to bear in Washington" in order to create "top down" support for "our initiatives," EDF said in the paper, written in April 2005.
Festa is a longtime close associate of Jane Lubchenco, the catch share-promoting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who had been the vice chairman of EDF and an academic scientist when President Obama chose her as national steward of oceans and atmosphere.
Festa and Lubchenco co-taught a class at Oregon State University and co-bylined an op-ed piece suggesting President George W. Bush was an environmentalist after he used a disputed executive power to declare a vast marine protected zone in the Pacific. The 2005 grant proposal extols marine protected areas.
Lubchenco's first public policy initiative was to challenge the New England council to approve without delay a long-debated catch share program for the region's groundfishery.
The council complied in June. But at its September meeting, the council implicitly agreed it made mistakes by moving so quickly — it initiated revisions to the design of the bitterly debated transformation of the fishery, now largely stabilized and moving toward the sustainability mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
Council meeting in R.I.
Finalizing these modifications — further limits to the fishing opportunities for those who have eschewed the catch share program — is a major item on the agenda for the council meeting that begins tomorrow in Newport, R.I.
The three-day meeting comes with EDF and the Obama administration's faith in catch shares under attack not only by fishing interests but also by Congressman Barney Frank, who since the death of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, has become the lead critic of the regional fishing policies, and even the Pew Environment Group.
Pew held two national teleconferences earlier this month to urge the administration to go slow on catch shares, and Frank recently released a letter to Lubchenco underscoring the potential for social destabilization resulting from catch shares' power to concentrate ownership of fishing capacity via ruthless market forces.
Since Lubchenco took office, a number of positions on councils for other regions' fisheries were filled with EDF and catch share partisans. McGee's initial appointment pre-dates Lubchenco's NOAA leadership, but McGee was reappointed last summer to a third council term.
Meanwhile, Festa — whose EDF salary was more than $300,000 in 2007 — last spring cited the windfall profit potential in the early acquisition of catch shares during an investors' conference at the Milken Institute on the West Coast.
Writing to the Sapling Foundation in 2008 about a 2003 grant, Festa said, "EDF's Oceans Program has turned this investment into what we now call the 'Big Bet' a campaign to convert the majority of US, Canadian and Latin American fisheries to catch shares."
With assets and liabilities of $145.7 million in 2007, the last year for which its IRS filings are available, EDF is one of the nation's largest and most influential ENGOs — for environmental non-government organizations — and has become known for its faith in the idea that market dynamics are the best tools for solving environmental problems.
'Economic engines'
"Through our tradition of working with market leaders to advance environmental progress," EDF said in its 2007 in-lieu-of-tax filing, "we achieve ambitious results by relying on rigorous science and harnessing economic engines."
EDF's sole rival among ENGOs in resources and influence is the Pew Environment Group, a division of the $5 billion Pew Charitable Trusts. Both 501(c)3s have made themselves permanent parts of the political Washington's political sinew.
EDF and Pew share a commitment to the "cap-and-trade" approach to carbon waste reduction in the continuing debate on climate control during last spring's U.S. House committee hearings and were perceived to be sharing a similar commitment to catch shares — until Pew's teleconferences in early November.
During the first teleconference, a participant, Zeke Grader, a well-known West Coast fishing industry official, cautioned against allowing "free market ideologues" — he made clear he meant EDF — to dictate fisheries policy.
Pew emphasized that it did not necessarily share the views of its panelists — Grader and others who were organized to speak about catch shares.
But Lee Crockett, director of federal fisheries policy for the Pew Environment Group, warned against a top down, one size fits all approach to catch shares. In a telephone interview, Grader said he found EDF's belief in the curative power of catch shares to be similar to a "religious" faith.
In a telephone interview, McGee asserted pride in her work; she is known around the council system to be a diligent and effective advocate. "My record speaks for itself," she said.
Julie Wormser, director of EDF's New England Oceans Program, described the grant proposal as hyperbolic, and speculated it was brought to light by unspecified anti-EDF interests long after it was forgotten by the organization.
Wormser said she was unable to determine the granting body to which the proposal was addressed. But the proposal clearly described catch shares as the goal.
"EDF seeks to put in place a management system that couples strong regulatory action with market forces to create sustainable fisheries," the EDF paper states.
"This is a gotcha," Wormser said, lauding McGee's record on the council.
No 'sleeper cell'
"Of course we are an advocacy group," Wormser said. "She's not a sleeper cell. Clearly, anti-EDF sentiment has been worked up. We are doing nothing that is anything that is not above board."
A grassroots federal agency whose members are appointed by the Secretary of Commerce based on nominations from governors — and nominations often subject to fierce lobbying — the fishery councils, one for each of the eight fishery regions, legislate under the authority of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
According to the EDF Web site, McGee, a Mystic, Conn., resident who did undergraduate work at Smith College and got a master's degree in marine affairs at University of Rhode Island, "builds coalitions with the commercial and recreational fishing industries, federal, state and local natural resource agencies, and other non-governmental organizations in support of sustainable marine fisheries that align conservation with the business of fishing."
She has been a staffer on the House Resources Subcommittee on Fisheries, Conservation, Wildlife and Oceans, and holds a Coast Guard merchant mariner's license to operate vessels of up to 100 tons.
The New England Council, based in Newburyport, has been working for more than two years to transition the groundfishery out of the effort control system to a system based on the harvesting cooperatives assigned a proportion of the allowable catch.
By the time Lubchenco, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last April to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for President Obama, the groundwork for catch shares had been well laid, and the result was all but a fait accompli.
Lubchenco is also expected soon to release a draft policy paper on catch shares. She previously helped write a transition paper on catch shares for EDF in which the scientists held catch shares essential to end a level of overfishing so severe that it could, by 2048, leave the oceans the province of "jellyfish." The paper has been widely disputed by other scientists.
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
Now read the reaction to the article:
"However, readers of the Gloucester Daily Times likely don’t know this. Because instead of providing balanced, objective information about the pros and cons of the current days-at-sea system versus other systems, reporter Richard Gaines has focused his coverage almost entirely upon criticisms of this management tool and given voice almost exclusively to those opposed to it. Coverage of those speaking in favor of the program and its potential benefits has been heavily loaded with biased language that questions the validity of the science, the organizations and the credentials of the experts delivering this point of view.
Sadly, the ones who lose most here are his readers—especially those who have a stake in the health of the fishing industry. We hope those who are interested in learning more about the pros and cons of catch shares and other fishery management practices will contact us, contact the Fishery Management Council, or contact fishermen's groups that have been advocating for a form of catch shares called "sectors" for years.
Change is difficult, and can cause undue stress when it’s not accompanied by an open and thorough exchange of information. Those affected by the changes in New England fisheries need and deserve to have the full story of the changes that are occurring—and they're not getting it in the Gloucester Daily Times."
Comments from commercial fishing families below:
| Dear Ms. Regas, In response to your indication that Richard Gaines is not reporting the full truth on Catch Shares, I must tell you I am absolutely in favor of Richard. I am one of the few women who harvest fish for a living, and with the half truths that are being presented to the public about catch shares is shameful. Your organization has done much to destroy fishermen and the communities that are supported by them. Catch shares consolidate fleets, the privatize the fisheries, they overcapitalize and they destroy lives. If they are so great, why is the EU abandoning their catch shares program after 25 years. Look what catch shares have done to the crab fishermen. About 266 boats were in business before rationing the fishery, now there about 80. Tell me how that helps our economy, ends what you call overfishing, and who profits from it. Big business that's who. Why should we pay to go to work, when I know for a fact there are more than enough fish to catch in our oceans.Why should we be regulated to death, only to let foreign nations catch our fish over the Hague Line, only to sell it back to our country. Does that make any sense to you? The amount of fish I throw over on a daily basis is sinful. Your organization does nothing but promote for big corporations to come in and take over our oceans, and to tell the American People that these big corps. will not take advantage and collapse every fishery they can get their hands on is deplorable. I see right through the game, even if most of America believes this nonsense called catch shares, you people know exactly what you are doing. The facts speak for themselves. |
Posts
All Comments
