FISHERMEN ON FISHING

Bill Lee – Rockport, MA

A Ground Fisherman Who Sold His Permit to Pay His NMFS Fines

In my fishing career, I recycled myself into my new career as a marine surveyor.

As for the rest of the fishermen in there, all I can say is you have somebody who will always support the industry. Even after I sold my license I did go to Washington, DC. Whenever there is a rally or meeting, I will be there. Whenever there is a vote, whenever there is anything a fisherman needs from me, I promise I will be there forever.

In light of BP, the oil companies and the oil slick coming up the coast, how do you think that affects regulation?

Well, to be honest with you, the way Jane Lubchenco makes her own rules and Obama putting people out of business, I actually think in the end, they will probably give an award to BP for cleaning it up. They’ll put a fisherman out of business, but they’ll probably get an award for how they clean it up whether they get it all or not. They will say “Well, you did a good job after the spill.” I can see Obama sitting with the BP guy saying, “You did a real good job, you got almost 40 percent of that oil back.” And you employed 50,000 unemployed people during that time, but at the same time, sorry, 75,000 fisherman went out of business. But that’s alright – Jane Lubchenco is taking care of that.

Where is Jane Lubchenco writing about the fishing industry and our “destructive power.” I haven’t heard one word she has said about this spill. Why isn’t she up there being appalled? Wait a second, that’s right, the company she works for and supports her; they get a lot of their money or some of their money from the oil industry. Let’s be honest, it keeps coming back to the strange thing everyone there used to work for the oil company, they go to work for the oil company, they support an oil industry interest.

That’s all right. They get all the fishermen out of business and there will be no fishermen on George’s Bank, then they can drill all the oil they want out there because there is going to be nobody in their way. You know, it isn’t the last fishermen standing, it’s the last oil well drilled.

 

---

 

G. Libby - Port Clyde, Maine

 

Glen Libby fishes goundfish, shrimp and scallops out of Port Clyde, Maine, and has for 30 years. His brother is a fisherman, as is his father. He fishes in the sector he helped establish.

“The sector plan, it’s not off the ground yet. My brother has fished under the new regulations and hasn’t found them too burdensome. His reporting (catch reporting) was not quite right, and the service (National Marine Fisheries Service) made the corrections and he didn’t have to stop fishing. He then showed the other guys how to get their reporting right.

We need to find out if there is enough quota for everyone in our sector. We think there is enough. If you based it on what you caught last year, many would say no.

We think there is a fairly good quota of cod. There has to be enough quota to take care of the choke stocks. If your careful when and where you fish, and try to control the amount of choke stock you take, you should be alright.

The choke stock numbers are way out of whack. The surveys can’t find the fish, but the fishermen are finding them. NMFS is going to do an emergency action in early June to increase the numbers for pollock.

At the May 17 herring meeting (New England Fisheries Manage- ment Council) we discussed move along rules. It was very exciting to see that develop. We need mechanisms to act quickly. They have them in Alaska. They can make changes to management plans in a few days.

There is a lot of criticism of sectors, but it’s too soon to throw them out. By the end of the summer we may find we are doing better. Someone with 100 days at sea, who is catching a lot of fish, is used to the volume. But for someone with 39 days, the sector plan looks better because you have more time to catch your quota. If you’re careful with the choke stocks it may be better when the other factors are figured in.

With days at sea I went out and ran the boat constantly to not waste time. The fuel bills were high, so was wear and tear on the boat. Weather was a bigger problem under days at sea. You would go out in bad weather not to waste the days, the opportunity. With sectors we have the same opportunity with flexibility on when we go.

We are also developing markets for groundfish here. The new gear that’s been developed is much more selective. It dramatically reduces bycatch and is easier to tow, which lowered fuel consumption 12%.

In places like Gloucester and New Bedford where there are lots of fish, sectors with the allocations they got are not going to be the same.”

 

---

 

Joe Orlando – Gloucester Ground Fishermen

 

You bought a whole bunch of permits and now they are not the currency of the day?

“They told me that if you want to survive, under that new amendment (Days at Sea) you go buy permits and as long as the baselines fit, you could lease the days to ourselves. So that’s what I did. I went out and bought two permits for $300,000, put my house up for them, and I thought we were doing what they told us to do. Then all of a sudden, they change the rules on us. They changed the currency from days at sea to quota, and because those permits, even though they qualified and they had the full days at sea, we didn’t have much history on them, so we got screwed.

“I had two boys fishing for me. Anthony left, went back to school and he’s working on shore, so I lost him. Mario is still with me, but now with this new Sector plan, they have changed the currency from days at sea to quota. With the quota cuts we don’t have a lot of quota, so I don’t know if Mario is going to be able to stay. I don’t know what is going to happen, we are just going to go through it this year, try it, and try to make the best of it. But, if we can’t, then I don’t know what is going to happen. Unless we get some kind of assistance to keep fishermen in there or more we get more fish into the system, which is what we really need. More fish into the system is what we really need. Not just the choke fish, but a little bit more fish, we spent 10 years rebuilding Gulf of Maine haddock. Because of the rolling closures, we never had a chance to go out and catch that fish when they came back. Because of the rolling closures, we got nothing for it. A lot of us guys, we rebuilt this fishery and we got nothing for it, that’s what I am saying.”

Do you see any future for your two sons in fishing?

“Not for both of them, no way. There is just not enough there, not for us, not unless we have a couple of million dollars. Then you are going to have to see a couple of your buddies die off so you can buy their quota. That’s why this thing is such a disaster, someone has to die for the other guy to survive – it’s crazy. We already had a system that was working and Sectors is no different from Days at Sea.” It’s just a shift and a way to get rid of people?

“It’s just getting rid of people. People worked it out and found a way to get through the Days at Sea system, the government figured that out and said they needed to change something to get rid of more. That’s how the system has been working and that sucks.”