F R O M T H E C R O W E ’ S N E S T
The Deadly Blow
We are at a cross roads in the New England ground fishery. The prospect of 70% cuts is more than most fishermen can stand. The disaster relief funding amount cited, if it comes and makes it to fishermen, will not fix the fishery and a buy out could nix the future of independents.
Whatever plan attempts to aid the fishermen must have embedded in it the means to preserve the rights of access to the resource for the many who do and want to fish. It must also reduce the accumulation of access in the hands of the few. Loss of common access will end fishing as we’ve known it for centuries.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) forked tongue policy claims it respects the Magnuson Act’s social impacts clause, while at the same time demanding fleet reduction and its implicit consolidation of access. This hard driven policy continues regardless of how many of NMFS management failures are left in its wake.
NOAA has made credible efforts to end over fishing and to get a handle on conditions that change faster than federal policy can. But current conditions do not speak of success.
Fishermen continue to be blamed for the sorry state of the fisheries, while management takes no responsibility for it’s own failures. Fishermen followed NMFS rules and in return NMFS enforcement expressed the agency’s position when they were allowed to trample on the rights of fishermen.
More recently and most notably, has been the dogfish problem. For 100 years dogfish have been considered a predatory plague. Managers 16 years ago, with all the benefits of modern science, decided to protect dogfish over cod. Right now amid talks of 73% quota cuts on fish like cod, dogfish are everywhere and will be protected 11 years beyond the rebuilt stage.
NOAA and congress need to recognize that NMFS’s failures have had a direct and disastrous impact on New England fishing communities. Loss of access will be the deadly blow.
Congress has a duty to bring resources to bear on the problem of preserving the individual fishermen’s access to the public resource. This multi-billion dollar food supply industry and it’s many independent fishermen deserve more funding for survival and better protection from the forces of consolidation.