As per media report New England’s Fishery Management Council has decided to attempt an after-the-fact tweaking of the groundfish catch share system to prevent “excessive” control and “over consolidation” of the nation’s newest commodities market in wild protein stocks. But the council is till not clear of what effort might produce to achieve such result. Some industry forces, representing big off-shore boats based in Maine, have cautioned against actions that could serve to redistribute equity in the fishery.
The council took the decision after a study of the full first year of catch share fishing by quasi voluntary business cooperatives known as sectors, but the anti-monopoly initiative has been working its way toward the public since last year. NOAA’s report confirmed anecdotal reports that many years of consolidation of the fleet, based primary in Gloucester and New Bedford, accelerated in 2010 after the fishery was reorganized to encourage buying and selling of permits under the new catch share management system and trading of ultra low allocations.
The council is said to hold a workshop in sectors, the 17 nonprofit business cooperatives organized over promises that self-government would eliminate much of the suffocating regulation that frustrated the independent minded entrepreneurs. Councilor David Goethel, a New Hampshire day boat fisherman, said that public hearing in every state is a must to have the comments of many people at a time.
Councilor David Pierce, deputy director of marine fisheries in Massachusetts, said that the need is correct because until the workshop on sectors and the publication of the trading report, the council “doesn’t know what it is sending out. Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, made the same point in the debate before the Groundfish Oversight Committee last month.
At the council’s Groundfish Committee meeting last month, the minutes said that several committee members stressed that when the fleet has to support monitoring costs, the small operators will not be sustainable, and the monitoring system needs to be overhauled as soon as possible in order to protect diversity.
