The first day of May marked the beginning of sector management, a new system of federal fisheries regulation in which an individual fisherman’s share of the total allowable catch – his “catch share” – is determined by his past landings. Commercial fishermen of the town are not happy with this development. They said it is going to be extremely ugly to start.
Chris King is the only groundfisherman in Provincetown who’s been able to join a sector, a group of fishermen assigned a quota that they must divide among themselves, according to rules recently devised by the National Marine Fisheries Service. All well and good for groundfishermen south of the 42nd parallel, where the daily quota on cod has at times been as high as 2,000 pounds per day. But it’s been a different story in Provincetown.
David Dutra, whose vessel, the Richard & Arnold, is the oldest in the fleet. He said that during the window of time used by fisheries regulators to determine a fisherman’s catch history, Provincetown fishermen were allowed to land just 30 pounds of cod per day. That means they’re faced with correspondingly low allocations under sector management.
Approximately half of New England’s fishermen are in the common pool, and they’re penalized for it. Because sectors control 93 percent of the quota, common pool fishermen are forced to divide up the remaining 7 percent. According to King under the new system everybody throws their stuff into the pot, but everybody has to fish by their own quota. If they exceed their quota, they have to contact someone else in the sector and buy quota to cover their excess.
Cindy Smith, manager of the Tri-State Sector, which King initially looked into before joining the South Shore sector, talked of the turmoil that has resulted from the rushed implementation of sector management. Luis Ribas was one of the local fishermen who dropped out of the sector. He said that with “all the things going on, all the fees,” it just proved too onerous.
