According to the press release this mess is brought to New Englanders not by Laurel and Hardy but by NMFS. In order to get around resistance to catch shares, the New England council created a “common pool” that would allow operators for whom catch shares was not a fit to harvest under the existing — and equally unsatisfying — regime of days at sea.
It is informed that trouble is, a program metering effort might enable a guy to catch more fish than he’d be entitled to under a catch share allocation. David Goethel, a council member and draggerman, said that under this program one can catch more fish in one year in the common pool than you could in three fishing in a sector.
It is explained that with too many vessels in the common pool, fish stocks could take a shellacking, one day at a time. With that in mind, the council voted this week to substantially reduce daily trip limits for the common pool fleet. Observers say that as a result, the survival of much of the common pool fleet is in doubt.
Experts told that the problem with catch shares isn’t the regime, it’s the resource. If there’s not enough fish to go around, no credible allocation plan is going to find many enthusiastic adherents. It is clear that the agency operates as though its mission were the elimination of fishing vessels. It has been said to eliminate enough vessels and the world’s worst management regime will succeed, if by succeed you mean not harvest many fish.
