With experts being flown in from other regions, the New England Fishery Management Council is holding a two-day workshop on catch shares, the bitterly debated method of privatizing fish stocks and granting harvesting rights, later this month at the venerable and pricey Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, N.H.

The sponsorship by the council, an arm of the federal government, makes the event public. But while the workshop is thus open to all, the public has not been invited.

"The meeting is not intended for the public," according to an e-mail from the council in response to questions from a fishing industry member, "but there will be minimal space available for (public) observance of the meeting.

"We will have only 30 free seats available each day. The agenda will include a public comment period, but that, too, will be limited."

The workshop dates are set for Oct. 20 and 21, weeks after the council made modifications in the details of a catch share system it had approved in June for the groundfishery.

The choice of the resort, built early in the last century at the side of Mount Washington, the region's highest point, puts its far from the fishing ports along the coast at sea level, 21âÑ2 hours from Portland, Maine, 31âÑ2 hours from Gloucester and 51âÑ2 hours from Point Judith, R.I.

"The purpose of the workshop is to share information and concerns about the use of catch shares ... and our target audience are our council members and staff (as well as others affiliated with the council)," council officials said in an e-mail.

Patricia Fiorello, spokeswoman for the council, said the workshop was organized not primarily for the edification of the public or the industry, but to help the council — the federal legislative body for the New England fisheries — gain a clearer understanding of catch shares.

She said about 55 people have confirmed their plans to attend.

But one invitee, Vito Giacalone, the Gloucester entrepreneur and industry innovator for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said the workshop seemed to be badly timed — falling after two years of debate leading to the creation of a catch share program for the groundfishery.

"Fire, ready, aim," he said.

The Seafood Coalition has organized 13 sectors that will work off catch shares.

The catch share debate partly centers on claims that aligning ownership with conservation aims will help preserve the stocks and provide a profit motive for the limited access to the privileged few granted catch share rights.

The other side of the debate is the concentration of equity, its emigration, consolidation and the disruption of cultures that reflect the dependence on locally owned fishing interests.

The scheduling of the event also puts it between two grassroots efforts by elements of the fishing industry to connect with its overseers.

A number of scallopers have obtained a meeting in Silver Spring, Md., with James Balsiger, the acting head of the National Fisheries Management Service on Oct. 14, while, on Oct. 30, contingents of groundfishermen from as far away as New Jersey are planning a mass protest at the regional headquarters in Gloucester of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Both protests are in reaction to catch share programs that are in the process of implementation.

At Bretton Woods, the featured guest speaker is Monica Medina, a private contractor who is being paid more than $100,000 a year to direct a "Catch Share Task Force." Medina's group is expected to report to Jane Lubchenco, who heads NMFS' parent, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on months of interviews about opportunities to convert traditional fisheries into catch shares.

Medina was chief counsel for NOAA in the Clinton administration, before moving to the Pew Environment Group during President George W. Bush's terms. She was on the search committee that proposed Lubchenco, an alpha academic scientist and stalwart of both Pew and the Environmental Defense Fund before her nomination to head NOAA.

A controversial subject which has come to dominate federal fishery policy and politics, catch shares are lauded as a near panacea for the economic and ecological problems facing the nation's fisheries by many environmental groups, notably the Environmental Defense Fund and Pew.

They were debated and assembled as a new economic and conservation system for the groundfishery of New England over the past two years. The pivotal meeting was in June in Portland, where the council approved the conversion of the fishery into sectors or harvesting cooperatives that will be granted catch shares; those fishing boats that eschewed the sectors will fish in a common pool under the same effort control system — days at sea, closed areas and daily catch limits — in place now.

The Environmental Defense Fund is indirectly involved in the sponsorship of the event.

The event is expected to cost between $20,000 and $25,000, split between the council, which whose budget comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Duke University's Fisheries Leadership & Sustainability Forum and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. According to its Web site, the Duke forum is a joint partnership with the the Environmental Defense Fund and Stanford's Wood Institute.

Coming from Duke is a party of three, including Amy Schick Kenney, who is married to Justin Kenney, the former communications director for the Pew Environment Group who was hired by Lubchenco to head NOAA communications.

Kenney is the support director for the forum.

Three present and former officials in the Pacific Fishery Management Council are being flown in to discuss catch share programs on the West Coast.

All invited guests will have their costs paid by the council, which received a government rate for the rooms in the Mount Washington Hotel, a National Historic Landmark opened in 1902 which "immediately became a favorite summer haunt for poets, presidents and princes," according to the hotel's Web site.

No press release accompanied the e-mail announcement of the workshop that passed through elite and well-connected fishing circles in the past week.

Rooms for the conference are approximately twice the cost for accommodations at the circuit of business-class hotels used by the council for its regular working meetings.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com