Fisheries panel grills new NMFS chief over catch shares

The Obama administration's race to privatize the ocean fisheries on three coasts has run into a range of congressional skepticism about the cost, the need for speed and the wisdom of converting wild resources that have been held as common wealth into tradeable commodities known as catch shares.

Eric Schwaab, the newly appointed head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, was peppered with questions during a lengthy hearing of U.S. House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife.

Reading from a prepared text and later improvising, Schwaab's answers did not always satisfy the subcommittee.

In an exchange with Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Schwaab dodged a series of questions aimed at inducing him to concede that catch share programs, which permanently allocate the resource as shares to members of the fishery with limited access privileges, are difficult to alter after the creation of property rights.

And in an exchange with Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., Schwaab admitted that he didn't have the facts to confirm or dispute her assertion that the catch share budget was "approaching the gross value of the fishery."

There were also congressional voices in support of catch shares, but the tilt of the hearing was to the other side.

The New England groundfishery is barely one month from a partial conversion to catch shares. The system has been in development for more than three years, but the allocation last June was rushed and in September the New England Regional Management Council, the instrument of NMFS that is assigned legislative duties, revisited and changed some essential decisions involving the fishing rights of the common pool of fishermen who opted against working out of fishing cooperatives known as sectors.

The allocations for 2010 were based on catch histories which NMFS' parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has conceded were erroneous in a number of instances and will be recalculated next year. This need to reallocate has raised questions within the industry about whether the New England shift to catch shares can be considered a true limited access privilege program.

NOAA itself seems confused. Government documents routinely place the New England groundfishery into the group of fisheries to be converted into limited access privilege programs but a legal letter from Patricia Kurkul, the regional administrator, in 2007 explicitly states that the sector program coming to New England on May 1 is not a limited access privilege program.

The budget includes $54 million for catch shares, including $10.5 million shifted away from cooperative research, which is considered the gold standard of research for the quality and credibility of results from the alliance between researchers and fishermen in a regulated industry that features chronic mistrust by the regulated.

The hearing was the second by the subcommittee, chaired by Congresswoman Madeline Z. Bordallo, D-Guam, into the Obama administration's fishing policies. Last month, the panel interrogated Jane Lubchenco, who heads NOAA, about law enforcement excesses documented in a scathing report by the U.S. Commerce Department inspector general after a six-month investigation.

Bordallo revealed that Dale Jones, NOAA's director of law enforcement, had authorized a mass shredding of documents while the investigation was in process.

Lubchenco promised a range of reforms and a public response which is expected soon, perhaps today.

The probe into egregious cases against fishermen and businesses continues.

Bordallo set the tone for Tuesday's hearing in her opening remarks, with the observation that to many in Congress NOAA is roaring ahead with catch shares at the expense of foundation scientific research into the size and status of stocks that form the basis of rationing.

The hearing kept pressure on the administration. That pressure began building at the side of the Capitol in late February with a national protest by at least 5,000 commercial and recreational fishermen and their families who lobbied for action to modify the Magnuson-Stevens Act by allowing flexibility where now a universal deadline exists for the rebuilding of overfished stocks.

The imminence of the deadline, in 2014, is cited as the root cause of catch limits so low that fishermen insist their ability to stay in business will be destroyed. Lubchenco heard a chorus of such complaints while in Gloucester earlier this month for a first House oversight subcommittee hearing, this one chaired by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, into the scandalous actions of the NOAA law enforcement office. Congressman John Tierney, D-Salem, had sought the hearing.

On Tuesday, it was the testimony of Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA regional administrator who now is president of a consulting company with millions in federal fishery contracts, that sparked much of the interrogation of Schwaab.

Schwaab was appointed to the vacant NMFS chief's job from a position in the Maryland fish and wildlife bureaucracy where he had limited saltwater experience shortly before the February mass protest.

Rosenberg made mostly encouraging comments about catch shares, but also advised that because a true conversion to a market system creates private property, it made sense to get it right on the drawing board because redesigns are much more difficult to complete.

As DiFazio attempted to elicit Schwaab's position on that question, Schwaab parsed his words carefully.

"Very carefully, very bureaucratic," noted DiFazio.

As the sparring continued, DiFazio shortened his questions.

"Is it better to get it done beforehand?" he asked.

"Yes, theoretically ..." Schwaab replied.

"No, not theoretically," DiFazio persisted.

Schwaab conceded that doing catch shares correctly at the beginning was a good idea.

DiFazio continued that "the last thing I want is Goldman Sachs buying up all the shares of a fishery in three years, and (having) derivatives of fishery shares being sold on Wall Street. I don't think that you have a clue."

Shea-Porter echoed DiFazio's concerns about the possibility of deep-pocketed investors stepping into the catch share programs without careful controls to protect the fishing communities.

"I worry we will be crowding out small fishermen and that major corporations will be taking over, which would be tragic for many reasons," she said.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464 or at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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