NOAA-pushed plan in stark contrast to course taken overseas

Federal oceans administrator Jane Lubchenco and the two environmental lobbies that were her stepping stones into the Obama administration promote privatizing the wild stocks of the sea into tradeable commodities — or fishermen's "catch shares" — as a scientifically proven antidote to what ails New England's and the nation's fisheries.

But the science comes from a narrow circle of fellow travelers in the orbits of the Pew Environment Group and the Environmental Defense Fund — ENGOs or environmental non-government organizations in which Lubchenco held pivotal positions before her appointment to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And from other quarters — Europe, British Columbia and the New England Fisheries Science Center — the implementation of the catch share regulatory system, set to take effect for Gloucester fishermen and the New England fishery next year, has sparked counter claims and a fierce debate about the effectiveness of the catch share format and their social and environmental impacts.

Just last week, Europe's top fishery official proposed ending a quarter-century experiment in catch shares.

In a presentation to the European Parliament meeting in Brussels, European Union Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg suggested scrapping annual fishermen's catch limits in favor of effort controls — the days at sea system of the New England fishery now being unwound and to be replaced by catch shares.

"Replacing TACs — total allowable catches — and quotas by effort can be a very effective way of reducing the environmental impact of fisheries, and in particular of discards," Borg was quoted as saying in the Aberdeen (Scotland) Press and Journal.

The Press and Journal went on to quote Borg as saying the present system — a mix of catch limits and days at sea — was not working and had failed to deliver either a profitable industry or a sustainable fishery. The New England fishery is targeted for a system allowing fishermen to choose regulation through catch shares, or through the days-at-sea format that would continue for fishermen who opt for an independent common poll rather than join new cooperatives known as sectors.

Research from at least three other sources earlier this summer have also raised serious questions about the economic, environmental and social impact of catch shares or their close relatives, individual fishing quotas, IFQs, or individual transferable quotas or ITQs.

In June, Seth Macinko and William Whitmore of the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island published a report on sectors, the voluntary fishing cooperatives that will begin working under catch shares next May. Commissioned by the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries, the paper warned that converting the common resources into tradeable commodities will not reduce "or solve the bycatch" problem, but will likely accelerate industry consolidation — which seems to be a universal outgrowth of fish stock privatization in almost all forms.

July brought a socio-economic study by Ecotrust Canada that disputed claims of wondrous improvements in the ecosystems and economies of fisheries converted into privatized models. It also brought a bitter exchange between Ecotrust Canada and the EDF, which in public has been pushing catch shares as a conservation panacea and in private as an investment capable of yielding windfall profits.

The Ecotrust study, "A Cautionary Tale about ITQ Fisheries," reviewed the experience of British Columbia fisheries which were converted to ITQ markets in the early 1990s.

The study reported that British Columbia's highly unregulated market encouraged speculative buying and leasing of quota by "armchair" fishermen and investors.

"This is driving up business costs for working fishermen, which is hindering their competitiveness relative to American fishermen. Income is also being drained away from skippers and crewmen to pay for expensive lease fees," Ecotrust reported.

"Individual transferable quotas are being heavily promoted as a solution for both conservation and the financial ills plaguing fishing fleets around the world," said Tasha Sutcliffe, fisheries program manager for Ecotrust Canada. "However, our experience in B.C. is that highly unregulated, speculative ITQ markets can create as many problems as they solve."

"Under ITQ markets, working fishermen in British Columbia are increasingly becoming 'tenants' who pay exorbitant rents to landlords, or 'sealords,' who own all the quota. The lucrative leasing has, in turn, driven up the cost of fishing and the price of purchasing quota, making ownership prohibitively expensive for many fishermen," Sutcliffe said.

Gloucester-based industry analyst, Vito Giacalone voiced similar concerns this summer after learning that EDF officials were talking up investments in catch shares.

"It's a conversion to share-cropping," said Giacalone, a founder of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, the region's leading industry group. "It sets up a Wall Street approach. Now, you handicap the product in the marketplace because people are skimming and renting a public resource."

The Ecotrust study also found that the most important elements in creating sustainable stocks and fishing dependent communities are scientifically defensible catch limits and co-management between government and stakeholders' communities.

When EDF recognized the study on its Web site but interpreted it as endorsing privatized fisheries, Ecotrust objected.

"Ecotrust Canada's motivation for publishing (the study) stems from the fact that some industry and environmental groups — including EDF — exaggerate the importance of catch shares in sustainable fisheries and have ignored or downplayed their negative side. Your blog posting makes our report sound like a glowing reference for ITQs and minimizes our critique of some fundamental problems as experienced in British Columbia, Canada."

"A proper and more balanced reading of our report would suggest that, as implemented in BC, catch shares have created huge market distortions and have missed the mark in achieving a number of objectives," wrote Ecotrust Canada, which describes itself as private, non-profit that promotes the emergence of a conservation economy.

Another cautionary report was published in August — this one from inside the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, a division of Lubchenco's own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Science center anthropologist Julia Olson submitted a chilling report on the tendency of privatized fisheries to create "employment loss, decreased income and quality of life, structural disadvantages to smaller vessels and firms, dependency and debt patronage, concentration of capital and market power, inequitable gains, regulatory stickiness, reduced stewardship, decreased community stability (and) loss of cultural values."

The campaign for catch shares was launched years ago by EDF and the Pew Environment Group; it was brought inside the government by Lubchenco, an academic marine biologist, who was vice chairwoman of the EDF board and a Pew Fellow.

She came to office as NOAA administrator promising enlightened, science-based policies. But the science she has cited to support the catch share conversion policy comes from a roster of academics who are solidly in orbit around Lubchenco herself.

As the basis of her advocacy for catch shares — the priority policy adaptation for fisheries in her administration — Lubchenco has cited a 2008 research paper in the magazine Science, "Can Catch Shares Prevent Fisheries Collapse?" by Christopher Costello, Steven D. Gaines, and John Lynham.

"The Science article looked at 11,135 fisheries from around the world and compared catch share fisheries against those without and found that catch shares halt and even reverse the global trend toward collapse," said NOAA press spokesman Scott Smullen.

But of the 11,135 fisheries that the authors studied, industry analyst and columnist Nils Stolpe wrote in National Fisherman in March, only 121 of them, barely 1 percent, were under catch share models, and an inordinate proportion were used by advanced nations in stable fisheries.

The paper acknowledged this in passing, but unlike Stolpe, the authors did not seem concerned about the thin evidence for their thesis, and in their paper cited other works of dubious scientific relevance.

One such citation was not so much a scientific paper but an op-ed type policy recommendation for catch shares, "Sharing the Catch, Conserving the Fish," by EDF officials David Festa and Diane Regas and EDF fellow Judson Boomhower, in Issues in Science and Technology Magazine.

A member of the Obama transition team for the Department of Commerce — parent agency for Lubchenco's NOAA, where he worked during the Clinton administration as director of policy and strategic planning — Festa advised investors at the Milken Institute in California that catch shares will produce profits in the range of 400 percent.

Festa and Lubchenco are longtime close associates. They co-bylined an op-ed piece in 2006 in the Washington Times praising "Bush, the environmentalist?" when the then-President created a massive marine conservation area off Hawaii.

In 2005, Festa, Gaines and Lubchenco were among the lead instructors in a course on marine conservation and science at Lubchenco's base campus, Oregon State University.

Gaines, the director of the Marine Science Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has been a prolific researcher, grants applicant and distributor and writer. He received his doctorate at Oregon State. His advisor: Jane Lubchenco.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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