Fishing leaders target NOAA data

NEW BEDFORD — A brutal version of economic Darwinism pushed by the Obama administration is quickly transforming the New England groundfishery, according to assessments from fishing industry leaders presented here Tuesday.

Landing figures for the first quarter of the fishing year suggest a story of successfully managed conservation with rising revenues — just what the federal government had hoped for in the rollout of its catch share program.

But industry reports from Gloucester, Rhode Island and New Bedford, the nation's No. 1 port in landings' dollar value, Tuesday described the unsettling underside of the catch share experience, with a few big winners and many little losers already emerging.

The initial observations, after three months of learning on the go, were that the new system — which allocates a total allowable catch in the 20 stocks to participants who get a "share" of the catch based on past landing histories, then encourages them to buy, sell or trade their allocation and permits — has begun to produce the signature result that catch shares elsewhere have shown: making the rich richer while driving those with lower allocations to the margins of the industry, or out of it altogether.

"The system is efficient, but it is not equitable," said Emily Keiley, a doctoral student of Brian Rothschild at the University of Massachusetts' School of Marine Science and Technology at Dartmouth.

Keiley presented a statistical analysis of the first-quarter landing and revenue figures that were released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's northeast regional office in Gloucester.

The meeting at the school was part of New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang's Ocean and Fishery Council's series of working conferences, with an eye toward providing an unofficial alternative to the analyses by NOAA.

Lang is leading a broad-based legal challenge to the new federal system.

Rothschild, the school's preeminent research scientist and mentor, was the informal nominee of the industry to serve as head of fisheries in the administration of Jane Lubchenco, named by President Obama to head NOAA.

But Lubchenco declined to make the appointment, despite Rothschild's sponsorship by Congressman Barney Frank and other coastal congressmen. Her refusal led to a widening schism between the industry and its regulators.

Rothschild said Tuesday he believed the catch share system was rushed into practice before it was fully engineered, without clear sense of the socio-economic price.

"There are obvious gaps," said Rothschild. "How can the agency (NOAA) be a steward without the data?"

Although the groundfishery landed 89.7 percent of its landings year to year for the same period in 2009, revenues were up 17.2 percent. More income for a smaller catch, helping conservation and the restoration of the overfished stocks, seemed ideal.

But Richard Fuka, president of an industry group based in Point Judith, R.I., Rich Canastra, who co-owns the major auction in New Bedford and Boston, James Kendall, an analyst in New Bedford, and Vito Giacalone, the leading industry theorist and analyst in Gloucester, reported that the industry was in the throes of potentially disastrous decline everywhere.

The toxic mix, they agreed, was the combination of the catch share system, which encourages the bartering of fish catching rights as virtual commodities and a hyper contraction in the overall volume of fish in the year's allocation. The latter stems from language written into the last two iterations of the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act.

"Overall," said Fuka, "there just isn't enough fish to get the boats through the year."

About one-third of the fishermen are facing fiscal insolvency, Fuka said.

As in Gloucester and New Bedford, the failing businesses typically divest assets, which include catch share allocations and permits.

In Gloucester, said Giacalone — policy director with the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition — at least four boats have been decommissioned already, and others are expected.

Overall, he estimated, the Gloucester fleet is working with an allocation about half the size of last year's.

"All the ills of a poorly conceived (catch share) system are rearing their heads early," Giacalone said.

Responding to a question, he said the system in place resembles that in Major League Baseball around the trading deadline, where teams that believe they can make the playoffs are buying talent while also-rans are selling them off.

"It's not as well organized as baseball," was his caveat to the analogy.

"Folks with enough allocation are buying more; those that lost initially are in serious trouble, competing with the (haves).

"(NOAA) hasn't to date addressed the socio-economic impacts sufficiently," he added.

Canastra said of the groundfishing boats of New Bedford 14 percent have been decommissioned and only 39 percent are working actively.

The fishing industry's push for changes this week isn't limited to Tuesday's conference.

The forum here came two days prior to a planned "friendly protest" by fishermen, organized for Thursday in Vineyard Sound, just off Martha's Vineyard, with boats from as far away as New Jersey expected to visit while President Obama and his family are vacationing.

The bulk of the armada is expected from New Bedford, a two-hour steam across the Sound.

Meanwhile, Gloucester's Northeast Seafood Coalition — also seeking to reach out to the president — ran a full-page ad Tuesday in the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, featuring a letter to President Obama from Gloucester-based fisherman Russell Sherman.

"The purpose of the letter," Coalition Executive Director Jackie Odell said, "is to request (the president's) immediate help to protect the small businesses that are being 'put out of businesses' by policies being generated under his control."

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

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