Catch share slow-up hailed

A consumer group, Food & Water Watch, yesterday seconded the Pew Environment Group's motion that the Obama administration ease its ardor at commodifying public fisheries to achieve ecosystem restoration with investor principles.

And the latest action may have sparked a full-fledged national debate on the privatization of the oceans' resources.

The impetus for the government's regulatory policy comes from the Environmental Defense Fund, which is known for its faith in corporate and investor dynamics to fuel the path to its environmental goals.

Under pressure from Jane Lubchenco, a former Environmental Defense Fund vice chairman, now the federal administrator for fisheries, the New England Fishery Management Council last summer agreed to phase in a catch share system for the region's groundfishery next year. A similar system is being designed for the scallop fishery.

Catch shares exist today in a small minority of U.S. fisheries but Lubchenco is trying to see where they might be fitted in.

Many fishermen and community leaders in Gloucester and elsewhere, however, strongly oppose catch shares based in part on their impact on fishing businesses and communities, but it was assumed — until the Pew teleconference Tuesday — that the environmental sector was as united in support of them.

During the Pew teleconference, one speaker -- Zeke Grader, representing an association of West Coast fishings groups -- suggested that EDF is controlled by "free market ideologues." The report and the crack brought an EDF rejoinder that Pew's work on catch shares was "overly simplified and somewhat confusing."

Lubchenco, who, along with her ties to EDF is a former Pew fellow and has hired almost exclusively from the environmental sector in staffing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has not yet read the Pew paper on catch shares and therefore had no comment for the second straight day, according to her spokesman, Justin Kenney.

But the consumer group yesterday praised the Pew white paper on catch shares that was released in Washington on Tuesday, and took the environmental giant one step further, arguing that the essential need was to avoid privatizing. If catch shares are used at all to regulate fishing and fishermen, they are best kept in public control, with fishermen's shares leased rather than granted.

Ben Bowman, a fisheries analyst for Food & Water Watch, said catch shares were primarily "an economic allocation tool" and should not be considered a conservation tool.

"Deciding who goes fishing is an economic decision," he said.

A universal effect of catch share privatization in other areas has been the consolidation of equity and fishing effort.

A four-year-old nonprofit group that spun out of Public Citizen and has emphasized corporate and government accountability for food, water, fishing policies and quality, Food & Water Watch — together with the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association — has urged Congress to hold oversight hearings on "the fair allocation of fishing access privileges."

The Pacific Coast Association also participated in Tuesday's Pew teleconference.

The request, which lay dormant since being filed in February, sparked renewed interest Tuesday as Pew Environment Group unveiled its cautionary report on catch shares.

The rosy picture of catch shares cited by EDF in the Alaskan halibut and sablefish fishery was revisited by Pew with "downsides" — including "lost jobs, high cost of entry into the fishery, consolidation of quota holdings and increased administrative costs."

The report also noted that "half the quota is leased to and caught by hired skippers rather than owner-operators. Leasing drives up the price of quota shares and pushes out those with limited capital and other resources," Pew wrote.

Congressman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said he would take up the possibility of hearings with the chairwoman of the House Committee on Natural Resources' Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife.

The subcommittee last week held an oversight hearing on problems with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and heard David Goethel, a New Hampshire fisherman and member of the New England council, testify that the catch share system in development for New England was destined to fail because of, among other factors, inadequate allocations and inaccurate catch histories used to divide the fishermen's total allowable catch.

Goethel also said he believed investor speculation would corrupt the conversion to catch shares, and consolidation would weaken fishing ports economically and socially; he urged a buyout and massive federal investment to ensure that the transition to catch shares proceeds without wreaking damage.

The environmental unit of the $5 billion Pew Charitable Trusts has been instrumental in making the case that the oceans' health is in sharp decline. But that case has been disputed in circles independent of Pew's bountiful academic research grants, and Pew has not been nearly as enthusiastic about catch shares as a fishery panacea as has the Environmental Defense Fund and the Obama administration, through Lubchenco.

Tuesday's teleconference introduced a paper that not only analyzed how and why catch shares can work, but also reserved two chapters that considered where they don't fit. One chapter, titled "Unintended Consequences," dwelled on catch shares' power to destabilize communities and concentrate fishing capacity in a few wealthy hands.

In a rejoinder posted on the EDF Web site almost immediately after the end of the hour-long teleconference, Kate Bonzon, director of design advisory services for the environmental non-profit, agreed with Pew that catch shares pose socio-economic challenges.

"There are critically important issues," she wrote. "The bottom line is that without fish, there will be no fishing communities or fishing jobs.

"Catch shares," Bonson wrote, "are the best approach to ensuring robust, healthy fish stocks."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x 3463, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com

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