Death knell for city's fishing fleet?

The Obama administration yesterday announced it was forging ahead with an experimental, dual track management system for the New England groundfishery that is calculated to cull out a significant number of small boat businesses while pushing hard to meet statutory stock reconstruction deadlines. The system is slated to begin May1.

Estimates of casualties range from half to three-quarters of the groundfishing fleet, which is especially bad news for Gloucester where groundfishing is the dominant form.

Vito Giacalone, the industry innovator and policy director for the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the region's largest industry group, said he expected business failures in the short term to be "pretty dramatic, perhaps 50 percent" of boats.

The announcement of the go-ahead with Amendment 16 was expected despite calls for a delay by industry representatives in Gloucester and New Bedford who argued that the alterations in business and regulatory model were not fully developed.

On the drawing board since 2006, Amendment 16 brings to New England groundfishing ports a partial version of catch shares, which converts the traditional understanding of fish stocks as common wealth into reserved portions of the resource to be taken any time.

The nature of the resource under full catch share management assumes and encourages external investment, but the system approved by the federal regional management council last year stopped short of defining a permanent allocation, leaving investors cautious for now.

The amendment also introduces a 2006 mandate of the Magnuson¬-Stevens Act: hard catch limits and required penalties or "accountability measures" for participants in the fishery who take more than their catch share.

Because of a 1996 Magunson mandate setting deadlines for the recovery of overfished stocks, mostly by 2014, the allocations were squeezed down so fishing business failures are anticipated — and desired.

Allocations of as little as one-half or one-third of last year's catch were reported.

Jane Lubchenco, who as chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the administration's top fishery official, has said she believes a "significant fraction" of the fleet needs to be removed to make the fishery "sustainable and profitable."

In a teleconference yesterday, Eric Schwaab, Lubchenco's choice to head NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, said he had no "timetable" or "absolute expectation" about how job loss via the new federal policies would unfold.

Schwaab also said the administration was prepared to provide financial aid to help the industry adjust to the new systems, and fund cooperative research. He also held out hope that new stock assessment information later this year might allow some loosening of allocations that could help keep the fleet fishing.

"As it stands," said Richie Canastra, a regional fishing industry leader and owner of the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford, "there will be a 50, 75 percent decrease in lost fishing vessels, if they don't give us more volume to catch in choke species."

"There is no victory in any of this for the (coalition)," said Giacalone.

But Giacalone also said he felt energy building for modified catch limits, especially since a closed-door meeting in Boston last week organized by U.S. Sen. John Kerry, who was said by his aides to believe that Lubehenco had flexibility in adjusting the catch limits that she had not used.

Kerry has stopped short of joining Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney in endorsing bills in both houses of Congress to modify and write flexibility into the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The flexibility issue was the prime focus of the mass rally in Washington by thousands of fishermen in February.

Schwaab circulated around the rally to argue against modifying Magnuson, the position held by the Pew Environment Group and the Environmental Defense Fund, the lead advocate for catch shares. Lubchenco, vice chairman of the EDF board before her nomination to head NOAA by President Obama, has made catch shares the No.1 fishing policy nationwide.

The new rules require fishing to stop when the catch limit for any one of the mixed stocks in the 15-species groundfish complex is reached, a "choke" system that Giacalone has predicted could shut down the sector and catch share system in mid-summer.

The coalition organized 12 of the 17 new sectors that go to work May 1.

Fishermen in New England are not forced into sectors and the catch share system. They may instead remain independent businessmen but must continue to work under the existing days at sea system, which has been made even more rigid than in recent years.

Figures released yesterday revealed that 812 boats are enrolled in sectors while 668 have opted to stay independent, but they have barely 2 percent of the allocation, while 98 percent is assigned to the sector boats.

The report on a Northeast Fisheries Summit, organized by New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang in early March, was released yesterday and reflected the anxieties about the new management system.

"Some participants felt that the open-ended nature of Amendment 16 has provided much needed flexibility to managers and sector participants," the document reported. "However, a more widely expressed viewpoint was that too many loose ends remained for May 1 implementation to be successful."

"Several of these species have been coined 'choke species' ... These species are anticipated to cause many sectors to shut down prematurely because they will not have enough quota to continue fishing. If these sectors are able to purchase additional quota from another sector or permit bank they will be able to continue fishing, but many anticipate that the fleet quota is so low that no one will have enough to share.

"The nature of this problem is more so related to the new MSA requirements, but is further exasperated by the implementation of a new management strategy," the report noted.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk wrote to Lubehenco last week urging relief from the traps of choke stocks and low allocations.

"Gloucester fishermen need immediate relief on the so-called choke species," she wrote.

"As I said at the meeting hosted by Sen. Kerry and as you heard directly from Gloucester fishermen," Kirk said, "the mortgage payments start being missed in July, with defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies right behind should the current path be continued. I am wholly unconvinced that these social and economic impacts are necessary."

Gloucester fishing Capt. Paul Cohan of the Sasquatch, a gillnet boat, described his colleagues as "dismayed, disillusioned and betrayed. I feel like we have been misled and bamboozled."

He said he was reacting to a blizzard of new bureaucratic requirements announced recently by federal regulators.

He produced a 10-page "Cliff Notes" booklet on sector operations that summarized an even larger set of rules and requirements.

Cohan said sectors were sold to the fleet as "the lesser of evils" and a way to get out from under stultifying bureaucratic strictures.

Richard Gaines may be contacted at 978-283-7000 x3464 or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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