U.S. oceans chief Jane Lubchenco sidestepped questions about her support for reducing the size of the New England fishing fleet yesterday morning in a meeting with Gloucester fishermen, and promised to "refine" coming federal regulations that are projected to wipe out a large portion of the industry.
Around 30 fishermen and industry members warned Lubchenco of a wave of foreclosures, bankruptcies and layoffs on the waterfront in the next year as a result of an upcoming change in management system and severe rationing of the catch starting in May.
They called for changes in how their allocations of fish are calculated, consideration of the impact on fishing communities when developing rules and freedom from requirements to rebuild all marine species to hard targets simultaneously.
"No one is going to make it," said Gloucester fishermen Al Cottone. "My permit is not going to be worth anything. This city is going to be in big trouble."
"The people who have made the sacrifice are being kicked out for people who have never mended a net," said Russell Sherman.
Mayor Carolyn Kirk, the organizer of the meeting held in a BankGloucester conference room, pointed out that Lubchenco in the past has said a "sizable fraction" of the fleet needed to be eliminated for fishery health. And she asked if the NOAA administrator still thought that good for the country.
"I don't pretend to know what the right size of any fleet is," Lubchenco answered. "I intend to work with the community to find the right balance of big and small."
What she offered fishermen — instead of promises the government would work to mitigate lob losses — was an assurance that she felt their pain, and would at least look at tweaking the plan coming down the pipe.
"It is pretty clear that the design of the sector system by (the New England Fisheries Management Council) is not working for you guys; the economic and social consequences of the transition are horrendous," Lubchenco said. "We have a lot of work to do to address what was voiced. We are not scrapping it, but we can refine it. We can make it better."
According to the fishermen at the session, the stakes for Gloucester and other New England ports in getting changes to the upcoming regulations could not be higher.
While fishermen on the wrong side of the conversion from effort control regulation to catch share allocations will feel the immediate affects, the entire community will ultimately suffer the loss of its place in the seafood market, Richard Burgess, owner of four Gloucester boats said.
Once local supplies dry up, the slack will be taken up by foreign companies not under the same strict environmental rules and a few factory ships, Burgess said.
"It will be like Iceland," Burgess said. "It is not a sustainable fishery."
Already the United States imports 80 percent of its seafood.
Sherman said all captains with only one fishing permit, which make up 70 percent of the Gloucester fleet, would not be able to keep fishing under the system proposed for the year starting in May.
"If you want us out — too many boats chasing too few fish — why not allow us a decent way out," Sherman said.
Northeast Seafood Coalition Executive Director Jackie Odell asked Lubchenco to take legal steps to make sure speculators do not use outside capital and current hardship in the industry to buy up and consolidate fishing quota in anticipation of catches increasing in the future.
That concern brought the assurance from Lubchenco that management was "not about Wall Street."
"I am hearing very clearly great angst and concern," Lubchenco said. "This is a difficult time. I hear that."
While fishermen had many questions for Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator only had one for them: how they felt about federal money for buyouts and sector administrative costs.
After the session, the fishermen said they hoped their comments had left enough of an impression on Lubchenco to result in change.
"I hope she was listening," said Mike Walsh, owner of the fishing vessel Guardian. "But I think she has an agenda for catch shares."
"I am an eternal pessimist," said Cottone. "We could lose 25 percent of the boats in the first year and then 50 percent in the second year."
Patrick Anderson can be 978-283-7000, x3455, or panderson@gloucestertimes.com.
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