Consumer group joins call top halt catch shares

A major consumer advocacy group has released a new study of fishery job losses caused by the regulatory program being pushed by the Obama administration and its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the organization is calling for a halt to any expansion of any catch share programs.

Food & Water Watch last week released its global research report showing a common pattern of job loss to consolidation and profiteering through catch share management regimens, and leaders called on Congress to prevent further expansions of the regulatory scheme, which came with controversy to Gloucester and the New England groundfishery last year.

Catch shares were first imposed in the Middle Atlantic on surf clams in 1991 and have been tried in a small number of fisheries, but in 2010 NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco declared catch shares official policy of the Obama administration.

Initial analyses of the impact of the catch share regimen on the groundfishing industry have documented both trends — fewer working boats and equity concentrated in the best capitalized businesses.

Food & Water Watch affirms that, five months into the catch share experience in the New England groundfishery, barely 10 percent of the boats accounted for 61 percent of the fishing revenue.

"Catch shares only increase profits for some fishermen by cutting hundreds out of the fishery entirely," according to the executive summary of the report, titled "Fish, Inc."

"Widespread job loss and reduced wages drag coastal communities ... into dire economic situations," the report continues. "Meanwhile, a privileged few are able to profit from exclusive access to a public resource."

The Washington, D.C. based non-profit warned that the administration's catch share policy will do to the fisheries what consolidation and corporatization did to the small family farm.

Food & Water Watch, which has been critically studying catch shares for a number of years, released a survey of U.S. fisheries managed via catch shares, showing that every one has experienced hyper consolidation driving out a significant number of boats.

F&WW has attempted to serve as something of a counterpoint to the Environmental Defense Fund, a much larger and politically influential $200 million non-government organization that promotes catch shares as a solution to alleged "overfishing" — and whose former board vice chairwoman, Lubchenco, was picked by President Obama to head NOAA in early 2009.

Since Lubchenco moved from EDF and academia to NOAA, the pace of expansion of catch share programs has accelerated.

The consumer group launched its push to rein in catch shares last week from the New Bedford waterfront, backed by New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, Tina Jackson, president of the American Alliance for Fishermen and their Communities, Richie Canastra, an industry leader and auction owner and about a dozen fishermen.

Among them was Joel Hovanesian, who like Jackson, works from Pt. Judith, R..I, but announced at the news conference that the groundfish catch shares program have helped convince him to sell his permit and boat.

He said he knew the day would come sooner or later but had hoped it would be a happier moment.

F&WW also released a letter to NOAA administrator Lubchenco challenging a legal opinion allowing NOAA to continue spending on catch share research and development despite a federal budget amendment approved by Congress last winter that bar any new catch share rollouts in the fiscal 2011 budget cycle, which runs through Sept. 30.

NOAA's Office of General Counsel released a legal opinion in April that justified continued spending on catch shares up to but not including new rollouts, but F&WW wrote that the intent of the so-called Jones amendment, as modified in conference and affixed to the Continuing Spending Resolution, only intended to allow spending on catch shares to allow work "on existing already approved limited access privilege programs (the legal name for catch shares) to get them right." The congressional amendment is named for Rep. Walter Jones, it's North Carolina Republican sponsor.

Catch shares now exist in about 10 percent of global and U.S. fisheries.

"Fish are a public resource," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "Unfortunately, private investment groups and even some public interest groups have shamelessly and publicly compared access to fish to the stock market, and are treating it like an investment that can be bought and sold for personal profit.

"They're aiming to model the fishing business after big agriculture on land, with giant commercial operations controlling the market," she added.

Fish Inc. explicitly identifies Environmental Defense Fund as the subject referenced by Hauter.

The report recounts how David Festa, an EDF vice president, described fishermen as "unskilled," "unprofessional," and "itinerant labor" with "high drug use" in a pitch to ethical investors at a 2009 conference in Los Angeles. It was at that conference that he also predicted profits of 400 percent and up for investors who buy into fishermen's catch shares.

Hovanesian, a longtime commercial "highliner" and outspoken activist, has been a leader of the Pt. Judith commercial fishing community, and a leader of the resistance to NOAA fisheries management, most notably catch shares.

"It's the end of a way of life for me," Hovanesian said in an interview. "I felt that I was forced out of the business. They've made it so complicated and confusing and ridiculous — and intrusive into our lives."

After selling his 75-foot offshore dragger, Excalibur, and his permits, Hovanesian said he would continue fishing part-time, crewing with a friend, Harold Loftes.

He also said he would remain active in policy and political battles.

"I'm not going away," he added.

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

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