Solomon's Work: Is Fisheries Management Sacrificing the Fishery to Save the Fish?By Tony Corey Winter–Spring 2001 The observation from Mike McGiveney pretty well defines a year’s intensive
public discussion about licensing the commercial fishing industry in Rhode
Island. Considerations of both urgency and destiny drive these hearings. With
a moratorium on new licenses about to expire, fisheries managers are on
the clock to come up with some sort of licensing plan that will potentially
redefine the state’s fishing industry. At stake is a harshly Solomonic
determination: who gets to fish and who doesn’t. “There are no easy answers,” concedes Peter August, director of the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island (URI), an entity developed to advance knowledge and develop solutions to environmental problems in coastal ecosystems. For these hearings, the Coastal Institute serves as neutral facilitator to “package the collective wisdom of the resource users” for inclusion in legislative deliberations. Moderating the public hearings as Coastal Institute director, August is officially and necessarily neutral about the proceedings, but he clearly appreciates the stakes. “How do you preserve the fishery and allow these people to make a living?” he asks rhetorically. “They’ve made a huge investment in boats, equipment, deckhands, staff. This goes back generations for some. At the same time, the new kid deserves a chance to get in.” August ponders the dilemma, then cuts to the quick of the issue: “But if the resource collapses, everybody’s out.” Spring 2002 But even as they seek to remedy an intractable problem so they can keep
fishing, they feel their fishery being cut out from under them. Against
the backdrop of groundfish fishery closures, an abrupt monkfish fishery
closure, and the draconian Kessler court ruling, they talk gamely about
weak links and neutral buoyancy and knotless cuts. But their expectations
falter under the new developments undermining their livelihood. “I’ve got zero days for monkfish. I’ve got 12 days for gillnetting,” one participant vents in exasperation. “So why spend all this time and all this money on equipment modifications to meet regulations? Why bother?” “We’ll solve these problems. We will,” counters another. Wearily he adds, “But then a whale will get entangled and someone will go to court, and there will be another step…. Where will it end?” Whale entanglement and groundfish stock status are different aspects of the same biological/social/political phenomenon: ocean animals in trouble, the fishing industry blamed, regulators awash in government dictates, court mandates, industry outcries. The leapfrogging of biological assessments, court orders, regulations, and industry response has cultivated an unwieldy process that some describe as management by lawsuit. “Lawsuits are driving a lot of these programs,” acknowledges Jackie Odell—at
the time a URI marine affairs graduate student contracted by Rhode Island
Sea Grant to coordinate and report the results of this workshop. “There’s
a lot of pressure to act.” The frustration is clear in Point Judith lobsterman John Peabody’s point-blank demand to know if the conservation community will allow fishermen time to develop entanglement solutions or if, as in the groundfish situation, “You’re going to tell us we’re doing okay but it’s not fast enough, and you’re gonna shut us down?” “If I had my druthers, I’d like to see slow, steady progress for getting troublesome lines out of the water while still allowing the industry to fish,” responds Susan Young. Young represents the Humane Society of the United States, one of the conservation organizations whose lawsuits keep the fisheries service’s feet to the fire regarding Marine Mammal Protection Act mandates. “Management by lawsuit is no one’s choice,” she assures, explaining that her organization only goes to court when it believes NMFS is overlooking some action that could reduce harm to whales. “But once we bring suit, we have no control over what the agency does in response.” What the agency does typically involves some form of area closure and/or gear restrictions. Because gear modifications are more flexible and more forgiving than closures, allowing fishermen to continue to harvest, they are the first choice of the industry. But a troubling down side of gear-focused remedies, Odell notes, is the absence of evaluation of their effectiveness. “Every six months, someone’s telling fishermen they’ve got to change
their gear but can’t even tell them if the changes are working,” she says.
Investing repeatedly in gear modifications to meet regulatory requirements,
fishermen feel entitled to know if these efforts have in fact reduced
entanglement mortality. So far, they don’t have an answer. Spring 2003 A Sea Grant fisheries extension workshop presented to update fishermen on scientific and technological developments related to urgent industry concerns explores the possibilities of such ownership. One in a series of focused workshops organized through a National Sea Grant Fisheries Extension Enhancement Initiative, this one deals with rights-based management as an option for salvaging the fishing vocation while saving the fisheries. “Rights-based management uses economic incentives to stabilize expectations,” Robert Pomeroy, Connecticut Sea Grant fisheries extension specialist, tells workshop participants. “It’s a self interest that fosters stewardship.” Unlike traditional management measures that dictate the who, when, where,
and how of commercial fishing, rights-based management restores control
to the individual by conferring rights to a specific, defined use of the
fishery. Use rights may involve access, catch amounts, territory, effort,
or some other apportionment of the resource. Pomeroy contends that restrictions on access are essential if a fishery is to be profitable. The conflict here is that the fisheries are a public resource, and the public trust doctrine ensures free access to resources held in trust. But increased competition in the fisheries, the scarcity of the resource, and the limited effectiveness of regulatory techniques in alleviating either competition or scarcity, raise the specter of private entitlement to the public fishery, Pomeroy says. Specific means of participation in the fishery depend on society’s objectives, on social and cultural considerations, on economic expectations, on political realities, and related factors, elaborates Anthony Charles, Pew Fellow in marine conservation at St. Mary’s University, Halifax. Participation might take the form of a license—a basic privilege to use the fishery—and/or specific allotments of days at sea, geographic territory, or percentages of the harvest quota. (Participation rights are not restricted to individual assignment but may be shared within a community, a fishing sector, a cooperative or even a corporation, again depending on the expectations for the fishery. Nor are the rights necessarily bound to the original owner: They may be transferable—subject to assignment, lease, or sale—or they may be limited in duration.) These allotments are rights of use, not ownership, Pomeroy is quick to point out. “We’re not giving away the resource.” The fisheries remain in the public trust, he assures, and the government remains guardian of that trust. While fishermen or other rights holders determine harvesting strategies within the parameters of their rights as users, “the government retains its responsibility to conserve the resource for the public.” Even so, some industry observers are wary of divvying up the fisheries among private hands, concerned that first-cut decisions may be hard to undo. In particular, the initial allocation—who’s in, who’s out, and who makes that decision—can shape the fishery well into the future, and possibly irreversibly, Charles cautions. If transferability of use rights—a linchpin of some rights-based regimes—is part of the deal, control may end up concentrated in a few hands, a situation that essentially privatizes the fishery. This unintended consequence gets stark testimony from Arthur Bull, director of the Bay of Fundy Marine Resource Center and Fundy Fixed Gear Council, the latter a local fishery management board in Nova Scotia. Bull reports that, under an individual transferable quota (ITQ) management system in Nova Scotia, fisheries ownership is so concentrated that profits, though healthy, are very narrowly channeled. “Ten years ago, there were 99 independents in the scallop fishery,” he says. “Now, six men own the 99 licenses.” Moreover, he relates, “less than 10 processor companies own all the mobile groundfish quota in southeast Nova Scotia. Others have to buy quota from these companies to fish in the fishery.” Consolidation to such an extent negatively affects crew and other industry workers who are not part of transfer transactions, Charles interjects. And Bull speaks of harsh impacts that reverberate through the community: the loss of community attachment as licenses are sold to outsiders, and the rise of “slipper skippers,” individuals vaguely equivalent to absentee landlords, who “make a good living leasing or selling ITQs” without boats or crews or local connections. Given that variations on ITQs are among the most widely explored alternative management options, the down side of ITQ programs carries significant weight with fishermen. Chris Brown, captain of the F/V Grandville Davis and president of the Rhode Island Commercial Fishermen’s Association, pointedly decries management systems “designed so it’s advantageous to get out.” He fervently believes that “fishing has to be good while you’re in it. You shouldn’t be able to get rich quick by getting out!” Fall 2003 Kathleen Castro believes it will. “A sustainable fishery is achievable,”
she declares with conviction. “And the path to a sustainable fishery is
having everyone involved.” “Fisheries management is not about managing fish; it’s about managing people,” Castro insists. “So it’s paramount that all the stakeholders be there. They have to be at the table, they have to be educated in the issue, and they have to be willing to participate.” Castro understands that people have different agendas when it comes to fisheries management. This is why she and her staff value process as well as product in their extension endeavors. By laying a foundation of up-to-date scientific and technological information and building in opportunities for face-to-face exchange among constituencies, they create an interactive informational environment. “It’s the perfect Sea Grant role,” observes David Beutel, Sea Grant fisheries extension specialist, “bringing everyone together and letting them hash it out.” This game plan informs Sea Grant's part in the licensing hearings, Ideas Into Action Reitsma, at the time director of the R.I. Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) and frontlines player in the restructuring of the commercial fishing licensing system, focuses the discussion as “Solomon’s work” progresses through another public hearing. His admonition anticipates his agency’s responsibility for shaping the legislation born of these hearings into formal regulations. It’s a daunting task, one that has been postponed in part through the now-expiring license moratorium and one that now demands the support of the diverse and disparate constituencies assembled at this hearing. Commercial fishermen from all fisheries, as well as resource managers, political leaders, academic experts, recreational fishermen, conservationists, and the concerned public, are here to speak for particular interests, but in this arena they talk together to articulate goals and objectives they can work into recommendations for licensing legislation. Propelling the process from idea to action, a triumvirate of state entities divides up the challenges of making new law. Along with the Coastal Institute, which coordinates and documents the public hearing process to generate options for licensing reform, RIDEM, the regulatory agency that manages fishery resources, contributes technical and biological information about stock status. In addition, RIDEM contributes its familiarity with the state’s political apparatus to make a case for improved data collection and broader management options. Closing the gap between public discussion and public policy, an intergovernmental fisheries task force takes position to “make it happen politically,” in the words of August. It’s this formally titled Intergovernmental Working Group, composed of representatives of the governor’s office and both houses of the Rhode Island legislature, that ultimately turns grassroots feedback into draft legislation. “What’s unique and important about the hearing process is that it’s not the regulators and the legislators developing the recommendations; it’s the people in the industry,” August notes. “The fact that this group can’t speak for everyone is the reason there are no votes, no hand counts, no recommendations—just comments, reasons why this or that is a good idea or a bad idea,” he adds. “But if there are elements where there’s emerging consensus we’ll find it.” Consensus can be a slippery proposition with so many issues in play and
so many players in the game. But tentative agreement is graspable as sometime
adversaries come face to face to brainstorm, argue, compromise, and ultimately
coalesce. If the outcome doesn’t please everyone, it does at least demonstrate that process can be as important as product. “Participants like the fact that they can talk directly to the people who are crafting their concerns into legislation,” says August. And Reitsma assures that points of concern are subject to fine-tuning. “Just because we have to adopt new regulations within three months doesn’t mean the process ends.” For now, the process creates a plan, a real, specific course of action that commits all concerned parties to protection both of the resource and the integrity of the fishery. The quiet success of the experience is evident in the philosophically simple observation of Robert Rheault, a Rhode Island aquaculture pioneer and a man well acquainted with the vagaries of untested regulation: “The enemy of the good is the perfect. What we have here is good.” Entanglement Solutions Brodeur, like many fishermen, alters his fishing practices and invests in new gear to prepare for a situation he may never encounter. Given the odds of snaring a marine mammal in his lines, Brodeur may have ideas about entanglement prevention that make more sense than hauling all gear out of the water or shutting down the fishery. So this is his chance to speak up. The whale entanglement gear advisory workshop puts him in the company of other fishermen, gear designers, and some management and scientific representatives who all have expertise in some area of gear and entanglement issues. In this forum, Brodeur and his fellow participants debate management tactics, evaluate new technology, and explore gear-based responses to entanglement avoidance mandates, says Beutel, facilitator of the whale entanglement workshop. The workshop is one element of the ongoing NMFS large whale take reduction effort, Beutel explains. Take reduction programs are mandated by Congress through the Marine Mammal Protection Act to reduce harmful interactions between marine mammals and commercial fishing operations. Formal take reduction teams are responsible for developing plans to reduce marine mammal bycatch in specific fisheries. This workshop fulfills a recommendation from the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, whose mission includes satisfying lawsuits demanding more aggressive protection of the endangered northern right whale. The goal, says Beutel, is to reduce whale mortality by reducing entanglement through gear modification. With its focus on fishermen and their in-the-trenches assessment of entanglement prospects and prevention, this workshop takes a tack somewhat different from the usual management discussion. Instead of hearing updates from regulators, warnings from enforcers, lectures from conservationists, these participants meet behind closed doors to “talk about solutions, talk about what they really do to be compliant,” Beutel says. They freely and frankly consider what works and what doesn’t, discussing and passing judgment on both gear requirements and on regulatory regimes. “There’s no reason not to be honest,” Beutel observes, making note of the workshop’s environment of privacy and its leadership by facilitators intimately familiar with the issues. Maine fisherman Leroy Bridges concurs: “It’s important to have this type of environment where you can talk without Big Brother watching,” he says. “It’s important to maintain an environment where people don’t reach that threshold of ‘had enough.’” In the sanctuary of the workshop, fishermen do voice their frustration about revolving gear requirements and their concern about sweeping, uniform management closures they feel fail to account for differences in fishing environments. But they also direct their energy toward positive action, presenting their own suggestions for resolving the whale entanglement issue. This, in fact, is a stated purpose of the workshop: enabling individuals with gear and fishery expertise to explore designs and modifications that will minimize or eliminate entanglement risks. “The ideas are out here in the industry,” declares Cape Cod fisherman and inventor Gary Ostrum. “We know what works.” That being understood, workshop participants indulge in show-and-tell review of gear alternatives, rating the value of inventions such as time- and tension-controlled line cutters, lipid soluble lines, knotless mechanical line splicers, and low-profile, tapered buoys that prevent or quickly correct entanglement problems. And they summarize their assessments in specific recommendations for NMFS follow up: gear models that merit funding for research and development, gear projects that rate discontinuation, and, in a broader view, management strategies that warrant rescinding. From here, the process moves to the take reduction team, which will promote development of selected recommendations, and then to NMFS, which will build on the recommendations. And while workshop participants urge timely follow up to their technological and regulatory proposals for entanglement solutions, they themselves offer a frontlines fix suggested in the subdued optimism of Brodeur’s comment: “There are a lot of us out on the water now paying attention. We’re a lot more aware.” Responsibility vs. Rights Weighing the merits of and considering the caveats about use rights based on individual quotas, community quotas, transferability, territorial boundaries, and limited entry, participants in the Sea Grant fisheries extension rights-based management workshop cut to the chase: Do these management alternatives work? “There is no inherently superior use right,” Charles responds, noting that each option presents drawbacks as well as opportunities. Controlling access rights by limiting entry “does limit the number of players and does slow expansion of the fishery, but it doesn’t resolve the rush for fish,” he says. Determining privileges according to fishermen’s input (days at sea, vessel, gear) does minimize waste but encourages use of technological advantages, “which creates the potential for overexploitation.” Basing participation on output—the catch—“does reduce overcapitalization and the race to fish but creates an incentive to waste—to dump, discard, or underreport to ensure the highest value of the catch.” He believes, though, that implementing some form of rights-based management “is better than doing nothing. The goal is to create an atmosphere where people believe in the system they’re working with.” Such a system is reality for a segment of Nova Scotia’s fishing population. It’s a community-based manage-ment program that Bull describes as “a system of democratic self-governance.” What sets this program apart is the fact that local management boards created—and funded—by fisheries associations develop and carry out the management regime for their memberships. The management boards allocate their counties’ shares of the federal quota, contract participants, sanction infractions, and set research agendas, while the federal Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans retains responsibility for overall quota allocation, quota monitoring, and on-the- water enforcement. The strength of the system, Bull says, is its “very strong bedrock of democratic fishermen associations. It’s more a question of responsibility than it is about property rights. “The main thing we’ve learned,” he offers decisively, “is that fishermen can manage the fisheries. “It’s not about more fish but about more stewardship.” Amendment Alternatives In public comment hearings for the proposed Amendment 13 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, fishermen lament the devastating social and economic impacts the regulations will have on their industry. Four alternatives under consideration include variations of severely reduced days at sea, gear modifications, area management programs with elements of TAC cutoffs, and “hard” total catch limits that shut down the fishery when the limits are reached. For the Northeast groundfish fleet, any one of these looks like the end of the line. “Discussion in the industry is that we’ve endured enough. The stocks are recovered and recovering, and we won’t choose from these alternatives,” says Jackie Odell, now executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition (NSC). The coalition is an organization of harvesters and industry-related businesses from mid-coast Maine to Long Island. Grasping for some source of hope for an industry rapidly losing sight of its future, NSC brings NMFS Director William Hogarth and other NMFS leaders to a meeting with fishermen to plead their case against Amendment 13 as proposed. Hogarth responds with his proposition for an industry-designed alternative: If the plan adheres to Amendment 13 provisions and meets biological objectives and legal requirements, it will get a hearing, he assures. The outcome of this challenge is dramatic testimony to industry initiative and self-management. With diligence and determination, Vito Giacalone, a Gloucester, Mass., dragger and chair of NSC’s governmental affairs subcommittee, gives voice to his own evolving ideas and the suggestions of others in the industry to craft NFC’s proposal. What becomes Alternative 5 meets the mandates of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the Kessler decision, sustains the rebuilding process, and ensures flexibility for fishermen. In a marathon meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council, Alternative 5 wins council approval and becomes the platform on which Amendment 13 will be based. The heart and soul of Alternative 5 is redirection of effort from weaker stocks to healthier stocks. Because some stocks are strong, Odell says, fishermen should be able to fish for these species while leaving troubled stocks to rebuild. “Unlike the other alternatives, which all require cuts in days at sea to address overfishing, our proposal reclassifies days at sea instead of eliminating them. This way, once stocks recover, fishermen can get back into those fisheries.” In a nutshell, the classification scheme divides days at sea allotments among A days, open to fishing for any groundfish species; B days, open to fishing for fish stocks that are doing well, though potentially with gear modification or special permission requirements; and C days, latent days that can be reactivated once stocks are rebuilt. Odell emphasizes that all permit holders get the baseline 88 days at sea allocated under current regulations, although the number of these that are active A days depends on the indiv-idual’s fishing history in the years from 1996 through 2001. The proposal does reduce days at sea, as do other alternatives, but it does so with one clean cut rather than phased-in reductions. Says Odell, “We’ll take the cut up front so people can figure out what to do with their lives instead of every single year facing another cut.” She points out that in other areas Alternative 5 also incorporates elements proposed in the original four alternatives. With only a month to put the plan together, NSC pointedly avoids recommendations that might require extended analysis or review. The proposal’s strength is its manipulation of existing elements to allow response to the realities of the fishery. “Our mission is to mitigate the socioeconomic threats of Amendment 13 while dealing with the legal requirements of overfishing,” Odell says. She believes the NSC alternative “provides fishermen hope for the future, gives them incentives to be inventive and gives them the opportunity to fish on healthy stocks without bycatch and without depleting the resource.” From Amendment 5 to rights-based management programs to entanglement-reducing gear inventions to licensing legislation, fishermen are taking on the challenge of managing their industry. Their involvement, as Odell and Castro emphasize, is their insurance for their own future and for the health of the resource. “Sometimes,” Castro says in quiet understatement, "the fishermen have the solution." —Tony Corey is a Communicator for Rhode Island Sea Grant. Related Links: National Marine Fisheries Service
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