CASTING COMMENTS Fishingfor Irony By Ted Venker, Conservation Director, Coastal Conservation Association TT


HEY SAY THAT FISHING is the world’s second oldest occupation, so it is likely there have been more ironic events in its long, storied his-


tory, but the recent letter from Massachusetts’s Governor Deval Pat- rick to President Obama must rank near the top of the list.


For those of you who missed it, Gov. Patrick expressed his “extraordinary frustration” with the lack of responsive- ness the Commonwealth has experi- enced with the U.S. Department of Commerce and its agencies on the chal- lenges facing commercial fishermen in Massachusetts. The Governor is upset with the severe regulations that have been placed on his hard-working com- mercial fishing community and the effect it is having on the state’s economy.


In“building”the state of Massachusetts, commercial fishing also proceeded to essentially destroy what was once some of the most prolific, profitable fishing


grounds in the world.


To back up his arguments, Gov. Patrick cited economic statistics to demonstrate commercial fishing’s vital role in Massachusetts’s history and economy. The industry, he said, employs approximately 80,000 people in fisheries and related shore side businesses, and generates $4.4 billion in sales. Those fig- ures are slightly suspect — using the federal economic impact model puts the commercial fishery economic impact of Massachusetts at $416.9 million in landed value, producing $1.9 billion in total sales and 35,609 jobs. The addi- tional jobs and dollars come from the retail sector involved with importing


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seafood that is not even from the State of Massachusetts. But let’s play along. There is no doubt that commercial fishing is a huge part of Massachu- setts’s culture. Anyone who has read Cod by Mark Kurlansky will appreci- ate how fishermen essentially built the state. There is a reason a wooden repli- ca of a cod has hung in the Mass- achusetts statehouse. Conversely, anyone who has read


Cod will also be familiar with the ironic part of this story. In “building” the state of Massachusetts, commercial fishing also proceeded to essentially destroy what was once some of the most prolific, profitable fishing grounds in the world. Serial, rampant commer- cial overfishing reduced stocks to mere shadows of their former productivity, and there are doubts whether cod will ever return to its former abundance. Among other hurdles, the nooks and crannies in the rocks of the ocean bot- tom that served as cod habitat have been smashed flat by decades of rock- hopper trawls, creating the possibility that cod simply can’t come back. The signs that groundfish stocks


were in serious trouble have been apparent for decades, but every time anyone attempted to rein in commer- cial fishing, the howl and cry from the fishing industry was enough to beat it back. Management plans that had no real chance of success were adopted again and again in response to enor- mous political pressure. Pressure not unlike the current letter from Gov. Patrick to President Obama. It became apparent to powerful


groups in the environmental communi- ty that managers were in an impossible situation when it came to Northeast fisheries. There was no way to effec- tively manage those stocks if it meant impinging on such a vital and revered cog in the region’s economy. So in 2006, those groups acted. In an effort to directly address the chronic problems in the Northeast, certain provisions were incorporated into the reauthoriza- tion of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery


www.joincca.org


Conservation and Management Act, the overarching federal law that man- ages the nation’s fisheries. Those provisions required Annual Catch Limits (ACLs), Accountability Measures (AMs), and an end to all overfishing by a certain date (2010). They were heavily promoted by envi- ronmental groups, some of which are expending enormous amounts of time and resources on oceans programs. Those provisions were directly aimed at installing the backbone necessary to manage New England’s disastrous commercial groundfish fisheries. Any attempt to end overfishing is generally appealing to a conservation- ist, but the ramifications of those provi- sions on the recreational sector were not truly appreciated or even under- stood at the time. Over the past few years, it has become painfully apparent to anyone associated with marine recreational fisheries that the federal agency in charge of managing those fisheries — NOAA Fisheries (formerly the National Marine Fisheries Service, formerly the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries) — has not the science or data or even the interest to properly manage recreational fisheries to the require- ments of those provisions. The terrestrial model of wildlife management that has been applied so successfully to ducks, geese, deer, elk, bass, etc, is nowhere to be found in the nation’s oceans. Because NOAA Fisheries has failed to collect the required data and science, it has a very limited ability to properly manage recreational fisheries. None- theless, the provisions that were aimed directly at New England’s commercial groundfish disaster are now being applied to ALL fisheries in ALL other regions, including highly valuable recreational fisheries. The most dra- matic examples can be found in the South Atlantic where fishery after fish- ery is being impacted to comply with the letter of the law. In one case, black sea bass, which hasn’t had a full assess- ment in 10 years, is being closed down. continued on page 51


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