On May 1, 2002, New England commercial groundfishermen began operating under a last minute ruling by a federal judge establishing a new and more restrictive management plan for the fishery. Judge Gladys Kessler’s ruling came after a coalition of five environmental groups won a federal suit charging the government of with failing to implement mandates to stop overfishing. The decision cut groundfish boats allotted days by 20 percent, closed additional areas for protection, and restricted fishermen who have not been fishing for groundfish from going back into the business. Some of the environmental groups involved supported the ruling, while others continued to push for additional restrictions. Fishermen from Maine to Massachusetts protested the action, saying it shuts down an essential fishery.
Working Waterfront asked some of the fishermen, conservationists and regulators involved in and affected by this ruling to share their views on these pages. The plaintiffs in the suit included Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Audubon Society and the Conservation Law Foundation. A motion for reconsideration has been filed by the Stonington Fisheries Alliance, the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, the Saco Bay Alliance, the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, the Associated Fisheries of Maine, the City of Portland, the City of New Bedford, the Trawlers Survival Fund, the State of Maine, the State of New Hampshire, the State of Rhode Island, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the Conservation Law Foundation.
Ben Neal is Program Officer for Marine Resources at the Island Institute.
Proctor Wells, Independent groundfisherman:
This action Judge Kessler has ordered will, without a doubt, severely change our fisheries and communities. In the past we have had active fishing communities that thrived around various fishing industries. This community structure is slowly eroding away to one of very large and expensive retirement homes. It started in southern Maine and like a cancer is slowly spreading downeast. One at a time, family fishing businesses are collapsing because they can no longer stand up under poor fisheries management and high taxation. They sell the only asset that they have left and that is the waterfront property that has been in their families for generations, unknowingly increasing the tax burden on the few remaining fishing waterfront properties. The State of Maine bases our property taxes on sales ratios. As long as there is no protection for the remaining fishing family businesses, the cancer will continue to spread. If this scenario sounds familiar, just look at the family farms that used to cover our country.
The Federal Government will spend over a billion dollars this year trying to protect the family farm. The question is how much are they spending to save the fishing family farm? The answer is, little if any. Fishermen have been harvesting fish off our coast for centuries. The only recognition that we get is to be labeled as “rapers of the ocean.”
What can we do? We need to fall under the Department of Agriculture. The fishermen are natural resource harvesters that feed our country the same as our farmers. Maybe ask our new state government this fall for some protection for fishing family businesses? Some tax relief for those that are remaining? The problem is that the cancer hasn’t been noticed in all the communities downeast yet, but it is there and slowly spreading. When the fishermen realize this, it may be already too late. I know, because 93 percent of the town of Phippsburg’s waterfront property is owned by non-residents.
Our groundfish will recover but will our fishing families? I don’t think so. We, as industry leaders who can see the whole picture, will continue to fight on all fronts. The New England Fisheries Management Coun-cil is talking of the consolidation of fishing permits and the institution of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). If this continues, it is only a matter of time before our fishing rights are in the hands of a few large corporations. If we want to see what our fisheries will look like then, just look to Canada or Newfoundland.
Proctor Wells is an independent fisherman out of Phippsburg pursuing lobster, groundfish and shrimp. He is a member of a new group called I-FISH (Independent Fishermen Investing in Sustainable Harvesting), which has been part of putting together an alternative Gulf of Maine Inshore Fisheries Conservation and Stewardship Plan. He is also a Selectman for the Town of Phippsburg.
Peter Shelley, Conservation Law Foundation:
With Judge Kessler’s federal remedial order, business-as-usual in New England’s oldest and once premier fishery is over. Cod fishing will never be the same, and just as well. Sure, there are more fish – but for every fisherman who talks of seeing more fish today, there are three retired fishermen who describe how many more they used to see.
More fish, properly managed, will produce economic prosperity as well as ecological health. Rebuilding stocks toward long-term sustainable levels brings more fish, more jobs, more product, lower unit production costs and less habitat damage.
Rebuilding fish and the fishery, however, will require hard decisions, discipline and vision, qualities apparently beyond the current New England Fishery Management Council. We need to change the Council membership, bringing in members who are ready to doing the hard work that is required for having a world-class fishery.
Area management for the inshore fisheries has to be introduced immediately. While the boat operators who thrive on “pulse” fishing will scream, a diverse fleet is economically healthy and can only be promoted through an area management approach. Let the offshore fleet develop ITQs to resolve their capacity excesses; inshore area fleets can work off area-based community quotas in ways that make sense to them.
Finally, attention needs to be given immediately to redeveloping markets and value for New England fish. While that may seem counterintuitive during a time of fishery closures, fish should rebound strongly. A dedicated effort to recapture lost market share will help keep prices stable, if not rising, during the rebuilding. With a lot of hard work, New England cod and the New England fleet could once again be known around the world.
Attorney Peter Shelley is Vice President of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), and Director of the Maine Advocacy Center of the Foundation, located in Rockland. CLF was one of the five conservation groups that filed the lawsuit that led to the restrictions, but has since broken with the other environmental groups involved in endorsing the consensus agreement. CLF has also has since expressed concern over the economic impact of the regulation changes.
Lew Flagg, Deputy Commissioner, Maine Department of Marine Resources:
As we reflect on the events of the past several months, the future of the Maine groundfish industry, as we know it today, is in serious jeopardy. Following a series of increasingly restrictive management measures over the past several years, industry is telling us they can no longer adapt to further cuts in days at sea, closed areas, gear restrictions, trip limits, possession limits and increases in minimum sizes of commercially valuable species. Based on recent history, these cries should not go unheeded.
Since 1994, there has been a 51 percent decline in multispecies vessels home-ported in Maine. From 1994 to 2000, the number of multispecies permits in Maine has dropped from 19.4 percent of the total to 12.4 percent. Groundfishing and related processing which historically occurred along the coast in such places as Eastport, Jonesport, Stonington, Rockland, Boothbay Harbor, Cundy’s Harbor, Harpswell, Biddeford and Ogunquit has now contracted into the Port Clyde and Portland area. If this trend continues, there will be fewer boats in all size categories in the fishery.
Notwithstanding these losses to outlying communities, Maine still ranks second of all Atlantic coast states in total groundfish revenues. Without an increase in days at sea allocations, many of the current vessels will be unable to support themselves in the groundfish industry. Current restrictions are turning our groundfishery into a part-time groundfishing fleet. Vessels which survive must diversify into other fisheries to stay solvent. Maine’s future groundfish industry should emphasize a diversity of gear types and vessel sizes that promote employment opportunities, especially for the more isolated and marine dependent eastern Maine and island communities. We need to retain the existing character of the fleet and allow for year-round employment in the groundfishing sector. The shoreside processing sector requires a dependable core of vessels that can deliver fresh product to shore-based facilities on a year round basis. While we must maintain this core of year-round groundfishing vessels to assure a healthy shoreside infrastructure, we must also strive to retain access of other fishing vessels to the groundfish resource in order to retain flexibility in the fisheries.
Lew Flagg has been a Marine Resources scientist with the Maine DMR since 1968. He often represents the state at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the New England Fishery Management Council. The state of Maine has appealed the federal decision, and is currently investigating economic impact mitigation measures for fishermen.
Paul Parker, Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association:
On Dec. 28, 2001, Judge Gladys Kessler agreed with five conservation groups that the New England Fishery Management Council had violated federal law. Specifically, the Judge ruled that overfishing and bycatch provisions of the Sustainable Fisheries Act had been broken. “Overfishing” is when regulators allow too many fish to be harvested from the sea and “bycatch” are those fish wasted because they are too small, unmarketable, or in excess of possession limits.
In response to the judge’s ruling, interested stakeholders filed papers to be admitted into the process of determining an appropriate remedy to the case. Judge Kessler listened to all parties and provided a forum for us to debate what the next steps should be through a four-day mediation process in Washington, D.C., in early April. A nearly universal settlement agreement was reached in mediation and signed shortly thereafter by the Federal Government, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Associated Fisheries of Maine, Trawlers Survival Fund, Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, and Conservation Law Foundation.
Throughout the mediation, we had our backs up against the wall. Many of us were worried that if we did not reach consensus that the judge would shut down the fishery. It was with that hard reality as a possible backstop that we came together with a plan that we felt balanced the needs of the fishing community, the fish stocks, and the letter of the law. The settlement was a firm commitment to protect the fish today so that we could expect to reap the long-term benefits of a healthier ocean.
Subsequently, Judge Kessler added increased stringency to the mediated settlement. The additions that she made were severe in further reducing the number of days that fishermen would be allowed to go fishing. The judge shifted the balance too far and is threatening to put countless fishermen out of business. Fishermen throughout the region will be unable to cover the expenses of their fishing businesses including insurance, boat payments, dockage fees, home mortgages, gear bills, and safety equipment. Cape Cod ports like Hyannis, Provincetown and Sesuit may be gone forever and our way of life may not survive to see another fishing year.
However, the parties that signed the mediated settlement agreement have filed pleadings with the judge for her to reconsider instituting the original settlement agreement. Lives are hanging in the balance, awaiting her final decision.
Paul Parker is Executive Director of CCCHFA, based in North Chatham, MA.
Jen Bubar, Stonington Fisheries Alliance:
Although these interim regulations affect many fishermen and the shoreside infrastructure supported by them, my main concern is for the rewards provided to those who stayed in the fishery, continuing to impact the cod stocks, while penalizing those who conserved groundfish by not fishing. When the cod limit went to thirty pounds per day several years ago, my husband and I made the decision to get out of groundfishing, rather than play a part in the wasteful practice of discarding perfectly edible fish. We were given assurance by federal regulators that we would not be penalized and were encouraged by them to prosecute a different fishery. We have renewed our groundfish permit, kept up with the logbooks and other permitting requirements so that if we absolutely had to, we would be able to reenter the fishery. Now we, along with many others, find ourselves in the position of being denied access to groundfish harvesting.
Coastal communities have relied on the ability to fish in a diverse manner, changing from fishery to fishery in order to maintain a viable marine resource. Under current management practices we have lost our opportunity to diversify. Short of the federal management system imploding, thus opening the door for different management practices, I see the future of the groundfish industry in New England heading with lightning speed straight towards an Individual Transferable Quota system. While on the surface this may appear appealing to some very stressed and strapped fishermen, in the end it only provides for a handful of the biggest, most efficient businesses and the traditional fishing industry succumbs to a similar fate as that faced by family operated farms in this country.
Jen Bubar is the former president of the Maine Gillnetters’ Association and a founding member of the Stonington Fisheries Alliance. She and her husband own a 40-foot vessel that is currently lobster fishing. In her immediate family there are 23 people, including 14 children, who are directly dependent on fishing as their income source.