The Icelandic fisheries policy, built on transferable quotas that follow the vessels, has secured that fishing is a thriving business in Iceland and at the same time it has helped secure sustainable fishing. Or that is the official story. Video, Read more here 08:42
NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?
While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here
Thank you for this concise and honest article and very well done video. I have spread it around to my fellow fishermen and fisheries advocates.
Although not quite as concentrated as in your smaller villages, we are experiencing a similar disintegration of our local fleets and the consequent pressure on our support businesses and fishing communities from the privatization of the publically held fishery resource.
We have lost 60% to 70% of the groundfishing vessels from our New England ports after the imposition of ITQs on our fishery in May of 2010.
Although the colluding regulators and Environmental NGO proponents will claim that catch shares sectors do not comprise an ITQ system, that ruse is nothing but semantic legalese trickery to get around a Magnuson Stevens fishery Statute that requires a 2/3 referendum vote by permit holders before such a scheme can be foisted. A vote which would easily have thrown catch shares overboard.
Catch shares aka ITQs have completely ruined an entire fishery and the regulators at NOAA are pushing for additional species to be privatized and commoditized.
Good Luck and Keep on Keepin’ on.
Dick Grachek
F/V Anne Kathryn
Port of Galilee, Rhode Island