Study pinpoints trend toward fisheries specialization
Commercial fishermen in Alaska have gotten older in the past three decades. As it turns out, they’ve become more specialized, too. Fewer permits overall are in the water; between the early 1990s and 2014, commercial fishing permits in Alaska decreased by 25 percent From 1988-2014, the number of individuals holding multiple permits declined from 30 percent to 20 percent, according to a study published in the journal Fish and Fisheries..,,The bottom line: fishermen are increasingly putting all their economic eggs into one basket, and that makes them more vulnerable to the ups and downs of fishing. >click to read<20:38
“…fishermen are increasingly putting all their economic eggs into one basket, and that makes them more vulnerable to the ups and downs of fishing”
No Kidding! Really? C’mon man, this is not news! In New England, known for generations as a diverse and nimble multi-species fisheries, this loss of diversity and increased quotient of risk were predicted by fishermen as the unavoidable result of ITQs or Catch shares! And we’ve been shouting out this inevitability in the Northeast ever since former EDF/Pew board member and administrator, then director of NOAA Fisheries, Jane Lubchenco, in 2009 decided to illegally jam in this privatization, monetization, and commoditization ITQ/Catch Shares scam!