Tag Archives: catch-share-scam
Who owns the fish?
“We’ve been frozen out,” said Collins, who docks near the Golden Gate Bridge. “This system has given it all to the big guys.” More and more wild-caught fish species and fishing territories in the United States are managed under catch shares, which work by providing harvesting or access rights to fishermen. These rights – worth tens of billions of dollars in the United States alone – are translated into a percentage, or share, that can then be divided, traded, sold, bought or leveraged for financing, just like any asset. Catch shares have been backed by an alliance of conservative, free-market advocates and environmental groups, some of which have financed scientific studies promoting the merits of the system, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. continued
Fishermen weigh options, risks as dire limits near – Faces of fishing’s ‘disaster’
The desperation shows on their faces and in the risks they’re taking to keep their mom-and-pop businesses on a lifeline. If pulse fishing hadn’t occurred, our sector would have been able to catch our quota,” said Burgess. “It’s a tremendous oversight to let the big boats work in shore,” said Ed Smith, captain of the 40 foot Claudia Marie. “And it wasn’t as if (NOAA) weren’t told” what was going on. Read more
Lubchenco leaves NOAA, ‘disaster’ behind
Jane Lubchenco’s provocative tenure as NOAA administrator ended Thursday, three years, 11 months and nine days after it began, with the groundfishery she promised to save in an apparent death spiral – Read more here
End of the line?
It could be overfishing. It could be global warming. It could be the seals. It could be a lot of things. In fact, there are perhaps only two things that are certain when it comes to fishing off the shores of Cape Cod: fish stocks are rebuilding a
t a slower rate than expected. And they will not meet management targets to recover to healthy levels unless something changes dramatically. Read more here
NOAA sugar coats disturbing fleet numbers By Michael Souza
According to a report issued by NOAA’s Fisheries Science Center during the last week of December, the fishing fleet in the Northeast has gotten smaller but has also caught more fish and made more money in 2011 than it d
id in 2012. And as reported by Richard Gaines of The Gloucester Times, two independent analysts, from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and the School of Marine Science and Technology at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, noted troubling behavior of the data in NOAA’s report. Read more
NOAA administrator to step down; some actions sparked controversy. hee hee yeah!
![environmental-watchdog[1]](https://fisherynation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/environmental-watchdog1.jpg)
“Under her leadership, NOAA has focused on restoring fisheries to sustainability and profitability, restoring oceans and coasts to a healthy state, ensuring continuity of the nation’s weather and other environmental satellites, developing a weather-ready nation, promoting climate science and delivering quality climate products, strengthening science and ensuring scientific integrity at NOAA and delivering the highest quality science, services and stewardship possible,” the administration said. “Healthy oceans and coasts and a nation prepared for sever weather, disasters and climate change are keys to economic recovery and prosperity.” Wow, just, wow. Read more!
From Nils Stolpe – Remember the fishing-induced “plague of jellyfish” that was threatening the oceans…? Remembering the “Worm” hook! Refuted
Brought to us, of course, by the Walton Foundation, EDF and Dr. Lubchenco as a reason to shift fisheries to catch share management immediately? A National Academy of Sciences study – Recurrent jellyfish blooms are a consequence of global oscillations – refutes that (now there’s a surprise!) contention. The article is available here. National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Happy New Year – and sleep soundly, knowing that we aren’t being threatened by hoards of slimy, nematocyst-brandishing cnidaria,
Nils
Boris Worm outed himself with an email that oceans full of jellyfish were the future by 2048, and he used it as a “hook’ in “Oceans of Abundance” the EDF, Walmart bought and paid for doctrine that hooked Lubchenco to the Obama administration. Seem’s though there’s more to it, and the “Smart from the Start” program of ocean industrialization along the East Coast of windmills and drill rig’s is the administrations answer to jellyfish aquaculture!
Remember this guy? “Gloucester, New Bedford Mayors foolishly endorsing crazies in New England” a few fisheries malcontents??
SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton (Editorial Comment) – June 15, 2011 A
Here is our editorial today, and a video.
Gloucester, New Bedford Mayors foolishly endorsing crazies in New England while the industry thrives, sickness has descended on the political class in New England that has so tied themselves to a few fisheries malcontents that they have lost sight of how they might really support their industry. Read and watch the video
NOAA study shows shrinking fleet – a perpetual struggle that will only be amplified in Fishing Year 2013,”
Keiley said she believes people are “frustrated” with the report because “they want to know two things:” “Are people making money … and how many people are working,” she said, “and those are two questions the report does not, and 
really cannot answer directly.” She said she did not blame the Science Center because “they have presented everything they can.” “This is a situation where data is insufficient to provide the analysis people want,” she said. Keiley also pointed out that “revenue is not evenly distributed. The top 50 percent of vessels earned 90 percent of the total revenue, leaving the bottom 50 percent of vessels earning only 10 percent of the total revenue. Read More
Upbeat NOAA fishery report challenged
NEW BEDFORD — To say that Richard Canastra didn’t quite believe an upbeat NOAA report on the state of the Northeast groundfish industry is to understate it.
“It’s a crock,” said Canastra, who co-owns the BASE seafood display auction. Only a few days ago he was telling regulators that this year might be the fleet’s “last hurrah.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration painted a sunny picture in a Dec. 26 report, saying that even with a smaller fleet, the catch was up, profits were up and total catch was up.
Canastra replied: “The headline looks great but when you look at it it’s just like the science. Everything NOAA does they try to cover up.”
There was also unanimous suspicion about the timing of the report, which was released the morning after Christmas, usually not a big news day. Read More
Editorial: Feds cannot allow exiting NOAA chief any transition role
There can be no celebration, only a sense of profound relief over the resignation and coming exit of Jane Lubchenco as chief administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And that sense of relief should not allow either commercial fishermen or our federal lawmakers to relax their guards between now and the February date when Lubchenco will formally bow out of her role. Indeed, the downside of Lubchenco’s plan to leave her six-figure post is that the Department of Commerce is essentially allowing her to do so on her own terms as if she should have had any choice after her policies reduced one of America’s oldest and most noble small-business industries to an admitted state of “economic disaster” in New England during her four short years at the helm. Read More
Update: Lubchenco leaving NOAA, says she ‘returned fishing to profitability’
Her departure from the Obama administration will end a four-year regimen that promised revitalization of the fisheries via a new economic system based on privatization known as catch shares but instead produced a declared fisheries disaster in the Northeast and a spontaneous resistance by industry all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x2120615228/Breaking-Lubchenco-leaving-NOAA
Lubchenco departure fuels hope for change in fishing rules
I’m happy for everyone here that this has transpired. It was but a few short weeks ago that Lubchenco wanted another four years as head of NOAA.
“There is so much more yet to do, and I want to do everything possible to make [it] happen,” she tells ScienceInsider. ScienceInsider traveled to Monterey, California, last week to attend a scientific conference on ocean acidification, where this wide-ranging interview with Lubchenco took place.” http://news.sciencemag.org/sci…
This tells me she was cut loose, and the “Singing My Own Praise Song” that includes twenty verses of success malarkey was sung by NOAA’s Milli Vanilli.
The question for fishermen and industry is, do we let them push another destructive leader into the slot, or do we for once push for someone trustworthy and credible, as one united front?
Whom would be the one person known to this industry that would fit this criteria?
I, like many of you have read damn near everything printed, anywhere I could find it, and of all the names that meet the criteria may not, for a multitude of reasons be interested, but I’m going to throw it out there and gauge the response.
Dr.Brian Rothschild.
This man is more than qualified, and could assemble a nucleus of trustworthy team members that could restore the trust destroyed by decades of mismanagement.
Magnuson will be reauthorized in 2016.
Who do YOU want in charge.
Jane Lubchenco to leave NOAA in Feburary – Jellyfish Jane’s Heady Top Twenty List (to be discected)
We’ve ta
ckled some big challenges together. Through an emphasis on transparency,
integrity, innovation, team work and communication, we have made significant
progress on multiple fronts. As you know, NOAA’s breadth is one of our greatest
challenges, but it’s also our great strength. Both are in evidence below. Our
notable progress includes (in no particular order!):
Editorial: Fishery appeals ruling put onus on capping catch shares
Yet no o
ne should believe that this ruling marks the end of the fight over catch shares, or other aspects of the gross mismanagment of New England’s and America’s fisheries by the administrator Jane Lubchenco and her National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as we know it. For in standing by Amendment 16 and catch shares, Chief Judge Sandra Lynch — who wrote the decision or the court – cited a December 2011 announcement by the regional fishery council that it is developing rules aimed at “reduc(ing) the likelihood that groundfish permit holders will acquire or control excessive shares or fishing privileges.”http://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/x520555400/Editorial-Fishery-appeals-ruling-put-onus-on-capping-catch-shares
City loses bid to have catch share tossed By Richard Gaines
The pla
intiffs included U.S. Congressmen John Tierney, whose district includes Gloucester, and Barney Frank, who represents New Bedford. The Conservation Law Foundation was allowed to intervene, allied with the government. A core complaint by the plaintiffs, rejected by the court, was the adoption of the catch share system without putting the regimen to a binding referendum. “Not allowing a referendum on such a measure effectively leaves the fishery up for grabs to the highest bidder,” said Tierney in an email. “This isn’t in the best interest of fishermen.”http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x1839362063/City-loses-bid-to-have-catch-share-tossed
U.S. Court of Appeals Rules Against New Bedford & Gloucester et al- Sides with Feds and Special Interests
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down every one of a number of arguments the cities and their co-plaintiffs in the industry made in their appeal. The court upheld a 2011 lower court decision in the suit brought by the two ports as well as fishermen and fishing groups. Broadly speaking, the court ruled that the government stayed within the letter and spirit of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, which was designed to end overfishing in the Northeast.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121129/NEWS/211290345
He said with two unambiguous court rulings in the government’s favor, there should be no doubt now that the fishing law is legal. “The challenge now is to get this fishery functioning in the way it ought to be functioning,” Shelley said.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121129/NEWS11/121129728
Read the official ruling here Read the background on the case and appeal here
Editorial: Federal quota caps needed to protect small-boat fishermen Gloucester Daily Times
Over a longe
r haul, that should mean the abolition and abandonment of the catch share system as we know it. But in the short term, that must mean clamping accumulation limits on the amount of quota any company can control, or taking other steps to ensure that smaller, independent fishermen are not driven out of business by their own government.
Fish quota limits spark debate GloucesterTimes.com
In May 20
10, just at the moment NOAA put into operation a free trading commodity market for groundfishermen who were given an allocation and joined into a fishing cooperative, a perfect storm of constrictions began strangling the industry. The New England Fishery Management Council last week came to a consensus that the “disaster” made of the groundfishery required belated intervention — an attempt to preserve fleet diversity between big and little boats and regulate the free market to bar more of the $80 million industry from falling into a small number of big hands and external investors.
