Tag Archives: Catch Shares
Time to change NOAA to EDF because they sound like EDF- Lube Job Jane and the Parrot Brigade You can’t sell that in New England, Jane its bull bleep
According to a 16-page NOAA report, 138 quota holders ,,,,,,,,fishermen compete for the total allowable catch, which often turns into a fishing derby as vessels rush to haul in as much as they can before the overall limit is reached.,,,,,,,,,,creates a situation with “too many vessels going after too few fish.” Fishing derbies, they note,,,,,,“Catch shares allow fishermen to plan their businesses better, and be more selective about when and how they catch their ,,,,,Shares are typically allocated based on historical participation levels ,,,,,,yadda, yadda, yadda, you know the drill. http://www.fishermensnews.com/story/2012/11/01/features/noaa-officials-say-trawlers-adjusting-nicely-to-catch-shares-system/129.html
Fred Krupp Shameless 1% Shyster. Your Catch Share crap is Flat Out Lie.
In this 10-minute talk from Techonomy 2011 in Tuscon, Ariz., Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, discusses how new techonoloy is helping to monitor and protect fisheries from over fishing. Data collection using video cameras and powerful software is helping local fisheries in Canada sustain their fish populations by calculating yearly fishing limits for fishermen.
http://techonomy.com/2012/08/fred-krupp-on-using-data-and-tech-to-prevent-overfishing/
Fred, I think the government should install a camera in your bathroom and monitor how many times per day you pull your gear.
Facing restrictions, fishermen welcome possible disaster aid
Another EDF puff piece from the boring broadsheet! A lot of BS in this one.
South Shore fishermen welcome the prospect of aid from September’s federal disaster declaration, but they remain critical of fishery management practices. Unprecedented competition from large boats over the last year has hurt the mostly smaller boats that populate harbors in Marshfield, Plymouth, and Scituate, they said. The disaster declaration allows, but does not require, Congress to appropriate money. Affected states are asking for $100 million, but the funding is not guaranteed.http://bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/south/2012/10/17/south-shore-fishermen-welcome-possible-disaster-aid-seek-long-term-solutions/DVHh7P6BvUG4Nhdnb7PPiO/story.html
Fight the Big Box Boats; Save Family Fishermen and the Fish – Sign this petition Sponsored by Ron Borjeson
My name is Ron Borjeson. I’m a second generation fisherman and I’ve fished for 42 years. Over the past 15 years, together with my fellow fishermen, we have taken conservation measures to bring back the fish. Now, new policies are allowing the biggest boats to take it all away and, in the process, the stocks are decimated.
A policy called Catch Shares is squeezing out family fishermen like myself who have spent years taking conservation measures to restore overfished species, ensure a more healthy ocean, and provide access to a healthy source of food from the ocean. http://www.change.org/petitions/fight-the-big-box-boats-save-family-fishermen-and-the-fish?utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&utm_term=11927086
Northeast Seafood Coalition issues statement on Accumulation Caps, Fleet Diversity, and “Amendment 18” – savingseafood.org
NSC believes any and all groundfish management measures must be highly sensitive to the potential for unintended consequences to all segments of this fragile fishery.
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) October 12, 2012 — On Wednesday, October 10, the Gloucester Daily Times reported that “NOAA’s regional administrator, joined by the Environmental Defense Fund,
the Pew Environment Group, the North Atlantic Marine Alliance and Food & Water Watch, is supporting a belated effort by the federal government to limit the accumulation of catch shares and thus provide
safeguards to smaller independent boats in the Northeast groundfishery…”
Email from Stephen Taupen – Groundswell Fisheries Movement – Catch Shares
NPFMC approves statement of purpose and need for groundfish rationalization by James Brooks/ [email protected] Kodiak Daily Mirror
Oct 10, 2012 (Wednesday) The North Pacific Fishery Management council has approved a groundfish rationalization motion that includes many of the items sought by the Kodiak Island Borough and city of Kodiak.
On Tuesday, the final day of the weeklong fisheries meeting in Anchorage, the council approved a statement of purpose and need for groundfish rationalization. The statement isn’t a plan or even a blueprint — but it sets the council’s goals as it embarks on a multi-year process that will wholly alter the shape of pollock and cod fishing in the Gulf of Alaska……..The brunt of this,and Stephens response will be in the comment section to save space on the front page, Read More.
Kodiak Daily Mirror — Friday, October 12, 2012 (as published)
Henny Pennys self-declare a crisis in the gulf fisheries
To the Editor:
Wednesday’s article about the North Pacific Fishery Management Council missed the trickery of disaster economics used by central Gulf of Alaska groundfish trawlers. Alaska Groundfish Data Bank and Whitefish Trawler Association representatives boldly declared “there is a crisis in the Gulf groundfisheries.”………Read more
Editorial: Inshore cod assault cries out for catch share reforms GDT
The grim ineffectiveness of NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco’s catch share fishery management system as presently carried out in New England may never have been more apparent than this week, when even NOAA’s new regional administrator and the Environmental Defense Fund, which pushed this system from the start, came out in favor of making key reforms to it. http://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/x1684125865/Editorial-Inshore-cod-assault-cries-out-for-catch-share-reforms
NOAA regional chief, EDF back catch quota caps
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x1618664521/NOAA-regional-chief-EDF-back-catch-quota-caps
Once again, the cart before the horse.
This should have been addressed before amendment 16 was rammed through. The EDF goal of Herr Lubchenco.
Yes, consolidation was occuring pre a-16, but then it really was free market driven consolidation.
Of course, the NSC syndicate likes it the way it is now, and why would’t they?
As far as “crossing the border” skirting the referendum vote, that has already taken place, the reason for the lawsuit.
For the syndicate to be concerned, is like Walmart saying they care about their employees, and they are looking out for their best interests! Why the parallel?
There are a whole bunch of fishermen not represented by the syndicate, that work within the syndicate. Crewmen that rely on the owners to do the right thing for them, as they share the expenses in the free enterprise lay/share arraingement of compensation, along with the owners. Crewmen now pay for leased quota with no representation, along with the regular expenses. They have become poorer and marginalized.
Only now is there a half assed effort to understand the system of compensation through a “socio economic survey” that should have been considered pre a-16.
I’m sure Johanna Thompson is a nice lady, but to read about EDFs concerns about fishermen? I find them amusing, and diingenuous following the history of EDFs actions, and knowing they recieve multi millions year in, year out from the Walton Foundation to privatize the resource.
Funny thing about the “socio” survey. All the current data collected already includes people like Johanna, regulators, and “stakeholders” involved in fishery issues.
Everyone except the fishermen!
ABOLISH CATCH SHARES NOW!
Kim Smith – Fishery Activist
One of the videos currently featured at Fisherynation.com is making the rounds and having an impact. Usually they are exposed for a short time, then forgotten.
JoeyC of GoodmorningGloucester posted an article The Problem with Catch Shares which includes a video being featured here . One of his regular followers (he has so many!) watched the video,
and read the the anecdotal words of some wise men passed youger men aout the future. ” I remember my dad telling me when I graduated from college and was at the crossroads of either coming down the dock or continuing my education to become an Economics professor. He said- “Joey if you come down the dock, there’s always gonna be fish and they’re always gonna need a place to offload them.” Never back then could he or I imagine how much they would have hyper-consolidated the industry and reduce the number of fishermen in our harbor by 80%. So in the middle of composing this post Pete Mondello pulled up to load bait to go lobstering. Pete doesn’t have any fishing permits any,,,,,,” Read more.
A GMG regular, a lady named Kim Smith read the post, and watched the video. It made enough of an impact for her to write a post on her blog, and become active. There is a petition linked at her blog.
This is grass roots activism at its finest! I welcome Kim Smith – Fishery Activist!
Fishing for truth in the feds’ latest Alaska halibut management plan – Craig Medred | Oct 01, 2012 Alaska Dispatch
With another round in Alaska’s halibut war shaping up between commercial fishermen and charter-boat operators, the staff of the National Marine Fisheries Service has written a 333-page indictment of what is wrong with management of the big flatfish in the North Pacific.
“The Regulatory Amendment for a Catch Sharing Plan For the Pacific Halibut Charter Sector and Commercial Setline Sector in International Pacific Halibut Commission Regulatory Area 2C and Area 3A” — as federal regulators call their hefty tome — was not intended as such as indictment, but that is what it ended up becoming. It is a long-winded, redundant, hard-to-fathom testament to what the agency didn’t do in terms of assessing economic impacts associated with changes in the halibut fishery, and what it plans to do to benefit commercial fishermen.
Where other U.S. resource agencies focus on generating revenue for the cash-strapped U.S. Treasury by making money off public resources — be it oil, gas, minerals, timber range land, or even scenery — the Fisheries Service is focused on increasing revenue for the fishermen with whom it long ago formed an alliance.
Syndicate Fish Wars: How the battle over halibut has impacted charters and commercial fishermen
Is the goal job elimination?
Show me the money
Charter operators growing tired
Damping down tensions
Editorial: Ex-AG’s ‘probe’ of fishing fund hardly independent – Gloucester Daily Times
The Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund’s naming of former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to carry out an investigation into its own “governance, policies and operations” might seem like a good move 
— one that could clear up the clouds raised last winter by fishermen who voiced conflict-of-interest and concerns to Gloucester’s two state lawmakers.
Harshbarger, after all, has extensive experience both as attorney general and private attorney dealing with regulatory and fiscal issues involving nonprofit organizations. And that fits the fishing preservation fund, which largely serves as a commercial fishing permit bank handling the $12 million in mitigation money granted to fishermen as compensation for having a liquified natural gas terminal plunked down in the middle of some of the regional’s most lucrative fishings grounds five years ago.
But it doesn’t take much looking beneath the surface to find all sorts of red flags and questions marks regarding a purported “investigation” that is not at all as it seems.
Deep sea of distrust – Catch-share controversy, and an uncertain future
Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part look at the tensions between local fishermen and regulators, and the beginning of a series on the fishing industry in general. Part 2 in next weekend’s Seacoast Sunday will feature the input of a NOAA scientist, new regional administrator John Bullard and David Goethel, a Hampton fisherman and member of the New England Fishery Management Council.
PORTSMOUTH — The new regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service says his goal is to rebuild trust with fishermen, but fishermen are able to rattle off a litany of complaints against the federal agency and its scientists that indicate the relationship may be beyond repair.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20120923-NEWS-209230338
Pulling one out the archives for Stephen Taufen. “Ted Steven’s may be dead, but his virus is affecting every American!”
“Hesitating in the face of evil is equivalent to siding with the enemy” – Marion Pritchard
Senator Ted Stevens. THE Stevens in Magnuson Stevens Act. The much revered Senator from Alaska. The Icon to every quota holding participant in Alaska, and now New England, soon in California. The hero of Catch Shares. Consolidation.
About Stephen Taufen A public watchdog and advocate for fishermen and their coastal communities. Taufen is an “insider” who blew the whistle on the international profit laundering between global affiliates of North Pacific seafood companies, who use illicit accounting to deny the USA the proper taxes on seafood trade. The same practices are used to lower ex-vessel prices to the fleets, and to bleed monies from our regional economy. Worked 20 years in the Alaska seafood industry for processors in cost accounting, fleet management, operations.
Groundswell Fisheries Movement
Welcome to Groundswell’s Public Advocacy website for Alaskan Fisheries
News analysis: More NOAA appeal talk fails truth test ! (who knew?!) CLF Shyster in Denial.(yeah.that too.)
By Richard Gaines, Heading altered by Bore Head
The lead attorney for the government was not the only one whose statements before the second highest court in the land this week ran contrary to documented evidence.
Justice Department lawyer Joan Pepin, defending the legality of the federal government’s conversion of the Northeast groundfishery into a commodities market, was joined in that realm by her co-counsel, Peter Shelley, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation.
Appearing Wednesday in Boston before the First U.S. Court of Appeals, Pepin introduced a claim — contradicted by records and comments from the New England Fishery Management Council — that federal fishery regulators had already put into place a system to prevent industry consolidation that would destabilize the way of life and underlying culture of the ports, Gloucester and New Bedford and beyond from New Hampshire to North Carolina. A check of record and talks with council officials confirmed that’s not the case, as the Times reported Friday.
Following Pepin, Shelley said the New England Fishery Management Council, the arm of the federal fishery regulatory system, had adopted fishery consolidation as its official policy.
But Patricia Fiorelli, spokeswoman for the council — a part-time, 16-member panel charged with researching and writing policies for approval by the federal government — said Friday that “the council does not have a policy supporting consolidation.”
Shelley’s argument to the three-judge panel on Wednesday also condescended to scoff at concerns held and expressed by many plaintiffs — including Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk, former New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney and others — that major environmentally-rooted nonprofits and foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation, which operates as an adjunct to and with endowment from Wal-Mart, had gained improper influence over federal fisheries polices.
“The plaintiffs (believe),” Shelley argued, “(that) some dark force of privatization was at work — nothing could be farther from the truth. This is not Wal-Mart vs. the corner pharmacy.”
Yet the common fear among many plaintiffs that Wal-Mart, through the Walton Family Foundation and in concert with a Wal-Mart corporate partner, the Environmental Defense Fund, has achieved a controlling position in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is grounded in documented fact.
The catch share policy instituted by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco after her appointment by President Obama and confirmation in 2009 was precisely the policy that was advocated in a policy paper written in 2008 by Lubchenco and a team of scientists and politicians. And The Walton Foundation was lead underwriter for the paper, “Oceans of Abundance,” which warned that overfishing was so depleting the oceans that jellyfish would be masters of the seas by the
middle of this century.
Lubchenco at the time was vice chairwoman of EDF board of directors; the paper has since been widely discredited in both scientific and academic spheres.
One of the appeal plaintiffs’ attorneys, Gloucester fisheries lawyer Stephen Ouellette, alluded to the concern across the industry that the catch share system creates a business model that invites external investment. The worry, he said, is over the future erosion of the local ownership feature that has defined the groundfishery for centuries.
“There is a large political movement seeking to force a catch share system on all the fisheries,” Ouellette said. READ MORE!
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x550068870/News-analysis-More-NOAA-appeal-talk-fails-truth-test
Fishing appeal on fed docket- Catch share challenge
A three-judge panel of the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is due to hear arguments today in a suit alleging the federal government’s re-engineering of the Northeast groundfishery into a quasi commodity market trading in catch shares beginning in 2010 was illegally introduced by denying industry the referendum promised by federal law.Read more.http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x1884284835/Fishing-appeal-on-fed-docket
