Tag Archives: shares and IFQs

Sweeping reforms to West Coast fisheries recommended

Canada’s West Coast fishery could be in for a sea change, if Parliament accepts and implements 20 recommendations being made by the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.,,, recommending sweeping changes to the way commercial fishing licences and quota are owned in B.C.,,, including quota ownership by foreign investors who may never have set foot on a fishing boat or in Canada – that has turned commercial fishing in B.C. into “a modern day feudal system.” “The direction that the industry is going is driving the independent harvester – the small boat fisherman, the Ma and Pa operations – out of business on the coast.” The ownership of licences and quota in B.C. is different from Atlantic Canada and Alaska, where the people who do the fishing – commercial boat owners – tend to own the licences and quota. >click to read<23:14

Fishermen happy with their jobs; Don’t like privatized fisheries

FISH-With-Mic-Logo-GRAPHIC-303-x-400-e1360148757522Alaska fishermen are happy with their career choice, but not so pleased with programs that carve up the catch. That pretty much sums up the findings in a multi-year study that aimed to gauge how Kodiak fishermen feel about privatizing the resource through things like catch shares and IFQs.  Courtney Carothers, “I was trying to understand also how people thought about privatization compared to other kinds changes in the community and then also looking at how people thought about privatization in terms of its affects on individual and community well being.”  Read the rest here 16:31