Congress Defunds Wasteful Catch Shares Program

Congress Defunds Wasteful Catch Shares Program

by Dan Bacher

Washington, DC – In a big victory for commercial and recreational fishermen, the U.S. Congress on April 14 voted to defund the "catch shares" program, a controversial and wasteful fisheries management fiasco.

Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, said the program has been "blocking access to fish for thousands of smaller scale fishermen, destroying their livelihoods and our coastal and fishing communities."

The widely-contested "catch shares" program on the East and West Coasts, a pet project of Dr. Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator, serves to privatize public trust resources by concentrating ocean fisheries in a few corporate hands.

This amendment, offered by Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, is part of the FY2011 budget that President Barack Obama signed into law on April 15.

“Unfortunately, this unfair program, known as catch shares, has already begun consolidating the fishing industry on every coast," said Hauter. "It is shocking that, while the thousands lost their jobs in the worst recession in decades and the nation debated spending priorities, our government wasted millions to hand our fisheries over to mostly larger-scale, often corporate, industrialized fishing operations.”

“It is an outrage that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the federal agency tasked with conserving and managing our living marine resources – requested a whopping additional $36 million to fund programs that would further industrialize our seafood and put even more fishermen out of business," said Hauter.

She added, “It is our hope that Congress will continue along this sensible path and commit to defunding catch shares in the future and not only in this budget. Our government should listen to the thousands of fishermen who are struggling to make ends meet or have already lost their jobs under this biased program and render it obsolete.”

Carolyn A. Kirk, Mayor of Gloucester, MA, also applauded the passage of the Jones amendment.

"As much as anything, a budget document is also a policy statement," said Kirk. "The clear message in the passage of the Jones Amendment is that the US House of Representatives, US Senate, and President have registered their disagreement with catch shares as a national policy."

Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC), stated, “This is a shot in the arm for fishermen and a shot across the bow of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The last thing our government should be doing in these economic times is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to expand programs that will put even more Americans out of work. NMFS would be wise to take heed of the opposition of fishermen, the public and the Congress to their catch shares agenda; we’re not going away.”

Supporters of the amendment include the Recreational Fishing Alliance, American Sportfishing Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association, Saving Seafood, Southern Shrimp Alliance, Commercial Fishermen of America, Southeast Fisheries Association, North Carolina Fisheries Association, Garden State Seafood Association, Florida Keys Fishermen’s Association, Long Island (NY) Fishermen’s Association. and Food & Water Watch.

Jones’s amendment received bipartisan support from Massachusetts Democratic Representative Barney Frank, New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone, Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown, and New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.

The catch shares program presents a threat not only to commercial fishermen, but the recreational fishing industry, according to Pallone.

“I have expressed considerable concern over the impact that catch shares may have on the recreational sector," said Pallone, a strong opponent of GOP and Obama administration plans to expand offshore oil drilling on both coasts. "I believe our priority should be improving the science and management of fisheries and that promoting another management tool until those issues have been fixed will only continue to hurt our coastal communities."

“Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) activists had spent the third week of February visiting the offices of federal legislators claiming erroneously to represent the interests of U.S. fishing communities while promoting their 'Catch Share' manifesto with Members of Congress in an effort to limit overall public access to coastal fisheries," said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA).

Jane Lubchenco claims the catch shares program is designed to "better manage" fisheries (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20091210_catchshare.html).

“From Florida to Alaska, catch share programs help fishing communities provide good jobs while rebuilding and sustaining healthy fisheries and ocean ecosystems,” said Dr. Lubchenco. “Although this is a national policy, our emphasis is on local consideration and design of catch shares that take into consideration commercial and recreational fishing interests.”

Both West and East Coast fishermen strongly disagree. On October 28, 2010, the Crab Boat Owner’s Association, Port Orford Ocean Resource Team and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations filed a lawsuit against the Department of Commerce to halt the catch shares plan on the West Coast (http://calitics.com/diary/12780/lawsuit-filed-against-privatization-of-public-trust-fisheries.) They claimed that the program will "consolidate much of the fishing fleet, privatize public fish resources, deny many fishing ports access to fish in adjacent waters and cause massive job losses."

"We had no option left us," said Larry Collins, a San Francisco fisherman and President of the Crab Boat Owners Association, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "If we didn't act to stop this travesty, ownership of the resource will consolidate into the hands of a few operators in a few ports along the coast, leaving many coastal fishing communities, including our own Fisherman's Wharf, with no access to our own local fish."

The "catch shares" program is just one of several federal and state campaigns designed to privatize ocean public trust resources. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, funded privately by the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, imposed a network of so-called "marine protected areas" along the California Coast (http://www.fishsniffer.com/content/1016-marine-protected-areas-%96-paper-reserves.html).

Unfortunately, these marine protected areas created under the MLPA Initiative fail to protect the ocean from water pollution, oil spills and drilling, military testing, corporate aquaculture, habitat destruction and other human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering. The panels that oversaw the implementation of the MLPA process included a big oil lobbyist, real estate executive, marina developer and other corporate operatives with numerous conflicts of interest.

I am very glad that Food & Water Watch, a great consumer advocacy group, is working closely with fishermen on both the East and West Coasts to stop the privatization of the public trust through the "catch shares" program being pushed by NOAA and Environmental Defense.

For more information, go to: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org.