Cure for Overfishing? Fewer Fishing Boats …
There is a growing school of thought among ocean experts around the globe, which believes that one way to slow overfishing is to eliminate fishing boats.
Not with dynamite (as occasionally happens among competitive lobstermen off the coast of Maine), but with legislation. Or, as they have done with success in Scotland, a lottery.
In Massachusetts, thanks to recent changes in fishing rules legislated with the encouragement of NOAA – creating so-called “share catches,” where the seas are governed by a kind of co-op system rather than the previous “every fisherman for himself” approach – both fishermen’s groups and Governor Deval Patrick have suggested that the federal government start buying up fishing boats.
A series of summertime letters from Patrick to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke argued such buybacks are necessary to keep local fisheries healthy. Locke responded favorably to the suggestion, writing Patrick “NOAA is ready to assist in designing a buyback program to help address the economic impacts of ending overfishing in this fishery.”
Now would obviously be a good time, with fish stocks around the world depleted by 90 to 95 percent during the past 100 years.
Boat buybacks to reduce pressure on fisheries is not a completely novel approach. A decade ago the Scottish government drew commercial fishing licenses out of a hat; if yours was picked, you were forced to not only give up your license but to take your boat directly to the scrap yard where it would be disassembled piece-by-piece, to insure its fishing days were over.
Many of those fishermen were already in hock, due to over-spending on new boats and the reality that there were not enough fish to go around among an overgrown fleet, thus were happy to have their boats – and debts – taken over by the federal government. Of course some multi-generational fishing families were not as pleased by the somewhat random approach.
If boat buybacks ever come to pass in the U.S. there will be protests about the government stepping in, like this early response from one Massachusetts resident: “The government shouldn’t act as a charity for fishermen. It’s a waste of tax dollars to buy boats and scrap them.”
Of course in many countries tax dollars already flow to fishermen via subsidies. Buybacks could be a way for government to get out of the fishing business once and for all.
In the EU, which boasts the third largest fishing fleet in the world (behind China and Peru), subsidies were introduced in the 1970s to help grow the fishing business by helping fishermen invest in bigger, more efficient fleets. Between 2000-2006, EU government’s put about $6 billion into the fishing industry; as fleets grew and fishing stocks diminished, the problem became too much efficiency.
In 2007 a review of the subsidy policy was recommended, requesting a “major” overhaul by 2012.
Last month, citing a specific threat – the overfishing of bluefin tuna – the World Wildlife Fund recommended scrapping the EU’s commercial tuna fleet altogether. The suggestion came after the tuna fleet, with an already reduced season that was to last just one month, from May 15 to June 15, met its entire annual quota in less than one week.
The WWF claimed the quick Mediterranean catch was “further proof that these boats are simply not appropriate for this fishery and that the whole operation is entirely unsustainable – not to mention economically unviable.”
While some in the federal and state governments in the U.S., and even the fishing industry, are keen on some kind of buyback program here, they are stymied by one small hitch: No money.
Despite Gov. Patrick’s long-standing friendship with President Obama, Secretary Locke made it clear that while he, and NOAA, were “interested in exploring” the creation of a buyback program, there was no currently no funding from government, industry or any other source.
A year ago, when the economic stimulus package was being hotly fought over, the Northeast Seafood Coalition proposed an earmark that would have included a $100 million buyback program, but it didn’t make the cut.
In this era of “jobs jobs jobs,” boat buybacks are an interesting economic angle, making sound environmental and economic sense, while essentially asking the government not to create jobs but eliminate them.
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