Today’s Catch is devoted to the commercial fishing industry, the marine ecosystems it depends on, and the catch shares and catch quota policies being put in place to protect both. As fisheries collapse commercial fishermen, particularly draggers, get blamed for damage to ocean floor ecosystems. The fishermen blame the science behind the policies and we try to represent both on this page.

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 It’s in the north Atlantic that catch shares is crippling the bottom fishing industry known as trawling. Trawling, on the other hand is in large part to blame, according to many of the scientists in Lubchenco’s agency, for the overfishing. Stocks of bottom fish like cod, haddock and pollock, struggle mightily year in and year out to keep pace with the nets that are dragged year in and year out over their habitat. If you destroy the habitat you destroy the ecosystem these bottom fish stocks depend on. It’s that destruction that, NBN believes, is a second but unstated reason for the catch shares policy Lubchenco is being accused of being clueless about.

While Lubchenco may or may not be clueless, the scientists she keeps deferring to in hearings like the one mentioned above, know exactly what they are doing: they are trying to cripple an industry that has crippled North Atlantic ocean floor ecosystems that support the bottom fish these fishermen depend on for their livelihood. No doubt there was a time when the boundless North Atlantic could support the armada of bottom trawlers that raked over the soft corals and rocky bottoms that host these fragile ecosystems, ecosystems that take centuries to establish themselves. Not anymore. There are too many boats taking too many fish. As the same time there are too many unknowns about the long term damage they are doing.

Is it unreasonable then to think Lubchenco's policies are deliberately designed by her NOAA scientists to shrink the ground fishing fleet in places like the north Atlantic? Fewer large boats are going to be easier to manage than many smaller ones. It’s only when the fleet is dramatically consolidated that science can hope to catch up with and more effectively monitor the damage that fleet is doing. Here’s a more interesting question. Is it possible the table pounding politicians are in on it? Folks like Kerry talk to the scientists behind closed doors. They get the straight skinny without the emotional appeals of the damage being done to fishermen’s families and an iconic American tradition. NBN can’t help but get the feeling someone like Kerry is a hellova lot more powerful than Lubchenco. If he wanted catch-shared ended it would be.

Not nearly the number of fish that were reported to have been there before trawling, but enough fish that their numbers do rebound when given a chance. That leads NBN to think there’s a new ecosystem at the bottom of the Gulf of Maine, one that somehow nurtures a food chain that provides an annual resource despite being plowed under by multi-ton nets every year. Which is why we don’t think all trawling should be banned. The cod, haddock and halibut they catch are way too delicious to allow that.

Who knows, if these party boat customers catch a lot of fish in these roped off areas maybe they could be paid to do what they used to pay to do. Maybe the trawlers put out of business by the closures could be rebuilt to accommodate people instead of nets. There are probably a few really good reasons why this won’t work. Like: finding fishermen willing to go out in foul weather. And that will doubtless mean the price of these really delicious fish goes way up in winter. But we think there are enough good arguments in favor to give this idea more serious thought.  Not the least of which are the number of jobs that could be created. So, lets replace the nets with rod and reels. That's how they did it in the old days. Actually they used hands lines, but those aren't nearly as much fun.

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Anyone who has mastered the skill of dip-netting for blue claw crabs from a boat knows well the challenge and reward of catching your own truly fresh seafood. It’s a Zen-like experience of gliding along a glassine salt marsh pond propelled only by the porous clutch of your crab net upon the cool October waters. Your stealth pays off only if you see the crab before it sees you and then you’re rewarded with finest seafood fare ever, teased from the labyrinth of cavities the blue claw relies on for muscle support. It’s a lot more work than it could possibly be worth for anyone who doesn’t enjoy the experience as much as the reward.

So, Legal has a keen interest in defending an industry whose image is getting increasingly tarnished. It's not surprising then that the cute crab commercials are not the first shot Legal has taken at efforts to protect fish being targeted by harmful fishing practices. In January the restaurant sponsored a menu featuring fish the Monterey Aquarium says should be avoided because their numbers are in decline. Legal is assigning itself the task of protecting an environmentally challenged industry kind of like what the Koch Brothers are doing for the oil industry. They champion their industry in ways that deflect public attention away from an insidious problem whose only solution will dramatically hurt their business. So, for those who know how delicious blue claw crabs can be, Legal’s commercials will no-doubt strike a sympathetic chord. But remember that these folks, like the Koch brothers, are laughing all the way to the bank at the environment’s expense and eventually there will be fewer of those crabs to catch

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Here’s an article saying the feces and excess feed from fish farms causes pollution problems far from the farm. As the article suggests fish farming, as it’s currently practiced, is clearly not sustainable. While fish farms have been around forever, the industrial applications like what's shown at left here, are only about 20 years old. What will the waters surrounding fish farms look like in 50 years at present operational practices? Each one will likely be the epicenter of a mini-deadzone. On the other hand, we have a relatively untried practice called aquaponics which marries fish farms and hydroponics and holds out the prospect of producing completely self sustaining fish farms far from the water. This is a very untried technology and needs a lot more R&D. Clearly, it’s a huge gamble but with a potentially huge payoff. Ripe for government funding, wouldn’t you say?

Then consider what will someone like Sen. Tom I-Hate-Science-I-Love-Oil Coburn say if we tried to get federal funding for projects that take fish farm wastewater and use it to grow soybeans to feed to the fish farm? NBN thinks he’d say something like: “Why bother when we can use chemical-laced water to pulverize stone a mile under our feet to produce natural gas and oil that can fuel tractors that can grow the chemical-laced acre of corn we need to feed to one cow that can provide this country with a few dozen awful $5 steaks, a few hundred Big Macs and a few dozen jobs.” If you think aquaponics is not for real, check out Google News on the subject. It’s happening.

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Lest anyone doubt it, the Gloucester Times has not relented in its campaign against the dramatic revision of New England fishing policy called Catch Shares. This time they are citing a study (pdf) by a “major consumer advocacy group” calling for an end to this policy because it’s crippling fishing communities like Gloucester while not providing the promised relief to crippled ground fish populations that the ocean-bottom trawlers in Gloucester and elsewhere target. NBN’s first question—which the Times ignored—was: Who did the study? Thumbing through the its 2009 tax files, we found this “major advocacy group” ramped up donations from $287k to $8.45 million between 2005 and 2009 while spending millions on “other salaries and wages”. Clearly staff salaries are as least as important as scientific studies to this “major advocacy group”. Does that make their study any less credible? We spent 30 minutes in an exhaustive review of the study itself to find out.

We found the overwhelming majority of the study deals with the economic impacts of the policy and confirms what’s largely, but quietly, conceded by advocates: Catch Shares are disastrous for fishing communities because they shrink fleets by driving smaller boats out of the business. What bothers us about this study is just 4 pages of the 28-page report deals with the ecological impacts of the Catch Shares policy. The policy was drafted and passed for ecological reasons. Those four pages were reasonably well footnoted with reference to some reasonably objective studies. But still: four pages? And there are also lots of photos and charts filling those pages. Moreover, the title of the study: “The Privatization of U.S. Fisheries Through Catch Share Programs” aims more to persuade, than inform.

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Last week we wrote about the conflict between genuine effort to restore the health of the ocean's fisheries and the notion of just limping along and catching what fish there are, knowing the chance of any one species truly going extinct were slim. That was supposed to be our definitive word on the subject for a while, but then we came upon this Washington Post story. It says that the world's appetite for fish has increased five-fold since 1951: From 19 million metric tons to a peak of 90 million tons in the late 1980s. The catch then declined to 87 million metric tons in 2005 and 79.5 million tons in 2008.

In the same time frame fishing technology has gone through the roof while the area of ocean being fished has expanded as dramatically. Yet the catch is declining. That’s scary stuff if you like fish or think our oceans are import to the overall health of the planet. Now juxtapose that scenario against a quote from veteran New Bedford fishermen Steve Welsh in a very well done story by Don Cuddy in South Coast Today. “There's an ocean full of fish out there and it's being taken away from us. When you can go out, make a two-minute tow and catch 300 pounds of codfish, 15 days straight, I don't see a crisis. It just breaks my heart."

How do we reconcile that quote with the Washington Post story linked at the top? For that matter, why are we writing about this again? Because NBN feels the Washington Post story, and the study it cites, make the fate of the fish sound worse than they really are while other publications and journalists make things sound much better than they are. The Cuddy story, on the other hand nicely illustrates the stark choices we face. There is no crisis in fishing, just a sorry state of affairs which could limp along for, quite likely, a long time. What we’re seeing in the ocean these days are not ecosystems they are, for lack of a better word, ecobulges. Just as the crash in the cod population was credited for an explosion in the lobster population that soon followed, were seeing freakish spikes in fish populations. These spikes in fish populations are not from improving health of the overlying ecosystem, but in response to government regulations and the rush of fishing boats seeking to capitalize on those explosions. As we quoted the brilliant Barbara Bentley in the 07.07.10 Biodiversity News: When an ecosystem is sick, you see wild swings in animals populations. One population will crash allowing the animals that stricken species fed on to increase, like the cod and lobster. Cod eat baby lobster. No cod, lots of baby lobsters.

Is that any way to run an ecosystem? Maybe. As we suggested last week, it seems possible the self sustaining natural ecosystems that ruled the planet for eons can be replaced with these chaotic explosion-and-crash environments that man has created for the past 50 years. As we've seen, during the war between government regulators and commercial fishermen that has resulted in a hodge-podge of catch limits over the years, the ocean ecosystems have limped along with a never ending cycle of population explosions and crashes. Is it possible then that planet can exist in a continuous state of flux?

Unbeknownst to a very large section of the US population, there is this little war going on in New England over a recently approved fishing policy called catch shares. In a nutshell the policy aims to protect the fishing industry by protecting fish, thus putting a lot of fishermen out of work. It’s not quite as insane as it sounds if you accept, as science seems to suggest, there are too many fishermen for too few fish. It’s all well and good to say fishermen should quietly give up their jobs and take up landscaping in order to save the oceans for the rest of us, but do you want to be the one to break the news to these guys? Or their kids and the dozens of small coastal communities they live in? And it seems to NBN that if you want to bellyache—as we do—about all the damage these folks do to the environment, you should at least suggest a solution or two—as we do—if you plan to keep eating fish—as we do. Let’s start with where the problem is now.

Catch shares as they are being enforced in New England, one of the nation’s most valuable fishing regions, appear to particularly hurt bottom trawlers, the mostly mom-and-pop fishing boats that catch some of the tastiest, freshest fish in the ocean by dragging nets along the bottom. The trawling industry fears catch shares will end a proud tradition tens of thousands depend on for the sake of exaggerated threats facing the nation’s fisheries. They are at least half right. Catch shares will put fishermen out of work and there is plenty of disagreement between fishermen and scientists over how many fish there are out there. So, we would like to propose...

NBN Commercial Fishing Crisis Solution No. 1: Repeal Catch Shares.

For years study after study has predicted the imminent collapse of fishery after fishery. In response to that, the government has used a whack-a-mole policy of imposing strict catch limits as the population of one species of fish collapses and lifting those catch limits if a threatened population of fish rebounds. It seems possible to us that commercial fishing in this country could limp along in perpetuity with this policy. Collapse of a fishery, does not necessarily mean the fish is going extinct, it just means it’s going to be real hard to find that particular fish for a while. That forces fishermen to go after another kind of fish, giving the collapsed species a chance to rebound and so on. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't get to the root of the problem: the damage draggers do to the ocean floor ecosystem the fish they pursue depend on. An analogous situation can be seen in the bay scallop industry on the East End of Long Island. Warning! Personal anecdote approaching.

I discovered the Zen of diving for bay scallops in college. With a scuba tank under my arm, a mask, regulator, fins and burlap bag, I’d spend cool fall afternoons bumping along the bottom of Little Peconic Bay picking up bay scallops the size of surf clams. The next few hours I'd spend with a sharp knife and glass of wine preparing the scallops for the scalding bath of butter, oil and garlic that, if I worked fast enough, awaited them about 4 hours after they came out of the water. (For the record! There is no finer culinary experience than four-hour-old bay scallops, barely seared, washed down with copious amounts of Ralph Pugliese’s Chardonnay.)

Then the Brown Tide came along and wiped out virtually every scallop in the bay. Then the brown tide went away and this past November found me once again in Nirvana plucking scallops from the bottom of Little Peconic Bay. Two things have changed, however, that relate to what’s happening in the open ocean where catch shares are taking hold. First, the number of scallops hasn’t nearly approached the pre-brown tide numbers and those that are found tend to pop up in odd places and not uniformly across the bays as they once were. When word gets out a location has scallops, the fishermen descend and wipe them out using miniature versions of the drag nets being used in the North Atlantic. They are called scallop dredges, shown here. (We have no idea who is in the picture, we found it on this website. We do know it was taken out on Long island.)

The other change, is the bay bottom. Where I dove this past fall, there was once a robust bed of codium grass, shown at left, which the scallops shared with toad fish, mantis shrimp, eels, periwhinkle, flounder, burgals, pipefish, and blowfish to name a few. Today, everything but the scallops are nearly absent. The bay bottom looks like the wet desert shown at right. I didn't take these pictures however, they are a real close before-and-after of the change in the bottom of Little Peconic Bay over the past few decades that I've seen. I don't know where the codium grass went. Logic suggests the brown tide might have played a role. Similar logic, and the codium being dumped from the dredge pictured above, suggest brown tide or no, these scallop dredges can't be good for the other life forms they are dragged over. There’s a large body of science that fears the ocean floor is suffering the same fate at the hands of the ocean trawlers. This fear is behind a lot of the argument in favor of catch shares: the draggers have to be reined in somehow. It seems like the bottom of Little Peconic Bay and the scallops that sporadically occupy it are a good analogy for the open ocean regions and the sporadic populations of ground fish catch shares aim to protect. Which makes us wonder if closing off more areas of ocean to draggers might work better than catch shares.

NBN Commercial Fishing Crisis Solution No. 2 Close more environmentally significant areas to fishing.

Marine Protected Areas are federal water bodies closed to fishing. A far-from exhaustive NBN search (PDF) this week suggests MPAs rebuild fish stocks while giving the ocean floor and Mother Nature a chance to rebuild the damage by trawlers. Trawler activity in this map is represented by all this little blue, aqua, orange, yellow and red dots. The extent of this damage is uncertain, much like the extent of damage done by scallop dredges in Peconic Bay. But make no mistake, this is one of the most popular and productive fishing holes in the world, and this video suggests ocean draggers can’t be good for the environment. This study, along with the one linked above and a little common sense, say MPAs clearly are good for rebuilding the fish stocks and rebuilding the ocean floor ecosystem. The large yellow areas in this map are the MPAs. What if we added a few more MPAs, smaller in size, perhaps. It would restore more of the ocean floor, save a lot of fish and send a lot of fishermen into the landscaping biz.

This brings us to NBN Commercial Fishing Crisis Solution No. 3. End all commercial fishing regulations.

No, we’re not kidding. The arguments and research we’ve seen so far suggests that even the most aggressive and destructive fishing practices, like trawling, are not likely to wipe out entirely these once incredibly abundant species of ground fish. They will just keep bouncing back muck like the Peconic Bay scallop. However, it's impossible to make a living just scalloping: the season is too short and the scallops too few, even in a good year. Once the scallops are gone there is nothing else to fish for. The same is not true of the North Atlantic.  If you run out of one fish you go after another. The assault on the ocean floor goes on unabated. However, if we lift all open ocean fishing restrictions that assault will end because the fishermen will run out of fish. It won’t take but a few years of all out exploitation to reduce the bulk of the ocean fisheries to such levels that none are commercially viable and many draggers will be forced out of the business. Which is what catch shares aims to do. We’ll all have to eat hamburgers for a few  decades, seafood markets and restaurants will go out of business, a premium will be placed on farmed fish and fishermen will become landscapers. However, a very valuable lesson will be learned along the way and the slate may be wiped clean allowing government to install fishing controls that those re-entering the business will have to conform to.

The point we're struggling to make here is there are too many fishermen for the seafloor to sustain the industry. Whether it's the bay bottom or the ocean bottom, you're never going to have healthy fish, or scallop populations if the ecosystems they depend on are being plowed under every year. Anyway you look at this, a lot of fishermen are going to have to find new work. That's what catch shares aims to do and that's why we support the legislation. Similar shake-outs are happening in every industry in the country. Fishermen are not alone. Journalists, doctors, union workers, we're all being forced to reinvent ourselves. Why should a fishing industry that's so destructive be given special consideration? Along these same logical lines we offer this great piece by Jamie Lee Curtis in the Huff Post this week.

A while back NBN wrote a confusing piece about the haves and have-nots in a land-use dispute erupting on sewage soaked Cape Cod. We used the issue to illustrate our argument that the country is entering an era where such disputes will no longer just be battles between government regulators and those being regulated. Such disputes over diminishing resources--in Cape Cod’s case, open land enough to accommodate new septic systems--will increasingly be pitting neighbor against neighbor. This week NBN would like to offer up commercial fishing as People’s Exhibit No. 2 in its endless argument that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is running hard afoul of survival of the fittest amidst dramatically increasing populations and decreasing resources.

Let’s start with this Gloucester Times piece on a dispute between  commercial fishermen using hook and line and those who use nets to drag the ocean floor. In the article, the hook and line folks are accused of selling their fishing rights to the draggers against the intention of legislation that gave the hook people a disproportionate share of those rights. According to the article, the hooker fish in a less environmentally destructive way, earning them the right to catch more fish under the new legislation. That legislation, called catch shares, made those rights being sold much more valuable, effectively enriching the hookers at the expense of the draggers, according to the article. Said another way, catch shares took fishing rights from draggers, gave them to the hookers, who sold them back to the draggers.

Fishermen have been fighting over fish since the invention of the hook and net. It’s just been in the past half-century or so that government has seriously stepped in and attempted to regulate these disputes. The regulations up to now have pretty much missed the mark. They aim to foster cooperation among competitors but rapidly advancing technology has allowed everyone to catch all the fish they want anywhere they want while science has struggled to assess the damage being done by.

As this map of the global impacts of over fishing suggests, we could actually be running out of unfished ocean, just as the Cape is running out of clean earth to soak up more sewage. In both cases, one of two things has to happen.  Either government starts to actually govern—as opposed to just accepting campaign contributions in exchange for laws providing privileged private access to public resources. Or the haves and have-nots will have to exercise their Second Amendment rights and starting shooting each other over these dwindling resources. (Is it just us, or does this choice bear a striking resemblance to the campaign slogans of the past election?) Commercial fishing’s proud tradition is steeped in examples of people fighting over fish. However, it could get a little dicey around the Cape’s country clubs if folks there took to sabotaging each others' septic systems.

Bad as the battles over diminishing resources may sound in this country, matters are worse everywhere else. The European Union just showed it has little chance of cooperating the way the US can to protect its fisheries. China’s air pollution problems are going nowhere if it plans to continue the economic growth it’s so proud of. And the Middle East is starting to value the drinking water they must share as much as the rest of the world values the oil it sells. It's not hard to see how natural resources like our air, water and land are eventually going to eclipse oil as the most sought after of international assets. It's also not hard to see that, If the US acts aggressively now to protect those natural resources, how much more powerful will we be when the rest of the world has exhausted its own? So, why not get a little overzealous about protecting the fish, land, air and ground water we have? In others words, why not become a nation of hard core tree huggers?

It’s easy to make these argument when you’re not in the, farming, fuel and particularly  fishing business. But jobs, family traditions, and personal liberties are being eroded here. If you caught a fish like this halibut here, would you throw it back in the hopes it will produce more fish for all? What do you get in return? This thing is worth about $3,000, at least. The only consolation we can offer up for such sacrifice is that this country is great in perhaps the greatest of all measures: natural resources. We lay claim to more fish-rich coastline than any country other than Australia.  The Mississippi, Missouri and Colorado watersheds fuel the mightiest agricultural machine in the world, by far. At the same time we have the best science in the world, which has made us a world leader in protection of those natural resource. (With the tragic exception of our addiction to coal and oil.) NBN would like to argue that, if we embrace ever-more tightly that science now and make some painful sacrifices, 50 years from now, as Europeans and Asians are killing each other over water, fish and arable land, we could be sitting pretty. Does that make sense? We didn't think so. Sorry, it looks like we wrote another confusing piece about the haves and have-nots.

Outdoor life has this shot of a fishergal with her marlin in a picture gallery in its website. As interesting as anything else about the pictures of the fish are the comments readers made below them. One guy out of Hawaii says marlin is delicious. No it isn't. If it was, you'd see it for sale at $15 a pound like Swordfish. Go to the fishing docks in Maui when the charter boats come in at the end of the day. They all have tourists with Cheshire Cat grins being photographed alongside dead marlin considerably smaller than the one OL has here. When the picture session is over the fish are carted off for catfood. Nobody takes those fish home. Nor do they apparently think much about what happens to those fish when they go home. Another comment under the OL piece is a little more to the point. It says marlin should be swimming in the water not hung up by their tails. There are any number of taxidermists out there who could make a mock-up of a 1,000 pound marlin, which can then be hung by its tail for pictures. Or take pictures of the fish while it's alongside the boat. Either way this beautiful fish could still be swimming around making baby marlins. This is a top predator, it deserves more respect.

Here's another OL picture gallery of big tuna, and some not so. Talk to a real tuna fishermen, the folks who boat these things on a regular basis. You won't find them hanging these things from hooks for photographers. No, they are packing them into insulating bags full of ice and sticking thermometers into the meat to make sure it doesn't get too warm. There is nothing better than catching a delicious fish bleeding it, getting it on ice as fast as possible and keeping it on ice until it goes into the frying pan, or grill. There is nothing worse than killing a fish because you want the world to see the monster you've just slain.

Warning! Personal anecdote approaching. This is a picture of Frank Mundus, the famed monster killer from Montauk, NY. He holds the record for largest fish on a rod and reel, a 3,500 pound great white shark. I'm not sure if this is the fish or not. But I did take a ride out to Montauk to see it. shortly after he caught it. The fish had been sitting on the dock near the Marina for days before they got rid of it. Who knows where and for what. The jaws? Frank Mundus built a legendary career out of shark fishing. He’s the one Capt. Quint in Jaws is supposed to be modeled after. Wikipedia says Mundus started out a shark hunter and became a conservationist. His website says he took shark fishing parties out just for tag and release. Certainly the shark pictured here was less fortunate and no doubt so were hundreds of others Capt. Quint caught. NBN hopes there is a lesson here for all of us who would love to do battle with such monsters and win We also hope Outdoor Life will stop running photo spreads like the one above.

We were so amazed that a publication other than the Gloucester Times wrote on the subject of Catch Shares that we read the whole piece. If you want a carefully orchestrated argument based on one statistic and a mountain of supposition from “informed” but unnamed sources, we strongly urge you to read the piece as well. The bulk of the article is built on this link to a 2008 fishing report showing commercial fishermen landed only 6 percent of the annual haddock allocation for a place called Georges Bank. Despite such low landings, the article argues, the feds went ahead with Catch Shares and now mom-and-pop fishing boats are going bankrupt because they aren’t allowed to catch what’s supposed to be a surplus of fish. It’s another example, the article suggests, of excessive government benefiting special interest groups—environmentalists—at the expense of small business and free enterprise.

We’re not asking you to read another 600 words on this subject simply to discredit this article. The guy is half-right. Catch Shares will wipe out small fishing boats. It will impose sweeping regulations on an industry that could likely limp along for decades using a one-sock-up-as-the-other-falls-down approach to fisheries management--the haddock may be here today, but the Atlantic halibut and wolfish aren’t. Our ambitions here are to discredit the author and publication for furthering an epidemic of crimes against public communications that NBN has even been guilty of in the past.

So who is “Examiner Contributor” Iain Murray and why is he qualified to write on this issue? According to his Bio, Murray’s expertise is everything. We think his credentials have more to do with his position as VP of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group dedicated to discrediting global warming theory.  The CEI’s IRS 990, (PDF) shows the non-profit organization’s annual income is $5.2 million with several “experts” making near or above $100,000. The president and founder of CEI pays himself $500,000.  In the past month Murray has written with equal authority on fire fighters in Oklahoma, trade protectionism in China, and European government stimulus plans.

Sadly, the age of internet reporting brings with it this sort of solicitous journalism, making strident claims on insufficient research. From time to time, that’s what we did here at NBN with this crucial caveat: we ask you to do your own research, don’t just take our word as the last word. That’s increasingly not the case in modern-day journalism. Murray, in this article, and the consistently hysterical Gloucester Times in every article, present just one side of this multi-faceted argument over Catch Shares. If you want your eyes opened on the collateral environmental damage from those mom and pop fishing boats, read this article whose five authors are expert on one thing: the ocean ecosystems annually mowed down by bottom trawlers. Then read the Gloucester Times and Murray’s article. Only then can you make a truly informed decision. We have to do it folks. There are too many of these journalistic landmines out there for us to be “dittoheads” anymore.

Diligently covering both sides of contentious issues was once a standard by which the “news” in newspapers was defined. So, what does a newspaper covering the news of dramatic restrictions on commercial fishing do when it’s given a “Friend of the Fishermen” award? What else, it burps out 750 words congratulating itself on a job well done. Sadly, the economics and social implications of the battle over a dramatic change in commercial fishing regulation called catch shares has flown largely under the national news radar. However, the changes have national import due to the specific type of commercial fishing at the center of the battle: bottom trawling.

If anyone wonders why NBN has been so critical of the commercial fishing technique called bottom trawling, this article might clear things up. Take this quote from the article: “even on the lowest estimates, the spatial extent of bottom trawling is at least ten times that for the other activities assessed, with a physical footprint greater than that of all the others combined.” Those “activities” include dumping garbage, off-shore oil drilling and minerals exploration, and storm water runoff. “Extent”, as it is used in this article, means damage. So, this article is saying bottom trawling is 10 times more damaging to our ocean floor ecosystems than all other ocean-based human activities combined.

This article estimates that virtually every inch of the seafloor in New England ’s ocean waters have been impacted by commercial trawling. By “impacted” they mean mowed down. That’s why there is this recent appeal to put the delicious wolf fish on the nation’s endangered species list. The widespread destruction of seafloor habitat in the Gulf of Maine, the same habitat that sustains Atlantic wolf fish populations, has been greatly reduced by bottom trawling.

So why should you care about this frowning fish and plants and animals living deep under the sea? At left is a satellite picture of the North Atlantic. All these squiggly lines are paths recently carved out of the ocean bottom by trawlers. Anyone who truly loves fish, and not necessarily  in any sense higher than eating them, knows bottom trawling has to be dramatically reduced if we’re to continue to enjoy day boat haddock, baked in a mountain of Ritz crackers. Or halibut, cod, wolf fish, orange roughie, and so many other species targeted by bottom trawlers. There is no reason some bottom trawling can’t still be allowed, but on a much more restricted basis. Perhaps by completely closing areas of the ocean to any bottom trawling?

First, outside the US many governments spend much more subsidizing these damaging fisheries than they spend on finding more sustainable ways to fish. If this country leads the way in protecting its fisheries, it puts pressure on the other countries to follow suit as their wild stocks will continue to decline. People are also getting more accustomed to eating farmed fish. There is no excuse for using any wild species of fish for Filet-o-fish sandwiches or fishsticks. The fish used in these products come almost entirely from bottom trawlers. Farmed fish should be used for these products. Lastly, as bottom trawling becomes more restricted the price of the fresh catch will skyrocket. These fish, when eaten the same day as they are caught are a delicacy. Haddock, cod and halibut should only be served fresh at a cost comparable to filet mignon. If we show more appreciation for these fish, we’ll appreciate them all the more when we do get to eat them. That’s why NBN cares so much about the bottom trawling industry: Because it’s within our reach to have our haddock and eat it, but only when we start taking a much harder look at how they are caught.

Fed fish regulators in the Northeast are once again getting rapped by politicians for abusing their power. This time it’s NY Sen. Chuck Schumer decrying the federal fish fines which were funneled to Coast Guard administrative judges handing out those fines. Talk about job security. No doubt there is plenty of abuse of power going on in government agency oversight of commercial fishing; nobody paid any attention to these folks before and we all know about the pitfalls of absolute power. However, what is completely overlooked in the press coverage and politicians now pandering to this problem, is that the Northeast commercial fishing industry is the nation’s oldest, largest and, being comprised largely of bottom trawlers, the most ecologically destructive. Nowhere is the problem of bycatch near the problem it is in bottom trawling.

There's a reason it's politically popular right now to pile on the federal agencies governing commercial fishing. The politicians have to appease a lot of really angry voters because entire communities, like New Bedford, Gloucester, Montauk, Portsmouth and Portland will be severely impacted, economically and culturally by catchshares. Yet, nobody is even addressing the possibility that these communities have the largest number of violations. The industry needs to be cleaned up and all the politicians know it. Is it possible that’s why Mass congressman Barney Frank just backed off his demand the top fed fisheries regulator, Jane Lubchenko,  resign.  She was the author of catchshares. Is it possible that Frank, like Schumer,  feel they have to put on a good show in opposition to catchshares. Even the governor of Massachusetts is soft peddling his opposition to catchshares. It's time for NBN to indulge in some wild speculation on this subject.

Hi Tim – thanks for your comments. Your observation about the habitat impacts of trawlers confirm the point I was making: in many multi-species fisheries there is a danger in designing the catch share program either for only one gear group, or such that one gear group gains an advantage over other, potentially less harmful gear types. That’s what’s happening here on the West Coast, where the fishery management plan would be amended to give trawling 90-95% of all groundfish.
I think it remains to be seen whether catch shares improve fisheries science. In Canada, one side effect has been that more data is being collected through the new observer program financed by the fishing industry, but that data has become inaccessible to all but a few government scientists, thus reducing the transparency and opportunities for outside research. The main benefit of catch shares is indeed, as you point out, to close the all-out fishing derbies – those, however, have been eliminated in many fisheries already through existing limited entry regimes such as trip limits. The price volatility does seem to go down in some fisheries, but of course prices are driven by many factors outside the fishing industry’s controls, so it’s not clear whether those effects can be attributed to catch shares. What we do know is that when there are as few controls on leasing and ownership, quota and lease prices can go up to a degree that make it not only cost-prohibitive for new fishermen to enter the fishery, but also change the operating economics of those fishermen who have to lease quota, in some cases leading to more accidents and injuries. Cheers, Astrid

It’s a lucid, well reasoned argument we still take issue with. For instance, Ms. Sholz speaks specifically of the Pacific Northwest. It’s uncertain her argument there is universally, or even generally applicable to the rest of the country. Her point about fish trips is dead on. The point about data access strikes us as a temporary wrinkle in government bureaucracy. As for the safety of the fishermen, she's also dead-on, no pun intended. In either case, it’s refreshing to hear another side to the story after the endless onslaught of righteous anger from ground fishermen and the only reporter in American giving them unlimited, unquestioned coverage.

You could argue passion has no place in journalism, but the Gloucester Times' vehemence regarding recent commercial fishing policy changes called catch shares actually produce a useful bit of reporting. The GT notes in this piece that one of the firms hired to enforce the policy is run by a former official in the offices spearheading it, NOAA. Give credit where credit is due. The Gloucester Times really nailed this story. This, after months of unabashedly biased reporting in favor of its readership on an issue which has regional, if not global significance. After reading so many articles by the paper on catch shares we were starting to believe the histrionics the editors there signed off on as objective journalism. Thankfully, this week we came across this Atlantic Monthly piece on catch shares which brought us back to our senses on this subject. This issue  is not as grotesquely one-sided as the GT would have you believe. This will also likely be the last we write on this subject for a while. So, let's state for posterity what we think will happen now that this policy is the law of the land.

When this Gloucester Times headline cited a UMASS scientist slamming catch shares, the pending overhual of fishing regulations known as catch share, it caught our attention. A serious scientist says catch shares are a bad idea? Well, not quite bad, but risky. Once again, you have to take the Gloucester Times with a grain of sea salt on this subject. But there is useful info here, if you can read past the histrionics. Before we dive into this issue, our one-paragraph preamble on catch shares. As of May 1, Atlantic fishermen are being allowed to catch “shares” of the 2010 federal commercial fish quota instead of past practice of being allowed to catch as much of that collective quota as individually possible. So, rich fishermen are expected to buy the most shares while others go broke, taking proud New England fishing traditions and communities with them.

There's no argument here on these issues and that's why the scientist says this new policy is risky. Once these diverse fishing fleets are consolidated into a few wealthy boats, the damage is done. There is no going back. The feds are taking such a hard line on catch shares because the North Atlantic's Georges Banks, shown above, are a globally vital marine ecosystem supporting a $812m commercial fishery that's suffered a decades-long decline with no relief.

We can't ban the trawling industry, nor should we. But consolidating all the smaller boats into a fleet of a few large boats will make for more effective regulation which is what this industry desperately needs. That is why the federal government is pushing ahead, despite growing local political pressure to do otherwise. There's not a scientist or a study in the world saying catch shares are bad for the environment. They all, like this scientist, say it's going to be very bad for the fishermen. Fishermen are not like easy-to-hate Wall Street fat cats. They are really cool people who scratch out a living doing what 99 percent of the world would be terrified to even contemplate. As damaging as groundfishing is to the ocean environment these people pull up some of the finest table far in the world. Fresh Atlantic halibut can take the Pepsi challenge with a prime New York strip steak anytime. Still, it would be nice to give the fish a break. No doubt the fishermen feel the same way after decades of federal regulations that have failed to stem the decline in George's Bank ground fish populations.

Contrary to how the Gloucester Times covers this story, there's no black and white here. It's all a shade of gray with powerful arguments on both sides. Yet, here's the scientist admitting at the outset of recent public hearing testimony that he's a “sounding board” for the Northeast Fishing industry. We think the Gloucester Times, which is widely quoted in other on-line publications and blogs, should make the same admission before its stories. One more thing. NBN has five bucks that says catch shares gets put on hold before the weekend. Any takers.

This Gloucester Times article on offshore fish farming is most interesting for the comments by commercial fishermen made at the bottom of the story. The piece details, with uncharacteristic objectivity, a federal effort to revive a fish farming plan that will focus on offshore installations. In quite characteristic, incomplete reporting, the GT does not mention how far offshore this policy seeks to place these fish farms. That info is crucial to the story comments which center around pollution issues and fears that farmed fish damage wild fish stocks. Both are problems plaguing salmon farming operations across the globe. Farmed salmon, which aren't as hardy as wild fish, tend to be kept in pens in calmer water close to shore. They often escape, occasionally in large numbers. The escapees then join the wild fish populations and the baby fish they produce aren't as strong as the wild fish. Sort of a reverse evolution. Pollution is another problem with fish farms because the farms have so many fish and use so much food to feed them that the surrounding water gets full of fish food and feces. It upsets the natural balance of things.

You can see how the fishermen would be opposed to this. What the fishermen complaining at the bottom of this story don't see is what could happen if these fish farms were put into the open ocean instead of the relatively shelters coves and bays they now occupy. We're talking 50 miles or more offshore. Out there you have to wonder if the pollution problem isn't much more diluted. In fact, way offshore the extra food and feces might actually be good for the environment because the deeper water tends to be starved of such nutrients while inshore waters tend to have too much from stormwater runoff. It's called nutrient loading. Also, will the weaker farm salmon, should they escape, be as likely to survive and mingle with wild fish populations if they are so far offshore?

These are just a few of the many questions far offshore aquaculture has to answer before it becomes a viable pursuit. But people are working on it and answers are out there. Caution: personal anecdote approaching. I did a story for the Boston Globe on folks building an offshore fish farm wave energy device. It was supposed to provide energy to far-offshore fish farms which employ automated feeding and cleaning systems. This wave energy device—shown here—looked like two 10-gallon hats welded at their brims. It was anchored last winter in a particularly wavy part of the Atlantic off northeast MA and that was the last I heard of it. I didn't hear the last of the people in the story, however. One fish farmer working on a grant for this project was pissed over the story. First because I got his last name wrong. Then because I had the audacity to discuss in the story the fish farm pollution problem. Fish farm pollution is the whole reason these people were conducting this work to begin with. He want's me to leave it out of the story?

Which brings us back to the GT story linked above. Not going into more detail on the offshore element of the story brings into question doing the story at all. Worse, the writer, in a digression that makes this story more unreadable than usual, goes into a completely unrelated critique of a very unpopular federal policy about to go into effect called catch shares. This side step goes beyond gratuitous and solicitous. It's blatant pandering to commercial fishing interests on an issue far too important to the entire country to skew your reporting to 5,000 or so local  readers. The GT's coverage of this issue is being picked up by publications every where and being reprinted as if it bore some resemblance to objective journalism. It's wrong and it's why we write so often about it here. The GT covers an area that specializes in the most destructive form of fishing in one of the world's richest ecosystems. Make no mistake, what happens in the Gulf of Maine affects a huge swath of the Atlantic Ocean. It's everybody's business.

The Gloucester Times once again takes liberties with realities in its never-ending campaign to prop up the antiquated groundfishing industry out of Gloucester. This time the paper says the president's plan to overhaul fishing regulation is “calculated to cull out a significant number of small boat businesses” fishing in Gloucester.

This is the government's take on the policy. They say it's to put more fish in the ocean. The article notes that Gloucester could lose half its fleet because that fleet specializes in groundfishing. Only passing reference is made to the overfishing this particular form of fishing is responsible for. The author's wholesale reliance on disgruntled fishermen for the facts in his piece coupled with his dismissal of the science driving these changes, is maddening. Probably just as maddening as the policy changes are to the fishermen who will lose their jobs, and who knows what all else, when the new policy goes into effect in 30 days.

What can you say here? Nobody wants to see fishermen lose their jobs. But groundfishing is a particularly destructive form of fishing. Changes have to be made. It would be easier to sympathize with the fishermen if they alone were the ones suffering here. Everybody is hurting. You don't see the Gloucester Times campaigning to protect the jobs of journalists being shown the door wholesale in newsrooms across the country. No doubt the fishermen, and by extension the Gloucester Times, would say the plight of the journalist is a reflection of market forces where the fishermen are being attacked by mean-spirited bureaucrats and scientists.

How about we do this instead: remove all the regulations. Then you'd have the fishermen, and by extension the Gloucester Times, screaming that they are being neglected by mean-spirited bureaucrats and scientists. The fact is, this country's past excesses are finally coming full circle with the growing limitations of our fast-shrinking planet. Whether it's global warming from coal fired power plants, draconian fishing regulations from over-fishing or the wholesale abandonment of newspaper by readers who don't want to fish through a dozens pages of copy to reach the story that interests them, powerful forces are thrusting unpleasant changes on us. Fighting them is not only stupid, but dangerous. These comments by an author plugging his book yesterday just begin to scratch the surface of what this nation needs to adjust. The fact is our standard of living has to change dramatically. We're not going to be driving bigger cars, we're not going to be eating these wonderful groundfish at $7 a pound any more, the price should be $20 to cover the ecological cost of catching them. The Gloucester Times is not going to spend $15,000 a day any more to bring you the one particular story you want to read which you can find for free on the internet. NBN has its own idea where this will all end: a leaner much more efficient world, where people work considerably fewer hours for a considerably smaller paycheck and still have a roof overhead and food on their plates. Just a different roof and different food. Splurging will no long be status quo. Where do you think this all ends? Can you imagine how many fish this market tosses into the trash every day?

In the absence of any news on pending federal commercial fishing policy revisions in the nation's Northeast called catch shares, the Gloucester Times decided to generate another non-story to advance its cause. (Newspaper reporters are supposed to inform, not argue, aren't they?) Anyway, here's GT reporter and commercial fishing advocate Richard Gaines' lead sentence on a story saying there's no news regarding the new fed fishing policy:
“The Obama administration's avowed plan to advance a fishing policy aimed at putting "a significant fraction" of the fishing captains in the northeast groundfishing fleet out of work is on track, according to testimony by captains.”

Outside of awful writing, this is flat wrong. That's is not to say the GT is gets it all wrong. In an earlier story also bemoaning the plight of commercial fishing in the face of the proposed catch share policy, the GT wrote this about the pending federal legislation:

It “gives fishermen catching rights and encourages the development of an investor-strengthened commodities market, but also has a track record in American and foreign fisheries of bringing about radical consolidation — fewer big businesses supplanting the large numbers of small boats that for centuries have made up the New England industry.”

The key difference? Groundfishing, which is the primary target of catch share policy, exploits and diminishes a resource that the health of the entire planet depends on. GM plant closings and the reverberations are felt on a far more limited range. Listen to the voiceover in the video above about groundfishing: “the destruction of an intricate mosaic of sealife.” Look at the net's scraping effect on the seafloor. What do you think? Is there long term damage being done here? All kinds of seaweed and small animals groundfish feed on are being scrapped into oblivion every time that net scourers the bottom. This links to the website with this chart at right showing the declining annual groundfish catch. The  website agrees with the GT, but it's worth reading because it puts some thought into its argument. The GT just grabs a bunch of loud quotes and twists them into deliberately misleading interpretations of arguably imperfect science and fumbling federal fish policy. However, the premise of this website is that complex regulations are sending fish catches down, not declining numbers of fish. That's kind of hard to buy for anyone who has taken rod and reel and headed out into the briny blue. There are no fish out there folks.

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We've got back-to-back headlines of politics outweighing science in two fishing communities on either side of an ocean that can ill-afford such indulgence: the Atlantic. First, New England's sea scallop fishermen marshalled plenty of political pull to kill a proposed 22 percent catch reduction for 2010. Is it safe to assume this reduction in the sea scallop catch was not originally proposed on a whim? The regulators, and the scientists behind them, gained nothing personally by proposing these cuts. On the contrary, the head of the agency seeking the scallop cut said the past few weeks have been the worst of his life. Yet, meetings with congressmen, governors and plenty of really angry fishermen got his regulatory agency to reconsider the reduction Not because science suggests otherwise, because "solid economic arguments" suggest otherwise. Here's a Boston Globe editorial that does a decent job discussing the issue.

Then, on the other side of the Atlantic, we have French president Nicolas Sarkozy seeking an 18 month postponement of a propose blue fin tuna ban. France has a huge blue fin tuna fleet. The US tuna fleet has been much more sensible protecting these fish, while the Europeans have gone hog wild. Accordingly, these fish stocks are dropping precipitously. Yet, the French president, like his New England colleagues, is letting political and economic expedience second guess precaution and science in hopes that something changes in the next 18 months. Such concern for fishermen who, at best make a very hard living, is understandable. But it's the lack of concern for the fish we all depend on that has caused fish stocks to plummet across the planet. If we don't take a stand now, when do we? Eighteen months from now?

The job requires training which is elaborated in the link above. Still, for Deadliest Catch fans it's got to sound pretty exciting. For those who don't mind being trapped on a boat full of men indifferent to death who hate you, its sounds like the perfect career.

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Once again the Gloucester Times abandons objectively to attack the messenger and ignore the message. This diatribe is worse than most that the paper publishes in the guise of information. It goes straight after the credibility of an official through the quotes of a lot of fishermen angry over her statements over dwindling fish populations. All taking place in a town far from Gloucester. Everyone knows winter in Gloucester can get a little sluggish, news-wise. But wasn't there a church function or school board meeting this reporter could have been assigned to instead of doing this story.  Why does the Gloucester Times continue to let this fellow continue to campaign for the fishermen in the guise of covering the commercial fishing beat objectively? Because it sells papers. Just look at all the comments. Keep 'em angry not informed.

Sadly, there's no simple answer and people's lives are going to be affected. In many cases proud family fishing traditions are going to turned into landscaping businesses. The paper just wants to prevent this. But is it doing its job just telling one side of the story?

The federal government wants to invite more input on how best to let US fishermen catch as many swordfish and giant tuna as possible without killing all sorts of other creatures that aren't quite as tasty, or valuable. These two fish, despite how much mercury may be dissolved into their muscles, can fetch over $10,000 a piece at dockside, even higher since sushi came on the scene. They are prized game, not to mention a ton of fun to catch. Not surprisingly stocks plummeted as European and US swordfish fishermen have gone after them with dollars bills blinding them to the turtles, dolphin and undersized fish killed in the process.

They didn't bring this up in Perfect Storm. Some 25,000 tons of sharks, rays and such are killed unintentionally by swordfishermen in Spain alone. The collateral damage got American federal fish folks passing laws to stop it and now US fishermen are taking in about half the number of fish those same regulators feels can be safely caught without sending stock plummeting again.

 What to do? That turtle above looks awful sad, however do we attend a funeral when the thing dies of natural causes? This is where environmental zeal can get in the way sound fisheries management. It also presupposes that man rules the planet and is thus ordained to kill these beautiful animals in the name of really fine seafood. For me it brings up the pangs of conscious I experienced when opening scallops. The cute little buggers with all those imploring blue eye, their shells helplessly clapping together in my hands shortly before my knife settles the issue. There's a lot to be said for vegetarians.

Speaking of overfishing, the Pew research institute released a study recently saying voters in Maine and Massachusetts are strongly opposed to overfishing by boats targeting groundfish like cod and haddock. Missing from the Pew study is how those same voters feel about cod and haddock crusted with Ritz crackers and baked in butter. I know I've railed about the damage these bottom fishing boats can cause, what bothers me about the Pew folks is they only present one side of the story. FYI Obama's EPA head, Lisa Jackson, is a former Pew official, actually when she was there it was the National Environmental Trust. Needless to say commercial fishermen were not thrilled with the appointment. Perhaps the extra input the feds are seeking will solve this.

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