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.

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.

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.