F R O M T H E C R O W E ’ S N E S T
We Need To Talk
On everyone’s screens in the coming year will be the desperate need for financial support and protection for ground fishermen in the Northeast. And of course the Magnuson-Stevens Act will need to be made contemporary and ultimately observed.
However, looming over this is the billion dollar funding of a very different kettle of fish. The Department of Commerce has brought the balance of trade in seafood issue to Congress and Congress has been funding budgets for the development of aquaculture in the U.S. Hundreds of millions have gone though university Sea Grant aquaculture development programs, private companies and government agencies.
Last week life long Gloucester fishermen Russell Shermen called the ground fish quota system that drove him out of business social engineering, not fisheries management.
Under funding wild fisheries and over funding what has to date been an ecological train wreck in many parts of the world, including Maine in the 1990’s, makes little sense. Wild fisheries and open pen fin-fish aquaculture have not been shown to be compatible.
At the same time Ocean Planning is about to change how we can use the ocean. The Northeast Regional Ocean Council (NROC) was said to have focused on “aquaculture, maritime commerce and energy”, those three in that order, in building their online Data Portal. Ocean planning is about access rights. The NROC wants stakeholder input. The ocean is getting more crowded. The aquaculture industry will soon be a big player and ocean planning is likely where it will make it’s move on access.
Fin-fish feedlots and their waste streams on the industrial scale implied in the DOC balance of trade numbers could be the mother of all gorillas in the wild fisheries room. It could mean a lot of fin-fish feed lots on someone else’s fishing grounds.
It seems near impossible to get anyone in fisheries management to talk about the “specifics of a development plan” for aquaculture. Congress will not hand out the proposed $3 billion without a plan being presented. So what’s the plan?
The tax-payer funded aquaculture plan needs to be openly aired before fishing rights to surface and bottom access are transferred. Fishermen can and should stake their claim now.* Ocean Planning is all over in 18 months. If the plan includes pushing out fishermen while their tax money is used to build the aquaculture business that displaces them, then we need to talk.
NROC/NRB Meeting, Cambridge, MA, Jan. 22 – 23, 2014