F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

Fish As Collateral



Twenty years of fishery council meetings and there is no progress to report. Year after year, crisis after crisis ends with fishermen losing to the “system.” Active industry players put in the time, travel, research and discussion to make things better on their own dime, but are ultimately forced to take less or sell their boat and give up. The industry is the fishermen, shoreside services, the infrastructure. They all lose something when a fishing business goes under.

The managers, operating on the taxpayers’ dime, are all still there. After 20 years it eventually sinks in that what is happening in federal fisheries management meetings is in part a charade. There are individual fishing industry players whose economic position and skill at working the system has meant better quota or area access, etc. It’s the politics, strategy and experience, from being able to afford to watch all the games, at the meeting and in the lobby delivers.

Many years of hearing fishermen complain of a larger, more overbearing and less well-defined opponent has been more difficult to bring into focus. “It’s politics” “It’s rigged against us.” “ It’s social engineering.” “We did what was asked of us and management screwed us.”

Heard in isolation without a clearly identifiable target for these assessments, they can sound unwarranted. The mainstream press reports it that way. When the forces impacting the fishermen come into focus, however, their claims make sense. An elephant at the council meetings has wanted for decades what the fishermen have always had a right to, the fish. The 900-pound gorilla in the room claims to know how to fix the resource without defining for whom.

The elephant is corporate wealth directed at ownership control of the multi-billion-dollar resource through an Individual Fishing Quota system. Its agents are so-called international environmental groups operating with special tax advantages and a rotating door for its and NMFS employees.

The gorilla, armed as it is with federal authority, is the National Marine Fisheries Service. Its experiments with a variety of failed management plans have been forced on the industry. Their flawed reasoning and science bringing negative outcomes widely regarded as witless or wily social engineering.

These cohabitating entities enable the corruption of the system. Driving out fishermen means less effort for NMFS and less resistance to consolidation and therefore ownership via quota attached to sold permits. Fish as collateral.