FROM THE CROWE’S NEST

What Does That Say?

True sustainability—not a buzzword—is and must be the keyword in any credible fisheries management plan. All around the United States and in most of the rest of the world, fishermen are demanding that industrial scale fishing be recognized as undermining all plans for sustainability.

This does not seem to be penetrating management armor.

The Soviet Union left plenty of examples of their miserably failed attempts at industrializing agriculture and fishing. The resources were stripped, large populations displaced, with local economies and lives left in ruins. Any bells ringing here yet?

The Soviets were trying to play catch up with the industrial west. In the 1970’s the United States decided it needed to play catch up with its fisheries and passed the Sustainable Fisheries Act. This act was not about making the fish stocks last, but catching as many fish as theoretically possible with a built up government financed industrial fleet. But a management model more suited to delivering coal to steel mills for building battleships during World War II didn’t and never will work for managing an ecosystem.

Ecosystem—sounds like a buzzword—but its where fish live, breed and can be caught indefinitely within limits.

The federal management system—from the Department of Commerce down through NMFS —lacks the ability, the will and the funding to establish a plan that would allow the many families that have brought fish to American tables for generations, to continue doing so.

The first step in making this happen is for management to stop living in the industrial past. The industrial scale model where it’s the bottom line or the breadline is dead wrong for natural resources. The New England Fisheries Management Council has a responsibility to make decisions that are in the best interests of the majority it represents.

All New England fishermen say the fishery is mismanaged and nearly all are unified in offering the same solutions. Those solutions include small boats, letting the fish come back inshore, equitability in a public resource and reigning in the industrial fleets. The big boat corporations appear to be satisfied with the status quo. What does that say?