FROM THE CROWE’S NEST

Enlarging Committee Derrieres

The complexity of fishery management plans, and the sometimes shallowness of their understanding of the systems they manage, are often revealed only by their outcomes.
It’s too easy to blame government for this, simply because government management has experienced more than a few failed outcomes. Which isn’t to say all government is bad.

We need government to organize defensive armies. We need government to defend all of us from the few who would manipulate financial markets to bankrupt our towns, schools and seniors, who would corrupt congress so that it works against the public’s health, and press to legislate control of the media, so that we can be made to believe that this is what we all want.

There is ample evidence that the few will screw the many. It was the case in Rome, the Soviet Union, Hitler’s Third Reich, and well, in other places, in history, of course.

So it is with great trepidation that fishermen look upon the government’s next fisheries management “plan”. It’s now Amendment 16 for groundfish, Amendment 4 for herring, Framework 44…or 45, all since 1986. More control by government, less fish for fewer fishermen. Can we expect there to be any fishermen attending meetings for Amendment 31, or Framework 101?

But, in spite of government intervention in the Maine shrimp fishery 15 years ago, and the subsequent collapse of markets, processing, and prices, it appears the fishery has sprouted anew out of the rubble of the government’s work.

It will surprise few that it was not wizened government committees that nurtured this rebirth. No, our government employees will not be able to chalk this one up in their column.

It has in fact been the blended result of fishermen heeding the “use it or lose it” policy on annual shrimp license fees, the effort of some fishermen to make their own markets, and the screwy, who’d a thunk’ outcomes of the fishery regulations of other governments, that apparently work as good as our’n’. Shrimp shortages elsewhere have boosted markets here.

Demand for northern shrimp is up. Sea Grant scientists have developed new, truly efficient gear - no bycatch, less habitat impact, and less drag towing. With more fishermen looking to the shrimp fishery, it may be that there is something there for them. Perhaps taxpayer money is better spent on science, than on enlarging committee derrieres.