FROM THE CROWE’S NEST

Rearranging Deckchairs

As solutions for restoring and managing the ground fishery continue to be argued, tossed about and reinvented, just what the problem is that will be solved and what it is that will be restored in some ways is becoming more vague.

The huge effort around the Magnuson Stevens Act reauthorization process, now going on in Washington, will result in the establishment of policy for an industry that’s been sprouting unanswered questions like weeds. Some of these unknowns may, by the time the reauthorization is complete, be the cause for the “Act” finding the tide has already gone out.

Fishermen and scientists regularly refer to what they encounter in the ground fish fishery with what amounts to a shrug. The size of some species, the scarcity of others, changes in maturity and where the fish are being caught, have some saying we don’t know what is going on out there.

Any experienced person observing the TRAC meetings at Woods Hole, where decisions are made about how much fish is out there, and how much can be taken, has to shrug watching the process. The final day after months of scientific effort are spent trying to decide what model to use to interpret the results. This, amid the politicking of the Canadian and US industry reps in the room.

The scene is enough to make a reasonable person feel as though they had just fallen down the rabbit hole.
   
If the fishermen are going out to do what they have always done, albeit, according to the rules set down by scientists and management, and they observe changes they cannot explain; and if the scientists, who would likely claim to be the more official observers, observe things in the fishery that they cannot explain; and if management doesn’t know what’s going on and has finally admitted it, maybe it’s time for a new game plan.

There doesn’t appear to be anything radically new on the management horizon. There are people looking at the problems from other and new angles. Its pretty clear something new is needed. Blaming the fishermen when no one else knows what’s going on just won’t cut it. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic again shouldn’t either.