F R O M T H E C R O W E ’ S N E S T
Fishermen, Communities, the Economy and Management
The Northeast Groundfish Science Forum held in Portsmouth, NH in November, in a way, recognized the enormity of the problem facing the fishery. Which isn’t to say the problem has not been enormous for 20 years, but that it’s dimensions are now seen to need better and more diverse scientific study.
One leading marine scientist close to the assessment process called it plagued with uncertainty, its results substantially wrong and in need of a systemic review. The Director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center called for a peer review of the process.
The public recognition of these failures is an important step that can lead to positive and productive change. The agency’s recognition of the importance of what fishermen have to offer to productive change is also important. Fishermen after all are at the center of this entire process and industry. We all want more fish in the water, but we all need some of them on the dinner table and all that that means to the economy.
The fishermen have been the targets of management policies. Management ammunition came from the assessment process and from assumptions based on an inadequate understanding of the resource. Recently accepted scientific data collected over many years has given traction to a number of collateral environmental causes for the state of the New England ground fishery.
If the science forum can quickly bring a new perspective to fisheries management science and genuinely bring fishermen and scientists together to study the resource, then progress could be made. It would be welcomed.
In the spirit of cooperation and collaboration it must not be forgotten that while all these uncertainties, substantial inaccuracies and systemic problems were playing themselves out year after year, fishermen were as a result of them being forced out of business and shore side businesses failed. There was a price for these science and management failures and it was fishing families, children’s futures, and communities that paid that price.
If a better science and management scheme come out of this self examination process, then some form of reparations for fishermen should come with it - reparations that provide security for their permits, boats, businesses and communities. This would be good for fishermen, communities, the economy and management.