Flawed Laws at Root of the
Groundfish Problem

Recently in a guest column written by Rip Cunningham chair of NEFMC, it has been put forth that no one entity is to blame for the demise of the groundfish industry in New England. While this may be true, many factors have come into play which have been catalysts to the demise.

Mr. Cunningham must realize that 16 amendments to a law necessarily proves the law to be flawed. All the years and meetings and all the time spent by so many to make the groundfish industry viable again have gone for naught.

When the Days at Sea program ended, the industry expelled a collective sigh of relief. Unfortunately, the industry should have held its’ breath. Look what came after that – sectors.

No one can seem to prove what is swimming in the ocean yet the industry is straddled by science the industry feels is very poor at best. Models, equations, “hard data” etc don’t seem to be able to pin it down.

Awhile ago we heard the cod stocks were rebounding. Then we found out that maybe someone doing the math did a calculation wrong and now the cod aren’t rebounding. Awhile ago we heard the blackback stock was doing well and a year later it wasn’t. How can anyone trust any of the science?

Saltonstall-Kennedy Funds

In 1954, John F. Kennedy and Leverett Saltonstall wrote a law that was supposed to help the fishing industry in the United States. Part of that law was that 30% of all import tariffs on seafood were to go to scientific pursuits to help the fishing industry.

From 1996-2009, the United States Government took in approximately $3,600,000,000 in import tariffs. So, around $1,080,000,000 should have gone to fisheries research for that period.

But annual budget transfers, which started in 1979, took much of that money and put it into NOAA’s Operations, Research and Facilities Account. These appropriations went to internal NMFS programs.

One small example. In 2009; $362 million in tariffs were collected. 30% of that is $108 million. NOAA for internal programs took $79 million of that $108 million leaving $29 million for fisheries research nationwide.

My questions are these: Isn’t Congress already funding NOAA and NMFS? Why are their operations being funded beyond that budget with money that was supposed to go to fisheries research?

For the period 1996-2009 where $3.6 billion was collected in tariffs and industry should have gotten $1.08 billion for scientific research, $953 million of that was taken for NOAA’s Operations, Research and Facilities account. That left all of $127 million for actual fisheries research from 1996-2009 nationwide.

I believe no boat should have had to pay for observers. I believe that money should have been paid out using tariff money. I also do not see the need for human observers. NOAA/NMFS should be required to pay for video cameras with GPS interface and should be required to install that equipment on all boats they feel need observers. Then all those people needing to see what’s going on on the water can watch videotape nice and warm and safe and sound.

My former senator John F. Kerry introduced a bill to correct this problem. My question is this: what’s wrong with enforcing the spirit and letter of the Saltonstall- Kennedy Act?

I fail to understand why this has been allowed to happen. Where have our representatives been? They seem to be able to appropriate money when our industry is declared a disaster. My question is who caused that disaster? My opinion is that the law is to blame. It is so flawed that it cannot possibly solve the problem.

Predators

I believe that a huge part of the problem is predators. Back 12 or so years ago, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center did a survey that conluded that the industry had decimated the female biomass of spiny dogfish. This led to he industry being cut from about 50 million pounds of dogfish down to 4 million. For more than a decade every fisherman both commercial and recreational complained about the enormous biomass of dogfish. However, in all that time never once did NOAA/NMFS look at any other data that directly disputed the NOAA/NMFS survey results. Apparently, NOAA is king and does what it ever it wants!

Slowly, the dogfish quota was raised but not before the dogfish (mostly female) which swarm inshore in the summer had already eaten the newly hatched out cod and flounder which coincidentally spawn inshore. Did I miss something? Why do we not have enough cod and flounder? Because the predators have been allowed to explode in terms of biomass and each one of them eats every day. Add to that all the “regulatory discards” which was so absolutely stupid and we are where we are.

I find it extremely ironic that all of a sudden we have 40 million pounds of dogfish coast wide for this fishing year. Back 10 years ago when I went to Woods Hole to talk to the Chief of the Population Dynamics Branch I pointed out that in one female dogfish are as many as 3 sets of fertilized embryos. He denied ever seeing that. Apparently scientists do not cut fish open, they just look at them and do a head count. Now all of a sudden this slow growing, low recruitment fish has reboundedin huge numbers. Great! The NOAA scientists could do dogfish research on the Seatrade processing line and actually see what the inside of a fish looks like. They could also admit they were horribly wrong about the biomass of dogfish all along.

Perhaps the FDA should make as a priority studying how to use spiny dogfish in the school lunch program or in food banks or in some other way to promote the consumption of spiny dogfish. That way, the businesses that lost a lot of their customer base when the quota was lowered to lower than whale crap, could recoup some business and open new markets along with providing jobs.

The MSA Failure

The Magnuson Stevens Act has been such an abysmal failure that the only way to solve the problems threatening our industry is to scrap the law, the councils and all the rest. Take a few years off and start again: after getting rid of the overstocked predators.

While we are not fishing groundfish we should fish dogfish skates and striped bassuntil some balance in the stocks is reached.

We got to Amendment 16 and Catch Shares because of a flawed law. While all the NGO’s and others have been hammering our industry with a constant drumbeat about “overfishing” they never once offered to help solve the problem. Their only solution has been cut the fleet, cut the quotas, cut, cut, cut.

If Pew or any of the other groups so opposed to fishing would fund some real scientific research, they might find that it hasn’t been about overfishing; it’s been about idiotic decisions made because of a law that was written so poorly that it couldn’t possibly help the fishing industry.

It is no wonder why 85% of seafood consumed in the Unites States is imported.

– Peter R. Howard

A former seafood buyer, retailer and part-time fisherman, Peter Howard now operates fishycaptain.com, a seafood sourcing and restaurant consulting firm. He lives in Oak Bluffs, MA.