Maine Fishermen Petitions to Stop
Wall Street-ization of U.S. Fisheries

Ed Snell, a fishing boat operator from Maine, has launched an online petition calling for the end of “catch shares,” a management regime for regulating fisheries. Snell’s petition calls for eliminating the catch share system that allows for fisheries’ quotas to be bought, sold, and traded like any other commodity, which overwhelmingly favors larger industrial fishing operations over small boats. Snell argues that the catch share system has driven a majority of family fishermen in New England out of business.

San Francisco commercial fisherman and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Board member Larry Collins echoed that sentiment in an interview back in 2013: “The system has given it all to the big guys,” said Collins at the time. Ed Snell is feeling the same pinch 3,000 miles away in a market, now closely regulated, that was once free for all fishermen. Snell’s petition demands action from John Bullard of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), which administers the quota system, and which, according to Snell, is hindering small fishermen, processors, and seafood marketers from creating the right balance of sustainability and economic fairness in marine resource management.

Snell said his message is that catch share as a fisheries management system is the biggest management failure to date, especially in New England. Rather than being based on fishing success, it is based on the ownership of rights to fish in a public resource—ownership that leased quota back to fishermen who once were entitled to it. Many fishermen are now paying more for quota than it is worth at the dock.

This is a social problem, said Snell, made with the help of well-funded conservation groups that can only judge based on what they see on paper. Catch shares have made it possible for a single entity to own all of a single stock. Those who gain the most from this system are the multiple big boats and permit owners. Some fishermen, said Snell, saw Amendment 18 as a possible opportunity to re-write the wrongs. But the big players changed the accumulation caps, which will enable one company to own most of a single stock.

Snell’s petition, he said, “is an attempt to show that the council has failed to represent the majority. Since most council management actions take place out of the view of most people, most people, including most fishermen,” he said, “are not aware of what the council has been doing until it has been codified.”

“Catch shares is facilitating the transfer of access rights to a public resource without the knowledge or approval of all the people who rightfully own it. When the stocks recover as they have in some areas as in Southern New England, the small boat, sustainably operated, family owned vessels will have been cut out of the industry by those who could buy out permits and wait out the recovery the small boats had paid for,” said Snell.

Rather than catch shares, Snell suggested a hybrid plan. “Something that would include gear limitations. Smaller boats that create few problems for the resource and the industry. Problems such as less heavy gear damage to the bottom, less bycatch and a better price for a higher-quality landed product.”

For a link to the petition go to namanet.org