By John Pappalardo
For many years I have spent a lot of time thinking about different aspects of one big, complicated, often-frustrating question:
How can the American fishing industry be managed in a better way?
Of course this begs another question:
Better for who?
Fortunately I’ve been able to answer the second one with certainty: Better for independent American fishermen who feed us, play by the rules, respect their crews and the ocean’s amazing bounty and habitat.
Knowing that gives me a deck to stand on, a perspective to apply. But the main question remains. And truth to tell, many a day, many a night, I muse about it. I turn it around in my mind, roll through the language of the Magnuson Stevens Act (the longstanding guiding legislation), replay council meetings where policy is debated and created (with my input). I reflect on experiences of so many fishermen and how they are affected.
Fisheries management has evolved into such a complicated entity that trying to understand (let alone explain) it is daunting. I appreciate why this has come to be, why we have scientists analyzing stocks, quotas and boundaries, mesh sizes and gear restrictions, why there are so many state and federal officials involved:
The ocean is our common public resource, wild fish belong to no one (until they’re landed). All this oversight became justified because anyone and everyone fishing wherever and however they wanted wasn’t sustainable, and won’t protect our future.
Unfortunately, despite great intentions, the system doesn’t work as well as we’d wish. That’s what makes me toss and turn, to try to think not just in this big box, but out of it.
In that spirit, sharing some of my obsessive thought process, here’s an example:
Suppose, just suppose, we profoundly change the way we define what fishermen can catch?
The way it is now, every year scientists analyze how many fish are swimming around out there, and recommend quotas meant to allow fishermen to harvest as much as they can but still keep the stocks healthy. Each fish – cod, haddock, pollock, whiting, scallop — has its own quota.
Sounds great, science-based and all that, but in practice very hard to do. Many people don’t trust the surveys and stock assessments; from year to year fluctuations can be wild, a 60-percent reduction coming out of the blue. That in turn makes it impossible for fishermen to plan ahead, make smart investments, even stay afloat. It also creates a strong incentive for people on the water, livelihoods at stake, suspicions high, to game the system as much as they can.
How about this instead:
We establish reasonable present-day quotas, which become baselines.
Going forward, if after a year fishermen catch the full quota, we raise it by 5 percent next year.
If the quota is not caught, we drop it by 5 percent.
Of course there can be exceptions, reasons to consider something different, but this is the new rule of thumb.
What would this accomplish?
First, it creates a strong incentive to report all fish landed rather than hiding it, because that keeps the quota strong; less cheating, better reporting and understanding what’s really happening out there.
Second, it fosters predictability and stability, what every businessperson wants and needs to make a go of it.
Third, it reduces overhead. We still need scientists and regulators, but nowhere near the bureaucratic layer our system requires now.
No doubt holes could be poked in this idea, cracks might show up in a pressure test, unintended consequences. But anyone who thinks there aren’t holes, cracks and unintended consequences in the present system doesn’t know it.
So that’s an example of what I muse about, maybe sitting at a fisheries council meeting, maybe wondering if Drake Maye will complete that third down pass. And I’ll keep thinking about ideas like this — OK, in good part because I can’t help it. But also because our fishing industry deserves creativity, and hey, every once in a while one takes hold, and improves things a little.
John Pappalardo is CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance