jaybee
25-08-2003, 03:31 PM
Part 1
Friday, August 22, 2003 By Emily Wilson, Newsdesk.org
Tommy Ancona, 58, has been a part of the fishing industry since he was a kid.
"I started fishing with my dad," he said. "I fished when I didn't want to fish. I fished when I wanted to ride my bike."
His father and grandfather were both fishers, and he makes his living the same way: catching groundfish, crab, and shrimp from his base in Fort Bragg, Calif.
But a West Coast fishing industry buildup over the decades has taken its toll. Last year the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) voted to ban most bottom fishing on the continental shelf from Canada to Mexico to prevent the collapse of stocks of some types of groundfish, a generic term for 83 different species of fish.
"We implemented a lot of strict management regulations in the last year," said PFMC spokeswoman Jennifer Gilden. And while those regulations will help fish stocks recover, "people have had a hard time making ends meet."
According to the Fishermen's Marketing Association, the groundfish industry's annual haul has plummeted from about $110 million in 1987 to an estimated $35 million today.
That's why Ancona and many other small, family-owned fishing operations are thinking about getting out of the business and selling their boats, as a part of a voluntary fishing-license buyback program administered by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).
"Faulty Exploitation Advice"
The buyback aims to cut the 263-vessel West Coast groundfish fleet by one-half and comes at a time of crisis for oceans worldwide. A recent study by the Pew Oceans Commission found that overfishing, pollution, and development threaten both oceanic ecosystems and the humans who depend on them.
And the New York Times reported on July 31 that "more than 70 percent of commercial fish stocks are now considered fully exploited, overfished, or collapsed."
"People in the fishing industry recognize the existing fleet is too large," said Peter Leipzig, executive director of the Fishermen's Marketing Association and a driving force behind the West Coast buyback. "The fleet was built up in the late '70s early '80s. The large fleet allowed us to harvest fish the government said were underutilized, and by the late '80s, they were telling us they were overfished."
Gilden blames a "lack of scientific knowledge" for the management decisions that created today's problem. "It's really hard to count all the fish in the sea," she said, and noted that in the past "there was a tendency to hope there were more" fish than there turned out to be.
Chris Dorsett, Pacific fish conservation manager with the environmental group the Ocean Conservancy, agrees. "[Fishers] were given faulty exploitation advice," he said.
But he says today's problems are not just due to inaccurate science. "There were naysayers even back then," he said, "people in the fisheries service who were very concerned."
To make matters worse, said Dorsett, both industry and regulators overlooked the fact that many fishing operations hauled in more fish than were brought to shore. That "bycatch" of commercially unviable fish took its toll on the ecosystem, he said.
"They knew there was significant bycatch," he said. "The number of fish actually killed exceeded the number of fish permitted to be killed."
Leipzeig disputes this, stating that the fishing industry has "always accounted for total mortality" and that day-to-day fishing quotas are even reduced according to bycatch estimates
Friday, August 22, 2003 By Emily Wilson, Newsdesk.org
Tommy Ancona, 58, has been a part of the fishing industry since he was a kid.
"I started fishing with my dad," he said. "I fished when I didn't want to fish. I fished when I wanted to ride my bike."
His father and grandfather were both fishers, and he makes his living the same way: catching groundfish, crab, and shrimp from his base in Fort Bragg, Calif.
But a West Coast fishing industry buildup over the decades has taken its toll. Last year the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) voted to ban most bottom fishing on the continental shelf from Canada to Mexico to prevent the collapse of stocks of some types of groundfish, a generic term for 83 different species of fish.
"We implemented a lot of strict management regulations in the last year," said PFMC spokeswoman Jennifer Gilden. And while those regulations will help fish stocks recover, "people have had a hard time making ends meet."
According to the Fishermen's Marketing Association, the groundfish industry's annual haul has plummeted from about $110 million in 1987 to an estimated $35 million today.
That's why Ancona and many other small, family-owned fishing operations are thinking about getting out of the business and selling their boats, as a part of a voluntary fishing-license buyback program administered by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).
"Faulty Exploitation Advice"
The buyback aims to cut the 263-vessel West Coast groundfish fleet by one-half and comes at a time of crisis for oceans worldwide. A recent study by the Pew Oceans Commission found that overfishing, pollution, and development threaten both oceanic ecosystems and the humans who depend on them.
And the New York Times reported on July 31 that "more than 70 percent of commercial fish stocks are now considered fully exploited, overfished, or collapsed."
"People in the fishing industry recognize the existing fleet is too large," said Peter Leipzig, executive director of the Fishermen's Marketing Association and a driving force behind the West Coast buyback. "The fleet was built up in the late '70s early '80s. The large fleet allowed us to harvest fish the government said were underutilized, and by the late '80s, they were telling us they were overfished."
Gilden blames a "lack of scientific knowledge" for the management decisions that created today's problem. "It's really hard to count all the fish in the sea," she said, and noted that in the past "there was a tendency to hope there were more" fish than there turned out to be.
Chris Dorsett, Pacific fish conservation manager with the environmental group the Ocean Conservancy, agrees. "[Fishers] were given faulty exploitation advice," he said.
But he says today's problems are not just due to inaccurate science. "There were naysayers even back then," he said, "people in the fisheries service who were very concerned."
To make matters worse, said Dorsett, both industry and regulators overlooked the fact that many fishing operations hauled in more fish than were brought to shore. That "bycatch" of commercially unviable fish took its toll on the ecosystem, he said.
"They knew there was significant bycatch," he said. "The number of fish actually killed exceeded the number of fish permitted to be killed."
Leipzeig disputes this, stating that the fishing industry has "always accounted for total mortality" and that day-to-day fishing quotas are even reduced according to bycatch estimates