Gloucester, Mass. —
The concern over the changes threatened by catch shares is also for the way of life that the American fishing industry has sustained communities that harbor the commercial fleets.
In the ports of New England, the predominant scale of the fishing businesses remains mom-and-pop.
The near-universal labor management arrangement remains the archaic profit-sharing system.
As a rule, catch shares fisheries devolve into a smaller number of players holding a larger percentage of the fishing capacity.
Fewer but better-paying jobs, and fewer and more profitable boats, are the carrots that advocates of the system offer in exchange.
Losses are expected to be catastrophic in Gloucester, the nation’s oldest fishing port, because of a reduction in the size of the catch its fleet must share, a development triggered by related requirements in the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act, which regulates the industry.
The act mandates that overfished stocks be restored to sustainability within a 10-year time frame — 2014 is the most common deadline year — and that hard catch limits be imposed on those stocks.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the agency that oversees fishing, has interpreted the law to require it to ratchet down the allowable catch of most stocks of fish, even as the stocks recover rapidly after a decade of conservation.
Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, worries that small fishermen won't survive to see the day when fishing stocks are declared recovered and will be forced to sell their shares of the catch when they are worth little.
The result, he said, could be a "conversion to share-cropping," with fishermen who once owned their own businesses working for corporate masters who never go to sea.
Gulf Oil Spill
Related Photos
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Old-timers in Gloucester, Mass., remember the days when a person could walk across the harbor on the decks of fishing boats. This photo shows the fleet in Gloucester — America's oldest commercial fishing port — in 1937. Cape Ann Historical Museum
Discussion
New rules threaten oldest fishing port
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New rules threaten oldest fishing port
The concern over the changes threatened by catch shares is also for the way of life that the American fishing industry has sustained communities that harbor the commercial fleets.
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