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US fishermen along the gulf coast are trying out a relatively new system to prevent over fishing and put control over when to go out and what to fish for back in the hands of local boat owners and crews. Under the old schedule, fishermen were confined to a narrow seasonal window. Just as portrayed on the popular show Deadliest Catch, boats rush out and fish like crazy for a short period of time. During bad weather and rough seas, commercial fishermen are forced to weigh the cost of missing all or part of the season against risking boats and lives. The US eastern seaboard and gulf coast are not as notoriously dangerous as the Bering Sea, but under a calendar based system, an active tropical storm season or other unpredictable factors could put an entire year’s catch in peril during already uncertain economic times.
"Catch Shares" are a sort of the ‘cap and trade’ of the sea. Marine biologists and other wildlife experts use data on reproductive rates and estimates of existing, breeding age sea critters to determine how much fishing a respective species can withstand and still maintain a healthy population. This 'total allowable catch' is then subdivided into units or shares which can typically be bought, sold, or traded. The program is overseen by the National Marine Fisheries Service , which is a part of NOAA. The fines for violating share limit or fishing without share are intended to exceed the potential profits gained, making it a commercially effective deterrent.
Heather Paffe, Gulf and Southeast Oceans Program Director for Environmental Defense Fund, a non profit agency that was intimately involved with implementing Catch Shares along the US Gulf Coast, explained, ”By allowing fishermen to decide their own schedules, they can more effectively match production with market demand, avoid unsafe weather conditions, and reduce the amount of other seafood inadvertently caught called bycatch. That’s good for business, good for fisherman, and good for the environment."
The Gulf of Mexico's catch share for red snapper showed these benefits almost immediately after implementation in January 2007. But skeptics point out that the new program could make it difficult for new fishermen, with little or no history with which to award them share, to enter the business. And the shares themselves are financial instruments, difficult to value, unregulated by traditional financial oversight agencies, and potentially open to the kind of rampant speculation that led to the infamous Dutch Tulip Bulb bubble.
Catch Shares, quotas, and fishing seasons are imperfect systems, but marine biologists and many fishermen agree something must be done to preserve viable breeding stocks under assault from overfishing, pollution, and ocean acidification. The data is universal and unequivocal: over the last several decades most fish stocks, including tuna, cod, and flounder, have declined by as much as 90 per cent. And the only 'fish' that seem to be doing well lately are preceded by the word 'jelly'.
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