Fish Stories
The Center for Investigative Reporting has an outstanding animation up about fish politics and who controls the fisheries. Essentially, the catch shares system for regulating fisheries has turned into creating state-sponsored monopolies over the fishing grounds. It doesn’t have to be that way. A few catch share systems create regulations that keep the quotas in fishing communities, but mostly this has capitalized the oceans, which also makes it really hard to know whether this system is helping the fisheries recover.
Working-class communities have fought against government-approved monopolization of natural resource economies going back to at least the 1930s, but rarely with much success. That so many resources are depleted suggests many problems with this system, but it continues given the ability of corporations to engage in regulatory capture.
In a related story, Maine lobstermen are seeking to organize with the International Association of Machinists. Fishing workers have few rights and are very lightly unionized. They can’t restrict supply because of federal law, but they could press their clout before the Maine legislature through a union, which might help them live a more secure life.
But Maine lobster is one of the very very few sustainability success stories. Having grown up on the Chesapeake Bay I respect a waterman’s need/desire to make a living, but more often than not those desires come at the expense of the environment.
I’m not sure what the conflict would be here. If anything, the Maine lobstermen want to restrict supply and raise prices.
Uhm whut? They will lobby against anything that they think effects their bottom line… which includes new environmental regulations. See ropes and whales. It’s not like there are zero issues with the biodiversity in Maine waters. What are the chances that this union supports anything that reduces their catch if a crash in lobster population does occur?
You are probably right. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have legitimate claims that a union would help them with.
And restricting supply would improve the ecosystem, although that’s not actually going to happen.
therefore what? if it’s going to be impacted anyway, might as well let the fisherman get the $$ rather than a corporation?
sorry, but I don’t see the MSC as a particularly reliable source of “sustainability” rankings.
http://www.npr.org/series/171717418/the-meaning-of-sustainable-labeled-seafood
Does this move distinguish between the lobstermen proper — who hold the permit, usually own the boat, etc — and do the employing, and the sternmen, who are considered independent, self-employed workers because they are working on shares, but are employees in all but name?
Don’t know, but I’m going to pay attention to this story going forward.
Fishermen typically want higher quotas. And overfishing has caused the collapse of innumerable stocks. Local fishermen typically simply want to exclude others. The sad fact is that so many species have been overfished, that recovery of the stocks can take years, or decades, if the fishery can ever recover. The destruction of the immense, renewable fisheries almost everywhere is one of the chief mistakes of our modern world.
In traditionally regulated fisheries, fishery participants tend to push for higher catch limits, even at the risk of overfishing. In catch-share fisheries, what we have observed is that fishery participants tend to encourage lower catch limits, and are more supportive of enforcement efforts. The empirical evidence at this point is quite clear: Changing the institutional structure under which the fishery is managed dramatically alters the incentives fishery participants face.
I don’t understand this post. There is now a wealth of data in the peer-reviewed literature (including papers in Science and Nature) showing that catch-share systems enhance fishery sustainability. Not only is fishing efficiency enhanced, but bycatch is reduced and share owners have an incentive to support conservation measures. Implementation of catch-shares have also faciliated greater enforcement of limits and better data collection — so we are actually learning more about such fisheries than those under traditional regulatory management.
As for impacts on workers, safety in catch share fisheries has improved dramatically, and the primary labor shift has been from short-term employment to more stable, long-term employment, as seasons extend from days to months.
I also don’t understand As for efforts to prevent monopolization of fisheries, as it happens in the 1930s through 1950s fishermen’s unions organized to monopolize fisheries on both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. These arrangements were challenged and struck down under antitrust laws. But, ironically enough, these arrangements — which were created by the fishermen themselves — had conservation benefits, both in terms of the volume and quality of the catch.
JHA
I have the same reaction, in a more general form. Fisheries are a classic Tragedy of the Commons situation, and romanticizing the small fisherman doesn’t change the basic economics of the situation.
A union for Maine lobsterman would be a welcome development.
Let’s hope, however, they do not follow the lead of the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which seems to have allied allied itself with a nasty fish processing corporation to lobby against limits on the Atlantic menhaden.
http://publictrustproject.org/blog/environment/2012/omega-protein-hiring-hundreds-of-foreign-workers-while-boasting-of-jobs-in-the-u-s/