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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 5
January 2006
Editorial
How does NMFS help US fishermen at ICCAT?
After more than 20 years of strangling restrictions, US commercial swordfish and bluefin fishermen may rightly be wondering what – if anything – has been accomplished.
For all the conservation sacrifices US fishermen have made, their own government continues to manage these fisheries and represent US industry interests on the international front in highly questionable ways.
As a result, Americans sit here tied to the dock, while most of the rest of the world continues to fish with impunity.
Despite pleas from the bluefin industry, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has refused to fully lift days-off restrictions and reassure fishermen that sufficient quota will be made available for the winter fishery.
All of this has left many experienced, professional New England bluefin fishermen reluctant to make the substantial investment necessary to head to North Carolina for the December-January season, and there was little hope in mid-December that the US fishery would come even close to catching its quota – again.
The US swordfish fishery has done everything humanly possible to address environmentalists’ and sportfishermen’s concerns over pelagic longline gear.
At often great personal expense, a dozen Blue Water Fishermen’s Association members spent three years participating in cooperative research projects to reduce catches of sea turtles and other marine mammals.
The gear modifications and handling techniques that came out of these projects were so successful that they are now being taught to fishermen around the world. Blue Water also worked closely with sport groups to address concerns over billfish bycatch in domestic waters.
While NMFS did reopen the Grand Banks closure area in 2004, only a handful of US pelagic longliners capable of participating in that distant water fishery were still around. And huge punitive closures remain in effect from the Mid-Atlantic down into the Gulf of Mexico.
Years of closures, restrictive trip limits, and dead discard requirements imposed by NMFS – largely at the relentless urging of sport fishing and environmental organizations – have forced dozens of smaller swordfish boats out of business and driven the majority of larger vessels into the Pacific or to foreign countries.
Today, there are just 40-45 active Atlantic swordfish boats left in the US compared to the 350-500 of less than 20 years ago. And all the while, imports, many from practically nonregulated countries, are allowed to flood the US market.
How have NMFS management strategies for these fisheries been in the best interests of US commercial fishermen?
This year’s meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) did little to improve matters.
The White House’s surprise appointment of Randi Parks Thomas of the US Tuna Foundation to the commercial ICCAT commissioner’s seat was a blow. Thomas’s experience is representing primarily the Pacific distant water tuna fleet and West Coast canned tuna processors – interests that have nothing to do with Atlantic tuna and swordfish fisheries.
The US was unable to convince ICCAT to postpone swordfish and billfish stock assessments, so these fisheries will be up for reallocation discussions at the same time as bluefin, marlin, and other tunas. That, combined with mounting international pressure to redistribute uncaught US swordfish and bluefin quota, has left industry reps here worried that their fisheries could be in real jeopardy at ICCAT in 2006.
At the November meeting, NMFS Director Bill Hogarth was elected ICCAT chairman. That’s a real honor, and it should put the US in a particularly influential position. But NMFS’s handling of the swordfish and bluefin fisheries here at home leaves us wondering what good the chairmanship will do for US fishermen.
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