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BP, Catch shares have NOTHING to do with the health of the fishery or overfishing.
Using the current terms where ABC = the allowable biological catch
ACL = annual catch limits and AM = accountability measures. The way the system works is that the Scientific and statistical committee (SSC) of the fishery management council responsible for that species set the ABC for the year, then the SSC takes various factors into account to come up with the ACL which is the actual amount fishermen are allowed to catch. If either the commercial or recreational sector exceeds their share of the ACL the AMs kick in and subsequent year's ACL for that sector will be reduced. In species subject to a rebuilding plan, like New England groundfish) the ABC and ACLs are well below the overfishing threshold. Notice that so far I haven't mentioned catch shares. As I said before catch shares have nothing to do with species rebuilding or overfishing.
With catch shares, as are currently implemented in the New England commercial groundfish fishery, fishermen can elect to join a sector, or fish in the common pool. However, the NEFMC made it very clear that any vessels fishing in the common pool would have much less of the quota allocated to them than those fishing in sectors. A sector is an association of vessels that are permitted in the fishery and have a history of landing fish in the fishery. Each sector gets an allocation of the ACL based on their combined history of landings. Any boat in that sector can land any or all of the ACL allocated to that sector. What has happened, due to the simple economics of the situtation, is that the big boats in each sector have landed the lions share of the ACL allocated to that sector and the small boats have stayed tied to the dock and been paid by the big boats for their share in the sector.
The boats that opted to fish in the common pool and not join a sector have had their trip limits reduced time and time again, to the point where it is only marginally profitable for them to sail.
Yes, this system makes fishing more economically efficient, but it does it by involuntarily forcing small boats out of the fishery. It's like the government giving Walmart incentives for setting up new stores in every neighborhood and forcing the Mom & Pop stores out of business. Economically it is more efficient, but it puts people on unemployment and takes away the freedom of choice for the small businessman.
Note that the Groundfish fishery has been a limited access fishery for years and there have been no new entries into the fishery except for a few handgear B fishermen who are allowed to catch between 50 and 100 pounds of cod per trip. Effectively an immaterial percentage of the fishery.
Now as for outside influences and other reasons to oppose catch shares. One of the biggest reasons IMHO is that NOAA/NMFS is diverting money that should be going into fishery science into promoting catch shares. The proposed budget takes about 50 million dollars away from scientific research ans uses it to devise and promote catch shares. Is that the way any fisherman wants the money spent? So in that sense catch shares is bad for each and every fishery. Secondly, the folks that have been pushing for these catch shares, in particular the Environmental Defense Fund, PEW, the Packard foundation, et. al.have been getting together to plan how they can buy into corporate fishing entities and control the catch shares either for profit or to achieve their other objectives, in short what can be seen as a plot to control all commercial fishing and perhaps all fishing.
While catch shares are a hot topic in New England right now, mainly because of the damage they are doing to our fishing fleet, other fishery management councils are proposing to take it even further to impose catch shares on the charter/party fleet as well as on individual fishermen. You can read all about it on the websites for the South Atlantic Fishery management Council and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management council.
Having said all of that, I'll just add the fact that WE WONthe Jones amendment passed by an large margin in the House!
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