You guys crack me up. This article was written by Commercial Fishing groups trying to get recs. to fight against IFQ's that have very little impact on us.
Northwest Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations =
http://www.pcffa.org/
Check out this quote from the article:
So what does this mean for you and me? Tighter regulations. Shorter fishing seasons. Higher prices. Less boats on the water. What does this mean for our economy? I don’t even want to think about it.
Translation- there will be no impact. If there was it would be spelled out point by point.
IFQ's are already in use in many commercial fisheries including alaskan halibut, sablefish and crab.
In fact here is a comm. organization that supports IFQ's in the Gulf
http://shareholdersalliance.org/joo...of-november-16-2009&catid=9:articles&Itemid=3
Really???
Catch share strife grows
By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
September 29, 2009 05:45 am
— Recreational fishing interests have registered their intense opposition to "catch shares" — the high-priority regulatory policy sought by the Obama administration to commodify and limit access to fisheries in an effort to align investment with conservation interests and reduce competition among individual fishing boats.
The objections — from two umbrella organizations, the New Jersey-based Recreational Fishing Alliance and the Texas-based Coastal Conservation Association — were filed over the summer with the president and with a task force closely tied to the White House that was appointed to assist Jane Lubchenco, the catch-share advocate who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in facilitating the transition.
There are no catch share programs in recreational fisheries today, but the recreational organizations see them on the horizon.
"The (government has) authority to use catch shares (in recreational fisheries) if they are appropriate," said Connie Barclay, director of the office of commissions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Each fishery may require different management techniques, but if it makes sense to use a catch share for a certain fishery, the (regional fishery council) can certainly consider it."
Both the Recreational Fishing Alliance and the Coastal Conservation Association argued against ending open access for the recreational fishermen to the resources — joining a growing chorus of fishing industry groups crying foul over the conversion to catch shares, especially in New England.
"There are no true catch share systems in purely recreational fisheries, nor are they appropriate," the Coastal Conservation Association, wrote to the task force last month. "CCA endorses the concept that the federal government is the trustee of the oceans' resources and must manage them for the overall benefit of the public.
"Open access to the resource allows the public to use these resources consistent with sound conservation."
"Traditional recreational fishing access has always been and must always be open and free to all anglers," the Recreational Fishing Alliance wrote to the president in June.
The alliance's executive director Jim Donofrio wrote that "Although we have seen no formal position from your administration regarding recreational catch shares, we are concerned that the environmental groups are seeking to kill our open access tradition."
In August, the alliance expanded its reasoning in a letter to the task force chairwoman Monica Medina.
A former chief counsel at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Medina served on the transition team that produced the recommendation for the hiring of Jane Lubchenco to head NOAA.
Lubchenco named Medina, an executive at the Pew Environment Group, to the $100,000-plus special assignment to organize a catch share task force.
"There are motivations that drive recreational fishing that cannot be assigned a dollar value and that simply do not exist in the commercial fishing sector," Donofrio wrote to Medina. He argued that the catch share approach ... "favored by some groups" would impose market dynamics on the recreational fishery, "thereby assigning a dollar value for every pound of recreationally landed fish.
"Recreational Fishing Alliance believes this approach would set a profound precedence forcing anglers to pay for fishing access. As market forces drive the cost for each fish," he wrote, "the recreational fishery would become cost prohibitive for many anglers to engage in the fishery."
The push for catch sharization has not slackened despite cautionary tales about the intense consolidation of ownership, creating fewer but more powerful equity interests, and potential economic dislocations in the ports that are subjected to catch share conversion and external ownership.
In New England, vast uncertainty and false starts have shadowed the rush to innovate a catch share system in the groundfishery, which has remained defined by mom-and-pop ownership of subsistence commerce in and around a thriving recreational sector in Gloucester and elsewhere.
Just last week, the New England Fishery Management Council informally conceded it had badly botched an allocation distribution between the catch share portion of the commercial fishery and the fishermen who resisted joining the harvesting cooperatives or sectors that will work off catch shares next year.
The council, which is the legislative and policy making body for the federal government, dumped the allocation to a common pool and asked a government committee to redo the allocation to avoid a possible "fishing derby" for cod and pollock by the independent common poolers.
The protests highlight difficulties in applying the catch share concept of privatizing fisheries heretofore considered commonly owned public resources in different components of the same fishery.
An additional complication to the transition to catch shares in New England and the Middle Atlantic states is the faulty catch histories produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service within NOAA.
The service has acknowledged that it cannot ensure that the histories can be adjusted and made accurate in time for the allocation into the first year of catch shares that begin next May.
The service did say it would accept applications for recalculation for the 2011 season.
In April, soon after her Senate confirmation, Lubchenco challenged the New England Fishery Management Council to complete the conversion of the commercial fishery catch shares without delay or excuse.
Mark Holliday, executive director of the Catch Share Task Force, said yesterday the first draft of its findings are on schedule for release to the public in mid-October. According to notes published on its own NOAA Web site, the task force is assigned to facilitate the implementation of catch shares and drum up support.
"Task Force participants were ... asked for their ideas on how to ensure thorough engagement of all constituent groups during the forthcoming policy review and comment period. Suggestions included targeting communication strategies at the regional level, not just the national level," the most recent dispatch, from Sept. 4, noted.
The Task Force released a national summary showing at least 34 "potential" catch share programs in the eight regions of the federal regulatory system established under the Magnuson Act.
The cautionary themes from the recreational sector arrived as the national debate over catch shares continues — with the government pushing on all fronts, the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico to institute the concept which has been a grail of sorts for the twin environmental titans, the Pew Environment Group and the Environmental Defense Fund.
Both non-government organizations — or NGOs — and others united after the 2008 Presidential election urged the new administration to forge ahead with catch shares.
The Environmental Defense Fund has broadened its claims to include potential windfall profits to investors who help bring powerful self-interests to the commodification of the fisheries.
