Support the Ayotte-Brown Fisheries Legislation

Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Scott Brown (R-MA) have introduced S.1678, the “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011.”  The Ayotte-Brown bill is similar to, but stronger than the House bill, HB.2772, also called the “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011.”  Both bills are aimed at limiting the fisheries management technique known as catch shares.  The House version addresses future implementations of catch shares while the Ayotte-Brown version extends the legislation to existing catch shares programs.  Ayotte-Brown requires that an existing catch shares program be terminated if it can be shown that the program has reduced fishing jobs by more than 15%.

Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)

Senator Scott Brown (R-MA)

Catch shares, a fisheries management technique developed by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), is documented in a 184-page playbook titled "Catch Shares Design Manual."

President Obama’s handpicked ecozealot, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA and former bigwig at the EDF, is implementing catch shares nation-wide.  In New England, she has personally driven fisherman allocations drastically below those levels that even her own scientists say are sufficient to sustain and allow growth of the stocks.  Dr. Lubchenco wants the industry to shrink.  She envisions a fixed number of catch share permits allocated within a small community of fishing boats.  Let the fittest fishermen survive.  Her implementation of catch shares has some curveballs.

·         Catch shares is clearly a limited access system as defined in the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).  However, because MSA does not refer to catch shares by name, NOAA has taken the position that catch shares are not covered by the constraints of MSA.

·         Catch shares should be equitable, but while most fishermen were required to show 10 years of history, other more favored groups were allowed to get by with only five years.

·         Catch shares are supposed to be voluntary, but NOAA offered only two choices, with the second choice being an Obama-like strawman called the common pool which is weighed down with burdensome restrictions.

Relief from the onerous burdens of the catch shares management system is essential if our fishing industry and the myriad of small businesses that it includes are to survive.  This legislation should be enacted.  The merits of the House bill are well covered by Nils Stolpe in his essay titled, “Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 – what’s there to argue?”

David and Ellen Goethel of Hampton, NH and the fishing vessel Ellen Diane said:

This bill, if passed, will provide some much needed balance to catch share programs. … We applaud Senator Ayotte for introducing this bill.

David Goethel and his son Daniel on F/V Ellen Diane

It is very interesting that Senators Ayotte and Brown combined to file this legislation.  They are both rookies, but neither is obeying the unwritten Senate rule that freshmen should be seen and not heard.  As Bob Dylan put it, "The Times They Are a Changin." 

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside ragin'.

It'll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'.

Both Senator Ayotte and Senator Brown have come to the Senate to do the people's business, not necessarily complying with Senate tradition.  The bill they have filed goes right to the root cause of the problem.  It doesn't simply throw stimulus money or bribes at the fishermen while leaving the root problem untouched as does so much of what Senator Kerry proposes. 

Let us hope that this is the new congressional paradigm.

This posting originally appeared on the Exeter Patch on 19 October 2011.