Crisis management

A standing-room-only, highly emotional crowd of industry, environmental and regulatory types is expected to be on hand in Wakefield, Mass., today when the New England Fisheries Management Council meets to save the cod. With all of the interested parties in the same place at the same, this would be a good opportunity to talk about saving the fishermen.

There is no question that Gulf of Maine cod stocks are in a disastrous state, severely depleted by any scientific or real-world measure. Cutting next year’s catch to 20 percent of this year’s already meager level may be the only recourse. The pain to be felt from Stonington to New Bedford may be unavoidable.

The present situation is not new, merely an extension of the past, and that’s why the council’s action today must not be in vain. If New England fishermen are to be force-fed this strong medicine, there must be an honest assessment of what the malady truly is.

It’s being called overfishing, but mismanagement is the more accurate term. For more than two decades, the crafters of federal fisheries policy — Congress and the National Marine Fisheries Service — have studiously ignored the advice of those they regulate.

It started with the 1976 Magnuson Fisheries Act. Not content with merely driving large foreign factory trawlers 200 miles offshore, not willing to let the industry fill the breach according to the rules of the marketplace, Congress had to tinker. Fishermen warned that federal subsidies for the construction of new American vessels would bring into the industry investors with no knowledge of the ocean, with no vested interest in its long-term health. The subsidies were handed out and fishermen who own and operate their own boats found themselves in competition with syndicates of dentists and lawyers.

And so the depletion began. Fishermen warned that spot closures merely would drive the biggest, most powerful boats into other waters, they warned that shortened seasons would lead to fewer days of harder fishing, they warned that absurdly low catch limits would result in only the highest-quality fish being kept and lower-quality but marketable fish being tossed overboard. Most of all, they warned that pigeonholing fishermen into specific fisheries was utterly contrary to the time-proven practice of fishing for what is abundant and laying off what isn’t.

Naturally, Congress and NMFS ignored those warnings and an industry that for generations sustained families and their communities is on life-support. The debate now about additional closures, days at sea and catch limits is essentially an argument over burial or cremation.

Even federal initiatives to reduce the fleet have been bungled. The much-touted boat buy-back program was underfunded to the point of being merely symbolic. The largest boats were given preference, thus allowing fleet owners to shed their oldest, least-productive vessels. Nothing prevented the proceeds from being used to buy bigger and better boats for the move into other fisheries. The small owner-operator had to make room.

The cod crisis is just the latest in a series of species-specific crises. The entire marine ecosystem is so sick, many fishermen say only a widespread and virtually total closure of several years can heal it. Sadly, the same regulators who would cut a fisherman’s income by 80 percent say the call for a total closure is merely a ploy by fishermen to get some kind of welfare program that would pay them not to fish.

The immediate question before the council today is how to preserve the small schools of cod as the brood stock for future generations. The larger question is how to preserve what remains of New England’s family-based fishing industry for that day when the fish return. Lawmakers and regulators led the fishery into this disaster by not listening to the fishermen. Today, while there still are fishermen to speak, may be their last chance.