FISHY BUSINESS

There’s a saying that if no one is happy with a hard-fought decision then it must be a good one. In the case of last week’s New England Fishery Management Council rules for rebuilding groundfish stocks, the widespread unhappiness indicates something else. No one likes the rules, which the council adopted by a 13-2 vote, with the two dissenters coming from Maine. That’s because they aren’t very good.

Under a federal court order, the council, which met for three days last week in Massachusetts, was required to come up with a plan to reduce fishing to allow stocks of fish such as haddock, cod and flounder to grow. Proposals before the council called for a 65 percent reduction in the number of days fishermen could spend at sea or the closure of large swaths of ocean or modifications to gear to allow more fish to escape.

After three days of often-heated deliberations and back-and-forth voting, council members approved a plan to reduce days at sea by 24 percent, while focusing effort on healthy stocks. Whether this reduction will pass judicial muster remains to be seen, but they were on the right track. Then, caving to the interests of large fishing conglomerates, the council also supported the concept of allowing unused fishing days to be “leased” to others. So much for reduction of fishing effort. The only good thing that can be said about the leasing proposal is that it only allows the sale of unused days within boat classes, meaning that large boats can’t buy up all the days not used by small boats.

Maine fishermen say the rules are especially unfair to them because they must travel far, often off the coast of Massachusetts, to target healthy stocks. Travel time, also known as “steaming time,” is counted as part of the days at sea limit.

Conservationists, who brought the lawsuit that resulted in the court order of the regulations known as Amendment 13, also dislike the fishery council’s proposed rules because they believe they are too weak.

It now falls to the National Marine Fisheries Service to decide whether to accept the New England council’s rules, amend them, or draft its own. Final new rules must be ready by May. Despite the outcry, regulators must keep in mind the judge’s order that overfishing must be stopped. That means there must be less fishing.

So, rather than lamenting the cutbacks that are required, effort should be focused on helping fishermen cope with the lean years to come when fewer fish can be caught. Sen. Olympia Snowe, chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard, earlier this year, asked for an independent analysis of the proposed Amendment 13 changes. Now that the New England council has put forward its version of the rules, she was joined by Sen. Susan Collins in asking for a review of potential impacts.

Armed with real information – rather than predictions of doomsday scenarios – regulators will be able to develop plans to reduce the adverse impacts of their decisions. In addition, specific segments of the industry needing the most assistance, such as those in Maine, can be identified and targeted. Such an analysis will also be helpful to the state’s groundfish task force, which should find new ways, such as innovative financing plans, to help Maine fishermen weather the inevitable cutbacks.

It is clear that unpopular rules are on the horizon, it makes sense to prepare for, not just complain about, them now.