Senate considers bill to create
system of whiting quotas
By Joel Gallob Of the
News-Times 8/8/05
Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) last week introduced a
bill, S 1549, that would create a system of
Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ) in the
Pacific Whiting fishery by providing cooperative
shares to fishermen and to shore-based processors
who have historically participated in that
fishery.
The whiting fishery, which began only in the early
1990s, is now one of the biggest on the West
Coast. Newport and Astoria are the two key ports
in the fishery.
"I believe that when enacted, S. 1549 will
complement the efforts being made by the Council
to conserve and manage the Pacific groundfish
fishery through a trawl quota program and
restrictions on bycatch," the senator wrote to
Donald Hansen, chair of the Pacific Fishery
Management Council. "Further, a whiting
cooperative plan holds great promise for our
coastal communities by improving the economics of
the fishery." Smith asked the council to review
the bill and make "substantive comments" upon it.
Kent Craford, a
spokesman for West Coast Seafood Processors
Association based in Portland, said the bill
should offer several benefits to the fishery, the
industry and the coastal economy. And, he said,
his organization has been joined in supporting it
by the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative, an
organization very involved in the whiting fishery,
which is headquartered in Newport.
"We have formed a partnership and asked for
federal legislation to rationalize the Pacific
Whiting fishery and implement a system of ITQs for
the harvesters and the processors of whiting. The
legislation only involves a shore-based sector,
not the other sectors of the whiting industry,"
said Craford. The whiting industry's processing
sector has three sub-sectors: the shore-based
processors; the boats that catch and process their
own whiting at sea; and the large "mother ships"
that send out vessels which bring back whiting for
on-board processing.
In order to determine who is in and who is out in
the ITQ program, the legislation identifies a
period (1994 through 2004 for harvesters, 1999
through 2004 for the shore-based processors)
during which time they had to be in operation
catching or processing whiting. In allocating
future shares in the fishery, it allows fishers to
toss out their poorest two years when requesting a
quota.
The idea, said Crawford, is to bring the various
benefits of an ITQ system to the large Pacific
Whiting fishery. "This kind of quota system has
worked in the Alaskan crab fishery," he said. "For
one thing, it will give everybody a more level
playing field. Beyond that, there are several
reasons for doing this."
One is the current fishery is wasteful,
over-capitalized and over-intensive. The fishery
currently operates as a "derby fishery," with all
participants competing against each other to haul
up catch before the season ceiling is reached.
That pushes the fishermen to catch as much fish as
possible at the start of the season - and that has
several ill effects, Crawford said. It drives the
price of catch down at the season's start and
makes the catch more difficult to find later. And
it means fishermen have to go out and stay out,
whatever the weather and whatever the condition of
their boat, if they want to and find and catch the
fish.
"Currently, the money in the fleet is poorly
used," he said, "the boats fish harder and faster,
and the plants do the same. It's better to space
it out, not flood the market. Stretching it out,
by assuring the harvesters and processors of their
share, will allow them to make more rational - and
safer - business decisions."
And, Crawford continued, although the whiting
fishery "is a clean fishery," reducing the
pressure to make the catch as fast as possible
should enable a cleaner fishery, with lower
bycatch.
Senator Smith, in his letter to council chair
Hansen, had a slightly different take on that.
"Most recently," he wrote, "the need for such a
plan was highlighted by the unexpected change in
salmon bycatch patterns that resulted in new
restrictions on the whiting fleet."
David Jincks, the director of the Midwater
Trawlers Cooperative, told the News-Times his
organization strongly supports the legislation.
"We're for it," he said. "It'll be good for us,
because the whiting is a derby; it does not make
sense to continue fishing like that. It's like
rationalizing the Pollock and the crab fisheries
in the Bering Sea," he said. The change to ITQ
systems for those Alaskan fisheries, he said, has
been credited with improving them, making them
safer and stabilizing prices.
The planned quota shares will be fully
transferable, Crawford said. "But you'll need to
match the harvester share with the processor
share, and in order to fish, you need to make an
agreement like that at the start of the season.
That will force the harvesters and processors to
team up in partnership," he said.
ITQs are opposed by some fishermen, who worry they
will lead to a concentrated fishery in which a few
big companies own most of the vessels, with the
traditional family business approach to fishing
becoming a thing of the past. Others say methods
can be found to protect the coastal fishing
culture while obtaining the benefits of an ITQ
system.
Some in the industry oppose the privatization of
the resource, and prefer to leave it unallocated,
open to anyone who can raise the funds to buy a
boat, hire a crew and enter the fishery. But many
economists, some fishermen, and at least one large
conservation organization (Environmental Defense)
argue that ITQs can have big benefits for the
industry, the fishers, and for conservation of
marine resources.
