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October 15, 2003
SUMMARY of MFP Community Panels Project Amendment 13 Comments
On October 15, 2003, the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership (MFP)
submitted comments to the New England Fishery Management Council on Amendment
13 to the Multispecies Fisheries Management Plan. The public comments provide
a preliminary report on the social and economic information being collected
by MFP’s regional effort, the Community Panels Project.
The Panels Project, funded by the Northeast Consortium and Saltonstall-Kennedy
grants, is focusing on 6 communities: Beals Island/Jonesport and Portland,
Maine; Gloucester, Scituate and New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Point Judith,
Rhode Island. MIT Sea Grant College Program’s anthropologist, Dr. Madeleine
Hall-Arber, is the project leader with Dr. Bonnie McCay of Rutgers University
and David Bergeron of the MFP, as co-principal investigators. The six
communities in the study represent the variety of characteristics found in
New England’s fishing industry including inshore/offshore, large/small
vessels; urban/rural communities; fish/shellfish products; mobile/fixed gear;
auction/entrepreneur-dealer, etc.
Cumulative Impacts of Past Regulations
The report finds that the cumulative impacts of prior groundfish
regulations have had much greater impact than previously acknowledged. These
impacts include a drastically reduced participation in the fishery, leading
to negative effects on families, crews, fleet profiles, and planning. In
addition, the reductions have increased the vulnerability of infrastructure
in some communities. Flexibility has been another casualty of the series of
regulations.
Infrastructure Vulnerability
The survival of fishing industry infrastructure is a major concern in many
ports, and one that is not adequately investigated by existing documents on
anticipated A13 impacts. Cuts in fishing effort will not merely cause
proportional cuts in profits to shoreside businesses. Rather, they are likely
to trigger large scale and cascading effects that may very well include
permanent losses of working waterfront. This is partly due to the already
precarious position of some shoreside businesses facing changing real estate
markets and food production networks. If one or more of the critical elements
comprising the fishing industry infrastructure disappears, a domino effect
could cause all to fail. Furthermore, the study has underscored the
importance of a diverse fleet structure in New England comprising large,
medium, and smaller sized vessels that work together to provide a consistent
supply of product and sustain the infrastructure.
Loss in Flexibility and Sustainability
Flexible switching strategies traditionally have allowed day boats and
others to adjust their individual business plans to changing ecological and
socioeconomic circumstances with relative ease. Like diversified farming
practices, the ecological and economic burdens and risks formerly were
distributed more widely than in the present fleet. As a result of
single-species fisheries management in New England, more vessels than ever
before focus on a single species or fishery. No longer can harvesters easily
shift to alternative species when one fishery experiences stock declines, or
normal inter-annual fluctuations. In contrast, flexibility was once the key
to sustainability and a hallmark of the centuries old tradition of fishing in
New England.
Further Study: Learning from the Past for the Future
The Panels Project will continue its work. Project leaders believe that
ideas about ways to improve fisheries management so that both stocks and
communities are sustained will emerge from the ongoing collaborative study.
In the meantime, the Panels Project strongly recommends that all effort be
made to retain the existing diversity in the fleet.
The full report is
attached and available in pdf format.
David Bergeron, Executive Director
Massachusetts Fishermen's Partnership
2 Blackburn Center Gloucester, MA 01930
Tel. (978) 282-4847 Fax (978) 282-4798
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