Cumulative Impacts and Community Effects

(from the July, 2006 issue of National Fisherman)

Fishing communities are in trouble. While tempting to blame this entirely on ineffectual management, that’s only part of the story. In fishery after fishery the screws are constantly being tightened by the managers. Fisheries have been subject to an unrelenting series of cutbacks; cutbacks often instituted for reasons unrelated to the level of commercial harvesting in those fisheries. Of course this is felt by the fishermen, who find it increasingly difficult to cope. It’s also felt by docks, processors and other shore-side businesses. They can be reeling from double- or triple- or quadruple “whammies” of multiple cutbacks in multiple fisheries that they depend on.

This is old hat to anyone who regularly reads National Fisherman, and to a large extent the resourcefulness of people in the commercial fishing industry has allowed them to tighten their belts and more or less cope.

Unfortunately, because other factors are now in play, coping’s becoming increasingly difficult.

Rising fuel prices, and attendant trickle-down impacts on the costs of other goods and services, are having major bottom line impacts. This can mean fishing closer to port, diminished landings and, in fisheries where it’s possible, consolidation. The result is less revenue not only for the boats and docks, but also for businesses that provide vessel support services.

Coastal development pressures are having a significant impact as well. Docks and other fishing-related businesses that require a waterfront location are being priced out of the market. And those that remain can find themselves surrounded by upscale development bringing new neighbors unwilling to accept the round-the-clock activities that a fishing operation depends on. Then when a marine railway, for example, closes down, it’s a longer trip with perhaps a longer wait to get hauled out.

There are the proliferating numbers of scheduled or unscheduled closures. A direct route to the fishing grounds is not always possible. Hours and miles can be added to every trip, with a corresponding increase in fuel consumption (and perhaps a decrease in the value of the catch.) The pending whale avoidance speed limits will, at least for larger vessels, add to this burden.

Insurance costs, particularly in hurricane-prone areas, are approaching, and in cases have gone beyond, being affordable.

And we can’t forget the increasing cost of regulatory compliance. Vessel monitoring systems aren’t free, and come with service charges. In Uncooperative Spirits in last month’s NF, Wesley Loy reported that the proposed regulations for the Alaskan H&G fishery could require an additional capital investment of up to $300,00 per boat and an additional observer on board, adding $82,000 in annual operating expenses.

Sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it? But, given some slack in the areas where slack is available, it doesn’t have to be. Can we look for any relief from high fuel prices or from the effects of those prices on the goods and services we require? Unfortunately, that’s not likely. Can we survive the impacts of rapidly escalating coastal property values? Zoning can help, and in some cases it already has. Insurance? Everyone’s in the same boat there.

Where is slack available? How about in fishing regulations? While nobody is opposed to rebuilt stocks, no one that places any value at all on maintaining traditional fishing communities can think that having those stocks rebuilt according to some arbitrary schedule is worth the loss of a fishing port.

In the long term, does the rebuilding time matter? Not a bit, but a shorter rebuilding period might mean the critical level of fishing necessary to prevent the transformation of a fishing port into another condominimized tourist magnet can’t be maintained. It’s impossible to believe that anyone valuing the contributions of fishing to the character of our coastlines and the health of the public would be unwilling to extend rebuilding for a few years to avoid the irreversible loss of a unique and valuable community. 

But what of the so-called conservationists, those foundation-funded activists who profess to anyone willing to listen that they are doing what they’re doing for the long term good of the fishermen and the public? That any flexibility in the management process will only make things worse? And what of the managers and the politicians who listen to them? Perhaps they really don’t realize that a MacMansion on the water is forever, and that the dock it replaced isn’t ever coming back. But it’s about time that they did.   

I’ve seen to many fishing communities disappear, and I don’t know of any fishery that’s actually been fished into oblivion.

Nils E. Stolpe