Fisheries Management Is Complicated. Here’s How Fishermen Are Helping.
Fishing is flat-out hard.
In addition to being able to find the fish they want to target, commercial fishermen must be part oceanographer, part meteorologist, part marine scientist, part businessperson, and part mechanic. They must be ready for anything to go wrong and hopeful that everything goes right.
Factor in climate-driven changes to oceans (warming, shifting abundance patterns, acidification), habitat degradation from rivers to the coast, drought, and gentrification of working waterfronts, and it gets harder still.
Then add in all the state and federal regulations around permits and access to the stocks, competing marine uses (wind energy and aquaculture), and the complicated ongoing process of managing fisheries, and you’ve got a cyclone of complexity.
Although the natural elements are certainly demanding, it’s that fishery management piece that beguiles citizens and fisher folk most. Longtime Monterey Bay fisherman Kevin Butler knows it personally.
“The average consumer is blind to the procedures, and most fishermen are as well,” he says. “There’s so much that goes on in the decision-making.”
Bob Dooley, a retired fisherman based in Half Moon Bay, serves as a California representative on the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC)—one of eight councils overseeing United States waters—that in turn, gives the recommendations to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries to implement under federal law.
Growing up and making a living from fishing between California and Alaska, Bob is well-qualified to provide perspective on how intricate fisheries management can get; for example, the PFMC alone is responsible for managing 119 marine species, including Pacific salmon, rockfish, flatfish, coastal pelagic species, and highly migratory species like sharks, tunas, and swordfish.
While some fishermen have made it part of their work to engage in management, for the most part, that tangle of bureaucracy alienates most fishermen. In the late 1990s on the east coast, a few thoughtful fishermen noticed that the meetings held by various management councils were getting even more complicated, and fewer and fewer fishermen were showing up to participate.
That observation inspired the development of a program subtitled “for fishermen, by fishermen” to decode the policy-making machinery: The Marine Resource Education Program. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute—an independent nonprofit dedicated to stewarding the ecosystem in its name and the communities that depend on it—signed on to help facilitate. And in the last decade, MREP has expanded from the east coast and now offers science and management workshops in X regions, including the West Coast.
Each regional workshop is based on similar curriculum, but specific to the fisheries and council processes of that region.
Overall, the intent is to : 1) Learn the “nuts and bolts” of marine fisheries science and management; 2) Demystify acronyms and vocabulary; 3) Gain tools and insights into effective engagement in regional Fishery Management Councils; 4) Connect with key regional fishery science and management experts.
The Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust has been on the MREP Steering Committee since it started on the West Coast in 2016. The Trust offers up to three local fishermen (or seafood business staff) scholarships annually to offset lost revenue from taking that time off work (the program reimburses them for travel expenses).
A primary reason for the Trust’s involvement, as MBFT Executive Director Melissa Mahoney, points out: It’s impossible to be heard when you don’t have a voice.
“There’s this classic saying: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” she says. “If any stakeholder isn’t there to express their interest or dependence in the resource, whatever stake they have is going to get eaten up because no one else is going to think about their perspective.”
If fishermen don’t weigh in, it generates a double whammy of sorts.
“Management misses out on the wisdom of the fishermen, and fishermen miss out if they don’t claim continued [rights] to harvest a resource and to bring their unique perspective to that forum,” Mahoney adds. “So it’s a loss from both sides.”
Monterey Bay salmon fisherman Butler is among those MBFT has provided a scholarship to attend and has traveled to both the Fisheries Science and Fisheries Management workshops.
“Everyone I know who’s gone through it was really thankful that they did because of how complicated the process is—even if you can’t do anything to change it,” he says.
While the slow pace of rule-making and the uncertainty of the science still frustrate him—“There’s no way to know how many fish are in the ocean!”—he says—attending MREP granted him some measure of peace.
“It allowed me to relax a bit,” he says. “If you have no understanding of how the decision-making process works, you think, ‘They’re against us.’ But when you get to ask, ‘Who are these people? Where do they live? Where do they hang out?’ you get a better idea of how rules come to be.”
He also finds the training can be calming for his fellow fishermen.
“When we’re here doing ‘dock talk,’ and someone gets all conspiracy theorists and says, ‘I heard this,’ or ‘What they’re trying to do is bleed us out slowly,’ I can say, ‘Actually it’s this reason we might be affected.’
“I may not agree with the [council’s] decision, and it can be a flawed process, but now at least, I know what I’m talking about.”
One fisherman who attended on scholarship spoke on the condition of anonymity—in part because he still finds all the regulations so byzantine that he didn’t want to criticize it. But he did mention he forged lifelong friendships.
“The connections I made there with other fishermen were incredible,” he says. “I met a lot of people I’d never meet otherwise who I still stay in contact with; we’re even going fishing in Mexico together.” Santa Cruz resident and third-generation fisherman Valerie Phillips, who fishes out of Half Moon Bay, also attended MREP on a MBFT scholarship. She believes the most meaningful outcome of attending MREP is two-fold.
“First and foremost, meeting the people who work in fishery management and advocate for fishermen was very helpful,” she says. “For me, I have heard certain names or positions in the council/management/advocate [sphere] all my life and there was always an aura of grandiosity to them, and in no way would I feel comfortable reaching out. But meeting the people and learning about their roles, I gained the insight that they really are working for us as fishermen, and they want to be approached and have lines of communication open.”
The other most helpful dimension: learning the terminology and steps in the council process, including full pages of acronyms.
“Without [the MREP handbook], I would be lost and speaking a different language than the people who want to have those open lines of communication,” she says. “Learning the council process was valuable as well, although a bit murky to me still. I think if more fishermen understood there is a process and you have to be involved before actions are made, our fisheries would look different than they do today.”
The next West coast workshop will take place in Santa Cruz September 25-29, and MBFT is hoping to see as many local fishermen as possible and will be able to offer financial support for up to four people to attend. They will also be helping to organize relevant field trips and group barbecues and—as Mahoney points out—lift up Monterey Bay voices.
“We can be a big player in making sure we get as many of our local fishery participants at that meeting as possible,” she says. “The more fishermen who move through MREP, the more confident they will be to participate in the process, and when more fishermen participate and share what they see on the water, we ultimately have better outcomes for management.”