THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200526
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SPECIAL REPORT
DIVIDING THE WATERS
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE AND SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines
The sleepy surf clam industry probably never thought it would be so trendy.
But the fishery, from Virginia to New Jersey, finds itself center stage in a national debate over how the country's dwindling fisheries should be managed.
To combat overfishing and limit boats on the water, the surf clam industry shifted to a loose Wall Street-like system in which fishermen and merchants can buy, sell and rent the right to harvest clams and another species, the ocean quahog, from the bottom of the ocean.
The two are favorites of large soup and seafood companies, which often use the species in canned clam chowders and clam strips.
Fishermen and merchants can barter without government oversight, exchanging cash for small colored tags that must be attached to each clam trap to make their harvest legal. Once the tags are used up, the fishery closes. End of season.
By most accounts, this free market approach seems to be working, which, in the dysfunctional world of fishery management, is a happy anomaly.
Called ``individual transferable quotas,'' or ITQs, the system is being considered by Congress as an alternative to stiff government mandates that for years have confused and frustrated the commercial fishing industry.
How extensively ITQs will be used in the future is perhaps the most contentious issue Congress faces in reshaping national fishing policy through the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, experts and officials agree.
Emotions are high. Greenpeace staged a protest in Seattle this summer against ITQs, arguing that they will lead to big corporations buying out small fishermen and monopolizing the multibillion-dollar fishing industry.
That hasn't exactly happened with surf clams, however. More than half the clam ITQs are owned by fishermen, statistics show. A handful of processing houses and food companies owns the rest.
One of the largest stakeholders used to be the giant food conglomerate Borden Inc. But it recently sold its processing house, boats and ITQs.
``It's simple: Commercial fishing is an industry, and companies like Borden will get in and get out when they feel the time is right,'' said Rebecca Metzner, a University of Delaware graduate student writing her doctoral thesis on the surf clam industry.
``If we want to run our fisheries to protect a way of life, fine. But there are ways, I think, to make money and protect for the future,'' Metzner said. ``This could be one.''
Many economists, government officials and scientists view ITQs as a way to unshackle fishermen from bulky regulations and give them a greater incentive to conserve fish by essentially putting them in charge of the fishery.
So far, the results have been promising, at least with surf clams. Since ITQs were initiated in 1990, the first such program in the nation, management problems have gone ``almost to zero,'' said David Keifer, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Management Council.
``I used to talk to clammers almost every day; they called with complaints and stories about other guys cheating,'' Keifer said. ``But we don't hear much of that now because, really, they pretty much control their own destiny out there.''
Not that the program was heaven sent. It took nearly 13 years of extensive planning, painful negotiation, angry meetings, lost jobs and hard feelings to implement ITQs, Keifer said.
The program also is embroiled in a lawsuit. Filed in federal court in Norfolk this summer by nine East Coast seafood companies, the suit claims the U.S. government used old scientific data to set an artificially low quota for clams in 1995.
Government officials counter that they only want to be biologically conservative in assessing clam stocks in order to build a long-term, healthy fishery.
To grasp how ITQs differ from traditional fishing quotas, think of a pie:
Under a traditional scheme, the government sets an overall quota each year based on scientific data. Fishermen can each take as much as possible and as quickly as possible from this pie until it's all gone. The Coast Guard and other authorities are supposed to determine when the pie's gone.
With ITQs, the government still sets the size of the pie, but gives each fisherman an ``individual quota'' for that year. Tags they receive in the mail represent their allotment.
Fishermen are then free to do whatever they want with their portion of the pie. If they want out of the fishery altogether, they can sell their shares for good. They can lease their tags to another captain and do something else that season. Or, if they foresee a good market, they can try to buy or lease more shares.
The most difficult part of implementing an ITQ program, officials agree, is deciding who gets the initial shares in the fishery. The surf clam program was worked and reworked for 13 years to try to resolve this thorny issue.
When finally introduced in 1990, ITQ allotments were based on a complex formula that factored in each vessel's size and its average annual catch during the previous 10 years.
Now, five years later, the clam population is safe, or at least stable, and much of the industry is happy.
Still, critics exist. The success of ITQs in the surf clam fishery is ``lucky,'' said Carl Safina, director of the National Audubon Society's Living Oceans Program.
A small number of fishermen catch clams; the fishery is subject only to federal regulation, Safina and others argue. Other fisheries, such as blue crabs or striped bass, are more complex and harder to regulate, they add.
``There's nothing inherent in ITQs that result in a better organization of a fishery,'' Safina said. ``People who have private ownership of resources usually destroy those resources. Look at private forest land in the West.''
Despite such skepticism, ITQs could become a valuable tool for environmentalists, said Jim Kirkley, a resource economist at Virginia Institute of Marine Science who has written extensively about ITQs.
Like The Nature Conservancy buying sensitive lands to stop development, environmentalists could buy or lease ITQs in a particular fishery to help a species rebound, Kirkley said.
``We've done very little to create incentives for fishermen to be conservationists,'' Kirkley said. ``It's like, if they don't catch those fish as quickly as they can, someone else will.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphics
Research by CHRIS DINSMORE, graphic by ROBERT D. VOROS/The
Virginian-Pilot
FARM-RAISED SEAFOOD
1993 farm production and value of seafood in Virginia and the United
States.
SOURCES: 1993 Aquaculture Survey of Virginia department of
Agriculture and Consumer Services; ``Fisheries of the United States,
1994'' by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
U.S. SALMON PRODUCATION BOOMS
The production of farm-raised salmon grew dramatically in the
1980's
SOURCE: ``Fisheries of the United States, 1994'' by the National
Marine Fisheries Service.
AQUACULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES
The production of fish farms in the U.S. grew steadily in the
1980's.
SOURCE: ``Fisheries of the United States, 1994'' by the National
Marine Fisheries Service.
[For complete graphics, please see microfilm]
by CNB