Check this out. I am for a buyout with the condition that the quota goes with the buyout. So as the stocks come, back bigger and better harvesting boats don't appear, to scoop up the entire quota anyway. We have to get the quota to go with it. Not to be scooped up by the tribes or commercials. It has to be a complete circle with no loop holes. I do not want to subsidize the commercials, but would like once and for all to get them off of the water.
Here is the Seattle Times report:

Sunday, November 09, 2003 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.

Sea changes in store for commercial fishing

By Julie Finnin Day and Seth Stern
The Christian Science Monitor


JEFF BARNARD / AP
Fishermen Richard Young, right, and Steve Woorrell discuss the federal buyback program aboard Young's boat in Crescent City, Calif. Federal regulators have decided to ban fishing of bottom-dwelling ocean fish off California's coast for the rest of the year.


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ASTORIA, Ore., and GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Sweeping initiatives are moving forward on the two coasts that will affect some of the world's most productive fishing grounds and the jobs of thousands of fishermen, from San Diego to Seattle, Bangor to New Bedford.
On the West Coast, the federal government has announced a $46 million plan to buy out as much as half the trawler fleet and permanently retire the boats from fishing. The move is intended to help ailing fishermen who have been hurt over the years by ever-stricter quotas placed on catches.

Meanwhile, a regional advisory board took a major step in trying to curb overfishing in the once-bountiful waters off New England. Under pressure from a court order, it adopted a plan that would restrict fishing of depleted species but allow fishermen to divert their nets toward more plentiful stocks.

The two initiatives, though different in intent and approach, will affect the livelihood and traditions of a centuries-old industry rooted in dozens of communities along both coasts.

'Massive overcapacity'

"Right now we have massive overcapacity," said Andrew Rosenberg, a former regional administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. "We have far more fishing power than the stocks can sustain."

The $46 million buyout is a life-changing move for those who live by a struggling industry's changing tides. On the West Coast, owners of 92 boats will be paid an average of $497,000 to permanently remove their vessels from fishing, starting Dec. 5. The plan is aimed at cutting the West Coast trawler fleet by 50 percent.

Overwhelmingly approved last month by the vested boat owners, the buyout was developed by the industry and government to help stabilize vulnerable coastal economies. The industry has lost tens of millions of dollars in the past five years as federal quotas tightened to protect seas from overfishing.

In 2000, the government declared an official fishery failure — a catastrophic drop in the fish population. Seven species of groundfish have been designated overfished, and federal regulators have decided to close a large swath of Pacific Coast waters to bottom fishing for the rest of this year to boost recovery of depleted stocks.

Now, those who stay in their fisheries could see their catch quotas double, starting next year.

A graceful exit




For the fishermen who will leave their boats behind, it's a way to make a graceful exit, one "that wasn't available to them before," said Pete Leipzig, executive director of the Fisherman's Marketing Association, a West Coast trawler-industry group in Eureka, Calif. "This gives them an opportunity to sell their business with dignity and (keep) some part of their life savings intact."

In his 39 years in the fishing business, Bob Finzer has invested more than $4 million in buying six boats — he has two left — and paying for their almost constant maintenance. A single trawl net costs him $30,000.

For most of that time, he made enough to pay his bills, employ a crew of four and keep the boats in good repair. But in recent years, his income has plummeted because of stricter fishing quotas. "I don't know whether we could (have lasted) another year," he said, standing in the grungy cabin of his 70-foot trawler, the St. Janet, scented by the ubiquitous smell of engine grease and fish.

Now, he said, the future could be very good, "as long as the government don't mess with things — change the quotas."

Like Finzer, most of the West Coast trawl fishermen have been struggling to stay afloat, often with their entire life savings poured into boats that no one — until now — would buy.

But while the purchase may help Finzer and many others, it is a mixed bag. Unlike previous buyouts, most of the loan ($36 million) must be repaid with interest to the government by the remaining trawl fleet, shrimpers and crab fishermen over the next 30 years. The number of fishing licenses will be cut permanently from 263 to 174.

Mixed feelings

In Astoria, Ore. — once a booming timber and tuna town, and still the state's largest fishing community — the new initiative is being greeted with mixed feelings.

Astoria was home in the 1980s to 36 canneries. But the public outcry over dolphin safety killed the tuna industry here, sending canneries abroad and putting at least 4,000 people out of work. Now, just a handful of custom canneries remain.

On a recent rainy morning in the biting cold, three fishermen prepared for their last trip to sea on the Pacific Sun IV, which was bought out.

"None of the hired people are very happy about it," said skipper Rob Seitz, inviting his visitors into the cabin for fresh-ground coffee. The father of four managed to find another boat to work on, and he's taking his two crew members with him. "But I'm one of the lucky ones," he said.

An estimated 300 skippers and deckhands will be out of work in Oregon, Washington and California. Chris Wallin, the maintenance person on Bob Finzer's boats, will compete for new work with some 30 other deckhands in Astoria.

In the Northeast, the New England Fishery Management Council approved the plan of a coalition of Gloucester-based fishermen to offset reduced time at sea by adding days on which they could target only healthier stocks. Still, the plan will not necessarily reverse decades of decline that have thinned bait and ice shops along the coastal harbors: More fishermen are expected to be forced out of business, especially in Maine.

Last week in Peabody, Mass., the advisory panel considered alternative ways to reduce fishing. The council — an advisory board to the federal National Marine Fisheries Services composed of industry representatives, scientists and environmentalists — was set to vote on details before submitting the plan to federal regulators.

Environmentalists complain it doesn't do enough to stop overfishing of threatened species of cod and yellow-tail flounder.

"We've got some real concerns," said Priscilla Brooks of the Conservation Law Fund, a Boston-based environmental law group that helped bring the original lawsuit.

But it's welcomed by Gloucester fishermen such as Russell Sherman, who has seen the numbers of days he can fish decline by 65 percent in the past two years — leaving him worried that he'd be out of business come springtime. "I will keep going," Sherman said after the vote in Peabody.

Sherman, who has fished commercially for 31 years, bought a $450,000 boat in 2001 — just before the judge's ruling — and has struggled ever since to break even and pay his three employees. "We're squeaking by," he said.


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