Case Study: New England Fishery Management Council

The author of American Catch, Paul Greenberg starts us on a journey through america's seafood industry from the early days of abundant seafood to the present condition of our fisheries. America has about 94,000 miles of coast and about 3.5 million miles of rivers, but about 91 percent of our seafood is imported. Here in America 39 percent of citizens call themselves coastal folk, but Greenberg argues we have lost touch with the complex ecosystems of the nation’s shorelines. Estuaries and salt marshes are strange crossroads where salt and freshwater currents meet to be home for oysters, shrimp, and crab. They are also home of dozens of varieties of fish. Greenberg complains about our nation’s destructive relationship with its own shoreline and tells Americans they must desire to “build a bridge back from the plate back to the estuary. This requires us to not just to eat local seafood. It requires the establishment of a working relationship with salt marshes, oyster beds, the natural flow of water from river to sea, and the integrity of the ocean floor.”.

Overfishing is a death sentence to the world’s oceans. As technology continues to improve a great deal of fish can be caught quicker; but at what cost? The effects of overfishing can lead to the extinction of not just the animals being fished, but also the predators that rely on fish to eat. Ninety percent of the ocean’s largest animals have been wiped out due to overfishing (“Overfishing- A Global Disaster”, 2011). National Geographic cites the academic journal Science (2006) that predicts by 2048, all fisheries will collapse due to lack of ocean wildlife. Fish are not the only animal caught in the nets used by fishing vessels. Often animals such as dolphins, sharks, turtles, and seabirds are

The Maryland Blue Crab, which is the most iconic creature of the Chesapeake, has decreased in population from 276 million in 1990 to 131 million in 2008. This dramatic decrease has caused a cumulative loss to both Maryland and Virginia of 640 million dollars. In an attempt to restore the blue crab population, Maryland and Virginia instituted a public policy to place restrictions on the crabbing of the Chesapeake. This is an example of a command and control policy because public authorities established direct controls on individual actions. This created harsh economic hardships for many crabbers, causing the Secretary of Commerce to decide that the blue crab fishery had undergone a commercial failure as it is defined under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is the primary authority for fishery management in the United States and it created regional fishery management councils that attempt to establish limits on total catches and regulations. This failure

Since 2012, there has been a 77% decrease in the number of fish that fishermen are allowed to catch or the TAC (total allowable catch). It was finally in the end of 2014, the New England Marine

New England Seafood Company executives face a potential two-stage plan to move into the freshwater catfish market because of the banned oyster harvesting along much of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, and increased competition from foreign producers.  These factors have resulted in significantly lower yields for New England Seafood.  In order to stay in business, New England Seafood Company needs to look at harvesting and processing something other than seafood.  New England Seafood Company looks to

The Maine Lobster fisherman have developed a widely used and accepted territorial system for regulating access to lobster fishing grounds on the coast of Maine. The system is an informal system that it is not legislatively created or mandated, but is communally imposed and enforced by the local fishing communities

Luke Combs Mrs. Daugherty English 9 March 20, 2017 Are Fishing Regulations Strict Enough? Fishing has been around for thousands and thousands of years. It has been a crucial part to our survival and well being as a human race. Nowadays fishing is not only done for food, it has also become a recreational activity. With the large affect fishing has on our society isn’t it important we regulate what we do with the fish? Fishing regulations are used to protect what we do with the fish and the limits we have. Commercial fishing regulations need to be stricter or fishing may not be around forever. Fish populations are declining much faster than scientists ever thought. In fact the population of fish has declined by nearly fifty percent since the

Given these imperative points, evidences of environmental disruptions and economical impacts in Canada proves that it is caused by overfishing.

In 2015, commercial fisheries harvested in North Carolina caught more than four times the recreational coastal fish harvest, yet commercial fishermen ask for less stringency on commercial fishing (“Portal”). Within North Carolina waters the most effective way of catching fish can be noticed without looking very far. Over the past few decades, many more commercial fishermen have been popping up creating a lack of abundance in some channels and creeks that once were pristine. The methods used by many commercial fishermen can harm them by catch and nontarget species of the estuaries and nurseries. With the harming of these species we also begin to harm the keystone species of most coastal regions. There may have been an abundance of fish at one

The availability of seafood in Canadian and Argentinean waters is also dependent on the total allowable catch allocated to Clearwater in a given area. Although the totals allowable catch in these areas and Clearwater 's enterprise allocations have been largely stable, fishery regulators have the right to make changes in the total allowable catch based on their assessment of the resource from time to time. Any reduction of total allowable catches in the areas from which Clearwater sources seafood, or the reduction of stocks due to changes in the environment or the health of certain species, may have a material adverse effect on Clearwater 's financial condition and results of operations.

According to a study done by Living Planet Report in 2015, 29% of the world’s fishing stocks are considered overfished and an additional 61% is fully exploited with no possibility to produce more fish. Our environment is currently afflicted by a number of different problems, one of which is overfishing. Overfishing is defined by FishOnline as, “Fishing with a sufficiently high intensity to reduce the breeding stock levels to such an extent that they will no longer support a sufficient quantity of fish for sport or commercial harvest.” The overfishing situation is being exacerbated by non-sustainable and destructive fishing practices and unfair fisheries partnership agreements; while there are currently attempts being made at fixing these problems and their effects on overfishing, nothing has been extremely effective.

Delgado, C. L., Wada, N., Rosegrant, M. W., Meijer, S., & Ahmed, M. (2003). Fish to 2020: supply and demand in changing global markets. Retrieved from http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/pubs/pubs/books/fish2020/oc44.pdf

The act of overfishing is not the only problem in the reduction in fish biomass being witnessed today. Salmon, a fish that once flourished in many of the world’s rivers has been relegated to smaller habitats with the proliferation of dams. Other sources of environmental degradation and reduction for fish have occurred with cod and the bottom trawling fishing technique that tears up the sea bottom and ultimately leads to a lack in cod nurseries for reproduction. More generally, a lack of “no-catch zones” has effectively reduced fish habitats as spawning grounds have been exploited and fish stocks depleted. Even still, for some fish like cod, governmental agencies to resuscitate their numbers by creating these no-catch zones have been ineffective as fish stocks became to depleted before regulation implementation. Government regulations are being created throughout

Many breeds of fish are being captured at a faster rate than they can reproduce. Some species such as orange roughy fishing became popular in New Zealand in the 1970’s. Over time, it spread to many countries around the world. In the last 20 years, there has been a decline in catch up to 75%. It is no longer common to see in grocery stores as well as restaurants. The amounts of fish that are captured and distributed around the world are alarming opposed to the rate the fish can multiply.

An increasing amount of fish are being harvested from the oceans in order to meet the demand of consumers.