A landmark deal between the groundfishing and scallop industries is being seen as proof that the so-called "catch share" system proposed by the Obama administration can work for the overall fishing industry.
The deal does offer evidence that it can work. But it is important to take note of why the deal got made in the first place: It made sense only after the New England Fishery Management Council reversed itself last week and voted for a more reasonable limit on the taking of scallops for the coming year.
And that only happened because of enormous pressure from political leaders, ranging from Congressman Barney Frank to Gov. Deval Patrick.
The agreement calls for the groundfishermen to give about 200,000 pounds of their yellowtail flounder allocation to the scallopers, in exchange for financial consideration that has not yet been determined.
Vito Giacalone, business director for the Gloucester Seafood Coalition, who was the negotiator for the groundfishing interests, said the deal made so much sense that he called it "a no-brainer."
Yellowtail are a desirable flatfish that tend to concentrate in scallop beds, and therefore become bycatch when they are caught in scalloping dredges or trawls. Instead of throwing them out, the scallopers will now be able to keep them, making them much more valuable to scallopers than to groundfishermen who target them directly.
This, advocates of catch share note, will improve conservation, since many fish will not have to be thrown out. And it will make the overall industry more efficient, since there won't have to be as many boats catching the yellowtail.
All that is true. But this is only working because political pressure was brought to bear on the council, which had voted 10-7 last November to reduce the allowable catch of scallops by 25 percent, to 47 million pounds, even though scallops are well known to be a healthy stock. The move would have cost the state's economy more than $40 million.
This, in the face of government scientists saying there are 300 million harvestable pounds of scallops, and that taking 65 million pounds would not affect the health of the overall population.
Indeed, a study by a scientist at UMass Dartmouth found that there were so many scallops in the waters off New England that some of them were dying of old age.
If draconian limits like that are placed on other healthy stocks of fish, catch shares will be less likely to work, since the various groups of fishermen will not have much of value with which to barter.
And at the moment, that is the case. Regulators continue to place limits on 16 species of fish based on the health of the weakest stocks, when there is ample evidence that they could relax the limits on some of those species and still have a sustainable resource.
Catch shares can work well, as the recent agreement between scallopers and groundfishermen shows. But it is much less likely to work with over-regulation.
