The New England Fishery Management Council settled a controversial policy battle this week by rejecting a proposal that would have authorized fishermen to lease out their government-granted access to scallop grounds. The change was sought by the industry’s largest fleet owners but fiercely opposed by their crews and many of their smaller competitors and shoreside service providers.
Creating a leasing program for scallop permits, which are currently assigned to specific boats with longstanding ties to the fishery, offered a solution to an old problem: There is an excess of scallop dredging boats today, with many aging holdovers from a more bountiful fishing era now sitting tied to the docks for as many as 300 days per year.
Leasing would have made it possible for fleet owners to stack their permits onto fewer boats and essentially retire the old ones they don’t need anymore. A lobbying group backed by industry titans like Eastern Fisheries, Blue Harvest and Atlantic Capes argued that retiring decades-old vessels would improve safety for fishing crews, reduce fossil fuel emissions and ease congestion in America’s fishing ports.
But at a series of public hearings held up and down the East Coast this summer and fall, opponents of leasing framed the effort to revise the fishery’s longstanding regulations as one driven by corporate greed.
“It will lead to consolidation because it is intended to lead to consolidation,” New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, who oversees the nation’s highest-grossing fishing port, said during a final public comment period at the council’s meeting on Tuesday in Gloucester.
“We’ve seen what happened in other fisheries here in the U.S as well as in Canada when consolidation happens,” Mitchell said. “Smaller businesses go out of business, there are fewer fishermen who fish, and port economies suffer.”
A review of comments made throughout a monthslong public hearing process found a majority of boat owners who participated — about 55 percent — supported leasing. But the review found 99 percent of captains and crew members in the fishery opposed the practice, as did nine out of ten elected officials who commented.
Paul Weckesser, who owns six fishing boats within a larger vertically integrated seafood operation in New Bedford, said he sided with his crew members on the issue after seeing how leasing fueled consolidation in other fisheries he’s participated in.
“I’m going to get richer. They’re going to get poorer,” Weckesser said in front of the council on Tuesday. “We owe it to them. They’re the ones who go out there on the water and risk their lives.”
A crowd of fishermen who made the two-hour trip from New Bedford to attend the meeting at Gloucester’s Beauport Hotel celebrated the council’s decision.
Tyler Miranda, the captain of two scallop boats, said his faith has been restored in the deliberative process behind fishing regulations.
“I was a little uncertain of which way it would go and kind of worried that it might be politically influenced or influenced by big corporations,” Miranda said, “but the council stood by the people.”
“It’s a win for the fisherman,” said Ziggy Johannesen, the owner of three scallop boats operating out of New Bedford. “A win for the small guy.”
Managers from Eastern Fisheries and Atlantic Capes who publicly supported leasing this summer declined to comment on the council’s vote.
George Lapointe, a former council member and current spokesman for the Scallopers Campaign, a lobbying group that put the issue before the council this year, said the group is now considering appealing the issue to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who has the power to reconsider the council’s decision.
“We’re going to see if that’s an option but nothing’s been decided at this point,” Lapointe said.
During the council’s extended discussion over leasing on Tuesday, which lasted more than four hours, several council members expressed interest in drafting a narrower leasing program that would allow boat owners to lease their scallop permits in the event of a boat failure. But several motions drafted on the fly to keep discussion of the issue open during the council’s next meeting in December failed to pass.
“If we close the book on the leasing amendment now,” Council Member Geoffrey Smith said shortly before the meeting adjourned, “we have not closed the book on having it be a priority to discuss in 2023.”
Ben Berke is the South Coast Bureau Reporter for The Public’s Radio. He can be reached at bberke@thepublicsradio.org. Follow him on Twitter @BenBerke6.
