If you shut down a fishery when no boats are on the water anyway, is there any real conservation benefit to the closure?
That’s the question that arises after reading the final rule published by the National Marine Fisheries Service in the November 12 Federal Register. The draft rule had proposed an August closure, during a peak season for the bigeye fishery. After protests from vessel owners, NMFS moved the closure to December 13.
And instead of the closure lasting six weeks, as anticipated in the rules adopted by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (of which the United States is a member), the closure lasts just two and a half weeks.
What appears to have happened is that a rule-making process begun to protect fish changed course in mid-stream to protect owners of the vessels that pursue them. The final rule describes the transformation:
“The vessel owners have two specific reasons for preferring the year-end closure. First, the weather conditions on the high seas and in the Convention Area [the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean] at year-end are normally more problematic than the August-September period. Fishing conditions are affected by weather and the vessel owners would prefer that the closure not take place during the period when the weather is least likely to adversely affect fishing. Second, there is currently a short supply of fish, and fish prices have finally begun to return to levels that support economically profitable fishing. A mid-year closure could prevent U.S. vessels from capitalizing on this opportunity. Finally, a later closure allows better opportunity for planning operations and scheduling repairs maintenance [sic] during the closure. For the reasons, U.S. vessel owners would prefer to delay the closure until later in the year.”
NMFS’ response? No problem. “NMFS has decided to implement the late closure supported by industry for the reasons presented.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 15, Number 6 December 2004