Although some of the quantitative data analyzed for this indicator exhibited clear trends, it was challenging to discuss the relationships between observed data trends and implementation of the respective catch share programs. The Measuring the Effects of Catch Shares project team believed that those stakeholders most involved in the fishery, either as active participants or as representatives of an involved coalition of participants (e.g., sector managers in the Northeast), would be able to provide insight and help to explain trends seen in the existing quantitative data. The following quotes were selected to illustrate some of those perspectives and highlight trends such as effects on small vessels, the effect of avoiding “choke stocks,” fleet diversification, and product quality. The individual quotes do not represent findings or conclusions for this indicator, nor do they represent a consensus across any category of participants.

Interview methodology and crosscutting themes

“You took boats off the water. And that was originally one of the purposes, was to get some of those excess boats away, which is happening. These guys are selling out. So now you’re going to have the mega-trawlers. You’re going to have boats that are go-getters with high quota.”
~ Processor

“The only boats that exist are the big boats with big volumes. All the little boats are gone. There was a whole fleet of boats that were between 55 and 70 ft. Every one of them is gone except for one.”
~ Fisherman

“Consolidation is the boogeyman in the closet when everybody’s talking. And there’s been a lot of fisheries that have a lot of consolidation, but they’ve all been high-end fisheries that have big dollar amounts on their product. Any time you start looking at trawling where you’ve got low-value fish, low margin, it takes everything to put your year together. You can’t do it in two or three months and be done. There’s very little consolidation. I won’t say there hasn’t been some, but I think the consolidation happened before the program went into effect, not after.”
~ Fisherman

“When this program went in, the Council says there’s going to be a two-year cooling-down period, which I think turned into a three- or four-year cooling-down period, and there would be no permanent trades or sales during that period. I really believe that that was the right way to go because you didn’t know how this program was going to turn out. You didn’t know if the value was going to be in the boat, in the fish, or in a piece of paper. You didn’t know if you were going to have more access to fish or less access to fish. It gave people time to learn what was going on. But many people panicked. We had a lot of small guys sell their groundfish off. That was the consolidation you saw.”
~ Fisherman

“You’ve seen guys like myself that had three boats that qualify, but I only fish [in the IFQ fishery] with two boats. But it’s not like I have one boat doing nothing. It’s fishing in [other fisheries] year-round. When I think of consolidation, I think a lack of jobs, lack of accessibility for crews, people making less money, that kind of stuff. I’ve been able to streamline the business a little bit to where two boats are fishing whiting here and one boat’s [pursuing other fisheries], so actually I’ve got more crew because we’re fishing more. I’ve added people and they rotate a month on and a month off on two boats. And on the other boat, they go two months on and a month off.”
~ Fisherman

“So I don’t know about excessive consolidation. I don’t think that that’s been borne out. Like the problems with getting fish out of the water, some might say, “Well, because there are less boats” or whatever, and that’s not the case. There are enough boats to catch the fish. It’s just all these other regulations keeping people from getting the fish in my opinion.”
~ Fisherman