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

“In my opinion, one of the worst things that we ever did was allow gear switching. It sounded great, but sablefish fetches a higher price pot-caught. So we allowed our sablefish to exit the trawl fishery—well, it’s technically still in the trawl fishery, but a guy can go fish pots and catch trawl sablefish. It created an inequality. They can get paid more for it, therefore they can bid more for it.”
~ Fisherman

“Gear switching really hasn’t worked the way they thought. What it’s done is let the fixed gear people come and buy trawl quota and put it into the fixed gear side. And that is hamstringing the Dover you’re going to get out of the water. Where you had 100% of the amount of black cod to prosecute your old fisheries, now you don’t have that, and it’s going to leave Dover, it’s going to leave other fisheries in the water. So I don’t think that that was right. I don’t think that they foresaw that.”
~ Fisherman

“The problem is the initial investment in resources from private foundations as well as from agencies is to get [catch share programs] in, and then a lot of that support goes away, and the fleet is left struggling with a lot of things that the support could actual be helpful in. For instance, now that we’re in an ITQ program, you can catch species with different kinds of gear on your trawl quota. So if you have trawl quota, you can start working on alternative gear types and that can lead to higher value in those products. Yeah, but here’s the catch; there’s really no easy identified funding source to help the fleet to do that. And I see that as a huge problem because it’s like, oh, this is great, you can get more value. There’s no mechanism for them to actually do that.”
~ Government

“Those who were smart enough to acquire permits and acquire black cod to go with their fixed gear permits are making good money on it. Black cod tends to be a higher value species, and pot and longline-caught black cod tends to be higher in value than trawl black cod. There’s a bunch of fisherman up in Ilwaco that were smart enough to recognize what was coming, and they went and they acquired trawl permits and were able to buy the black cod and do the gear-switching or trade it around amongst other fisherman and so forth.”
~ Fisherman

“There is that kind of consolidation which has changed the nature and the number of vessels that are really trawl vessels. That has happened directly because of IFQs. There’s been vessels that have changed business strategies and have trawl quota that I would not consider them a trawler. If you don’t own a net, in my mind you’re not a trawl vessel. But you have trawl quota, so maybe you are a trawl vessel. I guess it depends on how you look at it.”
~ Government

“People were opportunistic and saw changes coming but wanted to use that quota in a different way, so they started converting vessels. Sablefish is a nice example. Catching it with alternative gear so that the “trawl vessel” was no longer really a trawler anymore. That created a divisive issue because you have people coming in and changing vessels out, changing gear types.”
~ Government

“Anybody that fishes groundfish very much anymore leases quite a bit of fish. I lease two other permits. The guys that don’t lease fish, they’ll be the ones that just go dragging in between shrimping and crabbing and just do it for a month or two here and there.”
~ Fisherman

“If you’re in non-whiting trawl all year, all your fixed costs for the year have to come out of non-whiting trawl throughout the year. If you’re a lot of these other guys that have different fisheries, like pollock in Alaska or crab, they make good money in some of those fisheries. They can take their fixed costs off that. Then they’re thinking, okay, I got X-amount of groundfish. It doesn’t matter if I don’t make anything hardly because I’ve already paid for the boat and my expenses for the year. Let’s go make a couple of trips, and we’ll make a little bit of money. So they get to do that whereas I can’t do that as much because I don’t have those other more profitable fisheries to be in.”
~ Fisherman

“I actually try to lease to trawlers. If [a trawler and a pot boat] are both going to offer me the same price or close to it, I’m going to lease to the trawler ’cause I might be able to make a deal with him about something later. And it really doesn’t do any good to have all our black cod get caught by pots. It doesn’t do a thing good for the fishery, or for harvesting any of the rest of this fish, or the canneries or anybody. And a lot of guys bought permits just prior to this [IFQ program] that were fixed gear vessels, [they] bought drag permits knowing that the gear switching was part of the package. They never did drag. They just bought the permits and the quota with plans on fishing it hook and line, or pots or whatever.”
~ Fisherman

“Shrimp was just so good for the last three years. They made so much money. So I had more shrimpers than draggers. And I can’t blame them, and that’s okay. But this has been going on for quite a few years, and we get a lot less fish. Truthfully, I make money selling round fish. Filleting doesn’t make money; it’s very expensive. We’ll make money with whole round petrale or rex or something that can go to people [who] like to hand-cut their own in restaurants.”
~ Processor

“I got 180 people that work here. We’ll have more at crab season, but we have a core for our shrimp and our crab and all that stuff. Our core for our fillet worked well because the filleters would become crab pickers, and we’d pay by the pound. They’d make good money. I’d take that fillet crew and those two months that we didn’t do fish, do crab. Worked perfect. But now I don’t do fish. Now I got crab season coming, so now what do I do? Now I got to teach a whole bunch more people how to pick a crab.”
~ Processor

“So guys would, in the middle of shrimp season, they’d go shrimping, and then they’d come back and put on their groundfish gear, go out and catch a bunch of groundfish, and then return to shrimping again and do the same thing the next two-month period. So at least it kept groundfish coming into the dock on a regular basis throughout the year. And that enabled the processor to employ the skilled labor, the filleters. And it kept a lot of fresh groundfish in the market as well. Now with a bunch of groundfish coming in in March/April and another bunch coming in in October/November, there’s [nothing for] the filleters to do in the intervening months so the number of filleters the plant hires has gone down considerably. And the fish itself, because it’s coming in in rather large bunches at either end of the stream winds up going into the freezer because you can’t put that much fish out into the marketplace all at once and expect any decent return. And you’re still losing money somewhat on frozen fish, but it’s not as bad as everything going into the market at once.”
~ Processor

“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

“The way I look at it, we’ve had great shrimp years. Environmentally, we’ve had just terrific conditions for the last four or five years. And that’s not going to stay. It never does. And when it goes downturn now, it used to be you can go out there and work harder and do whatever, and you can’t do that now. You have so many constraints, and you got the costs so high. The fixed costs are so high that you can’t go out there and scrape anymore. And you can’t afford to catch too many canaries, yellow eye, halibut, all that stuff. Plus you’re paying a $500 day. Plus you’re paying the lease rates. And that’s why I think it’s more volatile. Pretty soon you’re going to have a crappy shrimp year, whether it’s next year or year after. And there’s going to be a bunch of guys, oh well, I better try to go dragging, you know, or spend more time dragging. So then everybody is going to be competing for leasing fish, which is great for the guys leasing it, ’cause their lease price will go up. But for those of us fishing, it just chips away at the profit.”
~ Fisherman