Facts
- America imports 80% of the fish it consumes, because the amount we catch doesn't satisfy the demand for fish
- Government implements Days at Sea program to limit how many days fishermen want to spend fishing
- There is a ridiculously high barrier of entry (is that the right term?) for the fishing industry. If you're not part of a fishing family but want to become a fisherman, the cost of permits, boats, etc. can cost you $500,000.
Problems
- Fishermen are unhappy with the fact that they are only allowed to fish a limited number of days. limited as in 26 out of 365. (To be honest, I'd be unhappy too.)
- If they fish on a good day, they catch too much and there's bycatch. If they fish on a bad day, they don't catch anything at all.
- Many Fishermen don't believe that that there's an issue with overfishing. Their view: there has been some shift in the populations of fish, but there ARE still fish in the ocean, and there are definitely fish in the closed areas. Scientific data tells them that the fish populations are declining, so the government tells them to stop fishing. Scientific data tells them that the fish populations are still declining, even when they've cut down on the amount they're allowed to catch, so they feel it's not entirely an issue of catching too much fish.
- Fishermen think scientists don't believe/understand them and their trade.
- closed areas and quotas change frequently, making it more complicated for them to determine where they fish if they fish at all.
- Can't make a living off fishing anymore, and are discouraging kids from going into the trade. Fishing will be gone in two generations unless something is done.
- Fishing is a scattered industry made of small businesses, and fishermen have no representation in Washington, i.e. weak lobbying, etc.
Solutions
I sort of brainstormed these when I got back. Some people said that we should just develop a solution to solve all the large scale global problems and just ignore fishermen because they're such a small percentage of the population and they can't be convinced that there is a problem in the first place. I think that it's possible to develop a solution that works on the big scale while still improving the fishermen's current situation.
GPS systems
This solves Problem #5. With the technology we have today, we can easily develop a touch screen that shows a map of the area and where fishermen can or cannot fish, and it can be updated instantaneously.
On the other hand, this will cost the government money if we are to subsidize them.
Get rid of Days at Sea program.
This will make fishermen happy. This also doesn't solve any of the fish problems whatsoever, and we would need to develop a completely new way.
Find them jobs
Some guy who talked to us spent a lot of his time working for a research institution because he can only fish for so many days in the year. The fishermen definitely sound like they have an thorough knowledge of what goes on in the fisheries (at least in terms of fish population trends and where to find certain types of fish), even if many of them don't have college degrees.
He said that a lot of times he'll be taking out researchers in his fishing vessel to gather data, but then the coast guard chases him down for entering closed areas, fishing without a permit for the day, etc. Also, he's not doing research related to the fish he's been catching for the past 30 years.
Jobs in science would definitely help create a link and better understanding between scientists and fishermen. Problem is, there are far more fishermen than there are jobs (guy said that he was lucky; some of his friends are now off working at home depot), and hiring them will cost money. (government subsidize again?)
Subsidize fishermen
This would solve #6. We said before that subsidies are bad because they increase the fishing effort and fishermen use the bonus towards buying more fishing equipment, etc. In Gloucester, at least, it seems like the fishermen can't increase their fishing effort due to Days at Sea anyway.
But subsidies cost the government money. We'll be paying out of our tax dollars to sustain the fishermen.
inflating the price of fish
If there's such a high demand for fish (fact 1), raising the prices will reduce the demand in the first place.