Copied from Fryingpantower.com
The road to catch shares for charter and headboats
The road to ?catch shares? for charter and headboat operators is being paved with an Environmental Defense Fund-backed pilot program approved by NOAA Fisheries this year for the Gulf of Mexico.
A catch share-based fishery management plan takes a fishermen?s landings and converts them to ?shares? that can be bought and sold like a commodity on Wall Street.
Studies have shown that there is no biological benefit to catch share programs and that they hurt fishing communities by reducing jobs.
Sponsored by a Texas group called the Charter Fisherman?s Association, which is funded with $161,000.00 from EDF according to the latest EDF tax filing, the pilot program will allow a small number of headboats to be allocated ?shares? in the gag grouper and red snapper fisheries for a two year period based on their reported 2011 landings. Participants are required to use Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS), an expensive and intrusive vessel tracking system that has been overwhelmingly opposed in the South Atlantic.
During the public comment period for the pilot program permit, 535 emails were sent to NOAA Fisheries by individuals opposing the program, while just 28 individuals sent emails in support of the program.
However, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, the lobbying arm of EDF that has spent over $1.4 million so far this year lobbying Congress and NOAA on fishery issues, generated 7,438 form emails supporting the catch shares pilot program, many from states outside the Gulf of Mexico region.
So it?s no wonder that a NOAA administration that?s already EDF-friendly approved the program.
Just as in the Gulf of Mexico region, EDF has poured money into a group called the South Atlantic Fishermen?s Association, based in South Carolina, to advocate catch shares and VMS in the South Atlantic region.
According to the latest tax filings, EDF and its lobbying fund have given SAFA a total o