RIGHTSIZING OUR FISHERIES

I spent most of my professional life in the corporate world, where maximizing profit was the name of the game, and layoffs—what the folks in the personnel departments euphemistically called “rightsizing”—were a sort of Sword of Damocles that hung above everyone’s head every time someone decided that the next quarter’s income might not be enough to support the firm’s whole legal staff.

Over the course of my career, I probably survived 30 or more rounds of layoffs, including the particularly deep and hard layoffs that came during my brief tenure with the now-defunct Lehman Brothers financial services firm.  But a lot of people didn’t survive.  There were lawyers and paralegals, secretaries and computer techs (along with a wide assortment of sales, support and back-office personnel) who came to work one morning only to find themselves escorted from their desks to a quick interview with one of the Human Resources hitmen, and then escorted out of the building.

A lot of those people provided the sole support, or at least a significant portion thereof, for their spouses and kids, but nonetheless suddenly found themselves with no income at all, and a daunting lifestyle change.

While some who were axed were truly dead wood, and should have seen the axe coming, most were reasonably good at their jobs, but just weren’t versatile enough, or didn’t provide value enough compared to their salaries, to be kept on the payroll when hard times began (and yes, there were some who just worked for awful bosses, who let the good people go to protect their favorites, but they were a smaller part of the whole).

The bottom line is that when “rightsizing” occurs, there are winners and losers.  The losers don’t have to be bad people or bad at what they do.  But when the hard times come, and there aren’t enough resources to go around, managers are often forced to make the choice between laying off some people who might not deserve it, or ending up in a place where no one survives.

Fishing is also a business, and in many fisheries, there are more fishermen than there are fish to support them.  We’ve thus reached a point where rightsizing needs to come to the fishing industry, too.

I started thinking about this a little bit more recently, because New York is in the early stages of trying to balance the number of commercial fishermen to the number of fish that they’re allowed to catch.  The state has to take some sort of action, because at the moment, there aren’t enough fish to go around.

From what I can see, the state is working hard to go about things in the right way.  The Department of Environmental Conservation is trying to avoid any biases that might exist within the agency; instead of relying on its own familiarity with the commercial fishery, it hired George LaPointe Consulting LLC to provide an outsider's insight. 

Mr. LaPointe held multiple meetings with commercial fishermen, which were held at nine sites between Montauk and Staten Island.  Once they were done, he compiled all of their findings, along with his recommendations, into a comprehensive report that was released earlier this month.

Now, it is up to the Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York State Legislature to consider the report, the fishermen’s comments and any advice provided by the Marine Resources Advisory Council, then move forward with measures that will better align the number of commercial fishermen with the number of fish available to them.

The Department of Environmental Conservation has begun a difficult task.

The consultant’s report included a number of recommendations, including

·         Reducing the number of latent (currently unused) commercial licenses by requiring license holders to demonstrate a certain minimum level of fishing activity, in order to prevent a sharp increase in fishing activity at some point in the future, should the fishermen who currently hold latent licenses either increase their fishing activity or transfer such licenses to someone who intends to fish more actively.

·         Using income from all fishing activities as the standard for qualifying for a commercial fishing license.

·         Not separating the fishing community into full-time and part-time fishermen.

·         Making it easier to transfer fishing licenses to immediate family members, but not relaxing the rules on license transferability to non-family members.

·         Making it easier for long-time applicants for new commercial licenses to succeed by weighting the current lottery system to consider the length of time persons have been applying for such licenses.

·         Creating an apprentice program that would provide a path for new entrants into the commercial fishery to obtain a license.

·         Exempting a fisherman, for a limited period, from the qualifying income provision if such fishermen had to leave the fishery in response to a medical issue.

New York is far from the only state looking into such issues.  

North Carolina began an intensive effort to get latent licenses out of circulation, and better define who was truly a “commercial fisherman” more than a year and a half ago, and had to address the same sort of issues that are being addressed by New York today.

And there is another similarity between the effort in New York and the one in North Carolina—a substantial number of commercial fishermen didn’t like it.

Earlier this month, I attended two meetings where commercial fishermen were asked to comment on the consultant’s report.  One occurred on the day the report was released; the other was a Marine Resources Advisory Council meeting called solely to address the licensing issue. 

I contributed very little to the conversation at either meeting, because I wanted to hear the very diverse opinions of the commercial fishing community, and then try to synthesize those opinions, the consultant’s report, and the very real need to reduce fishing effort into some sort of viable opinion.

I found that the commercial fishing industry itself is split in many different ways.

Some full-time commercial fishermen recognize that current finfish quotas are too small to support a full-time fleet.  In order to survive, they have obtained licenses from states besides New York, so that they can land a part of their catch in out-of-state ports under out-of-state quotas.  They also target non-finfish species, such as squid, in order to boost their incomes.  Generally, such fishermen support income requirements and a reduction in the number of latent licenses outstanding.

But other full-timers are completely opposed to taking licenses away from anyone, not even from those who have no current landings.  They might support dividing licenses into full-time and part-time categories, despite the recommendation in the consultant’s report.  They might support limitations on transfer, and seem to be universally in favor of some sort of standards being imposed on new entrants into the fishery.  But removing latent licenses from circulation is an idea that makes them uneasy.

Reducing the number of latent licenses was also roundly opposed by those who don’t fish full-time.  That category includes a broad swath of fishermen.  

Some have full-time jobs, replete with medical insurance and other benefits, but still fish to supplement their incomes.  Others are more jacks-of-all-trades, who fish a little, and engage in other work, in order to cobble together enough to survive.

Some are retirees, who fish to supplement Social Security or pension payments.  Some are former fishermen who want to fish again if and when their target species become more abundant.  

And one fisherman even admitted that he wasn’t selling any fish, but fished under his commercial license from time to time just so that he could bring home more fish than the recreational limits allowed (that issue arose in North Carolina, too).

In the end, the meetings produced many points of view, some good information, a lot of emotion and little real guidance.  

Two more meetings with fishermen are going tobe held in late August, and hopefully they will provide regulators and legislators with a little more light.

But having said that, I think that the fishery managers and the legislators are going to have to make a lot of hard decisions if they’re going to make any headway on the issue, and I think that if the Department of Environmental Conservation comes to a firm decision on the issue—as I believe it very much wants to do—a lot of people aren’t going to be happy with the way things turn out.

As one of the fishermen I spoke to before the meeting said, “There will be winners and losers.”  And losers are never happy about their lot.

That’s why I began with the “rightsizing” comments.

My thoughts on the issue are still evolving, and I may still change my mind.  But right now, my views are coalescing around the fact that fishing is a business, and that as a business, it is subject to the same hard economic and other realities that govern every business, whether it is a local restaurant to Sears, Roebuck.  

No company can spend more than it earns for long, and companies—and industries—must adapt to change or die.  

Right now, I believe that the consultant’s report is on the right track, at least for New York and the current political reality (if I had my way, I’d take a totally different path, and adopt a more marketplace-oriented solution, but that would have no chance of getting agency approval, much less making it through the New York legislature, at all).

What that means is that, in order to make New York's fishing industry viable in the long term, it will have to be rightsized.  Some fishermen will have to be laid off, whether they like it or not.

The ones affected will oppose such decision, but in fairness, they will be the fishermen who fail to meet the income requirements, who fish only to supplement their income, and not to pay their mortgages and put food on their family’s table.  So, unlike the many, many folks who have been laid off from their primary jobs, the part-time fishermen will only lose a relatively small share of their income.

And by so reducing the number of fishermen, the state will be better able to increase trip limits for the fishermen who remain, many of whom depend on fishing income for all the essentials of life.

Yes, it’s a tough decision.  But it makes business sense.

And it may be the only decision that, in the long term, will let New York's fishing industry survive.

I don't know whether the powers that be will ultimately come to the same conclusion, but I strongly suspect that, whether in New York or elsewhere, other folks presented with the same set of facts with reach the same conclusion and make the same call.