The Pointy End of Hook: Fisheries Policy and the Importance of At-Sea Enforcement
Eric Quigley is a graduate
student in the Coastal and Ocean Policy Program at the University of North
Carolina Wilmington. He graduated from
the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 2006 with a BS in Management. Currently, he is an active duty Officer in
the U.S. Coast Guard with six years of at-sea experience aboard three ships
enforcing Federal and multi-national laws and treaties including, leading approximately
120 fisheries enforcement vessel boardings in the Gulf of Mexico and Western
and Central Pacific Ocean.
Illegal
incursions in the United States Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) increased by 13%
from 2014-2015. The increase reflects a
general trend over recent years. The continued
illegal, unreported or unregulated fishing in US waters have led the UN Food
and Agricultural Organization and the US President to encourage development of
new frameworks to improve effective management these resources. A common ethical perspective holds that
despite the manner by which a fish is caught (legal or illegal), once brought
to shore fishermen should bring the animal to market for consumption.
The question then arises, how does society, or even just the
US, curb illegal fishing while bringing illegally caught fish to market remains
an acceptable practice?
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| US Exclusive Economic Zones |
The Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries
Conservation and Management Act of 1976 established an EEZ extending 200
nautical miles from the coast of the United States and its territories- an area
encompassing approximately 3.4 million square nautical miles. Congress enacted the legislation in response
to negative impacts on the U.S. economy and U.S. fishing fleet financial
interests by foreign fishing vessels exploiting fish stocks in close proximity
to the U.S. In 1997 Congress amended The
Act to include fish stock rebuilding and sustainability mandates as policy
goals; and it reauthorized The Act in 2007.
The ability to effectively enforce
the related laws, rules, and regulations of a policy is critical to policy
success. Although the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) implements the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the
U.S. Coast Guard enforces the laws resulting from the Act. That is, the Coast Guard enforces the
sovereignty of the US EEZ, which in turn, supports NOAA’s goals of economic
prosperity and food security through ocean biological sustainability.
However, fisheries enforcement is
only one of 11 Coast Guard statutory missions.
The other 10 missions, specifically, homeland security, search and
rescue and drug enforcement, requires some of the same resources as fisheries
protection but promise visually attractive benefits. For instance, in 2015 the Coast Guard saved 3,500
lives at sea and seized 179 metric tons of drugs worth $4.9 billion. Each event is an opportunity for media
attention thereby overshadowing the fisheries protection activities which are
comparatively, less sensational.
Enforcing regulations that protect
resources over the open ocean and in remote areas is a costly endeavor. Hourly
rates to operate appropriate Coast Guard ships range from $5,000 to nearly
$30,000, and surveillance aircraft cost between $10,000 and $20,000. The Coast Guard budget of $10B is
comparatively small to other agencies such as the US Navy at $127B, US Marine
Corps at $22B and the NYPD at $4.8B (NYPD has a similar number of personnel to
the USCG) and much of this goes towards the Coast Guard's other “sexy” missions
rather than fisheries protection.
The social and economic benefits
from fishery sustainability and national security far outweigh the fiscal costs
of Coast Guard operations. According to
budget documents for the Coast Guard, the fisheries industry contributes $186
billion and 2 million jobs to the economy annually.
Although those numbers may seem
large, the US imports upwards of 90% of our seafood, approximately 5.3 million
pounds worth approximately $18 billion, and 20% of the seafood we consume is
illegally caught. The World Wildlife
Fund estimates that worldwide, $23.5 billion worth of seafood is illegally
caught annually.
As nations such as, Indonesia and
Argentina, secure their EEZs and take action against illegal fishers new areas for
exploitation will become targeted. The US, with the world's largest EEZ, is at
increased risk of having our resources stolen, impacting our economic
well-being as well as our fisheries health.
Implementing more stringent policies is a start, however, in order to
ensure the laws are followed, at-sea enforcement and deterrence is critical for
ultimate policy success.
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