Food & Water Watch Seeks To Torpedo IFQ Program
Falsely claiming that a “re-referendum” plainly shows that the majority of reef fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico are opposed to the IFQ Program as proposed and approved in the real referendum, Food & Water Watch distributed a news release claiming that an overwhelming majority of permit holders in fact oppose the plan.
The TRUTH? Even by polling those permit holders with minimal catch histories, they were only able to make the margin closer. Adding their figures to the ones gathered in the original referendum still shows a clear majority in favor of the IFQ proposal, with the totals at 232 FOR and 202 ANTI. Given that, how do they come up with the headline for their news release which is:
“New Survey: Fishermen Oppose Controversial Management Plan”
They arrived at this falsely stated conclusion by polling those “fishermen” holding commercial reef fish permits who have less than 8,000 lbs per year in landings to back up their claim to in fact BE a commercial fishermen. They further claim that forcing these essentially recreational fishermen to fish as recreational fishermen will somehow deprive them of their livelihood and cripple the industries that depend on them. They also don’t show just how low they went into the pool of people holding commercial reef fish permits. Should the person with a reef fish permit who lands, say, 2000 lbs per year with that permit be given the same voice in the regulation of the fishery that a person who makes his sole living in the fishery and lands, say, 40,000 lbs per year? Only if their vote will help some enviro group publicize one more lie.
This same environmentalist group, who now take the welfare of the poor commercial fishermen so seriously and try to act like they are speaking up for a threatened industry, was eerily silent when NMFS just closed down the healthy Gulf Longline Industry, denying many fishermen of their livelihoods and certainly doing more harm to the coastal industries than giving all users shares based on their catch histories will do. Their “news release” never points out that these marginal permit holders will not be excluded from receiving shares commensurate with their catch history and acts as though they will be shut out of the fishery completely. So far, the only people being shut out of the fishery are the longliners, everyone else is looking at getting catch shares based on their historic participation.
Food and Water Watch also trumpets this not surprising statement:
The survey also asked fishermen if they believed that the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council was managing the Gulf of Mexico reef fish resource in a manner that benefits public interest. Ninety percent (154 respondents) said no, 7 percent (13 respondents) said yes, and 3 percent (5 respondents) had no comment.
Well, really? Of course the majority of ANY commercial fishing sector polled would say the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is not managing the fishery in an such manner. They aren’t.
However, Food & Water Watch conveniently stopped quoting these “overwhelming” figures they have gathered in the next part of their bullshi…..err, “news release”.
Permitholders were also given the opportunity to comment on how the privatization program would impact both their livelihood and their community. Many expressed concern about losing their livelihood by being shut out of the fishery. Others were outraged by the unfair voting process and felt that it had been skewed in the interests of those who would benefit most from the program.
How many expressed these concerns? How many were “outraged”? Why are they so outraged? Even when the votes of anyone the Food&Water Watch people could scrape up were ALL counted, the vote is still a clear majority in favor of IFQ’s, why make all this fuss and construct this misleading but in reality worthless “press release” in the first place?
Who are these “many” who would be shut out of the fishery? A person who landed 8,000 lbs of fish per year in the control years will still be able to land approximately that amount in future years, more or less as determined by any changes to the Total Allowable Catch. A person who landed 2,000 lbs of fish per year will not be losing their livelihood. If anything, they just won’t be able to continue to essentially be a recreational fisherman yet, due to carefully manipulating the permitting process to their benefit, have the ability to backdoor a few fish a month into some local restaurant to pay for the fuel on their $50,000 toy boat to go out with a few buddies and catch as many fish as they can boat. How sad for them to have to be treated like all the recreational fishermen who didn’t manage to submit an application in their wife’s name (to get around the income percentage that a real fisherman needs to show comes from commercial fishing) so that bag limits don’t apply to them.
How convenient for Food & Water Watch to latch onto this re-referendum to try and pull a last minute torpedo job on the IFQ proposal. Too bad their re-referendum didn’t do anything to change the actual fact that a clear majority of those polled were in favor of the plan but that doesn’t stop them or even slow them down.
Using totals from BOTH referendums:
For: 232
Against: 202
When they don’t have facts, they just sling a bit more BULLSHIT.
