Current and Former Fishermen Speak Out Against Privatized Fishing
Former fisherman Rhonda Maker protests against catch shares
Rhonda Maker, a former fisherman from Kodiak, Alaska was one of the thousands of people who traveled across the country to rally in Washington D.C. against ‘catch share’ programs last week. Strongly supported by the Obama administration, these programs create a market to allocate fishery access privileges - determining who can catch public fish stocks. While markets can be designed in a positive way to support jobs and a healthy environment (see our fact sheets on Cap-Rent-Recycle and Namibia), at present these markets are being designed to privatize control over access to public fish, and push small business people out of the industry. Familiar with this struggle in her own right, Rhonda once ran a small fishing outfit that was forced out of business thanks to the implementation of a ‘catch share’ program that heavily favored the interests of large fishing operations.
In the same way that agriculture has become agri-business, fishing culture - both commercial and recreational - is under serious threat from speculators, big business, and their cronies. These interests are using catch share design as a weapon against working people. To make matters worse, they are trying to greenwash their agenda by making unsupported environmental benefit claims. When it comes to catch shares and privatization of access to our public fish stocks, Rhonda’s message is clear: fishery privatization – just say NO!
To learn more, watch the great new film we’ve posted on our website. The Last Frontier, a documentary (12 mins) by Alaska Motion Pictures, asks the question, what does it mean when you can privatize something like fish? Terry Haines, one of the Kodiak fishermen featured in the film, summarizes their struggle:
“We’re making a perfectly good living right now, but people who could own access rights could be rich. And how do you do that? You take away the perfectly good living from people who actually harvest, by taking away their ability to access the resource.”
-Ben Bowman