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“Fishing helped create
Point Pleasant
Beach, it is in our roots and it is part of who we are
as a community.” Though Mayor Tom Vogel said it, his
words were echoed in comments from Mayor Kirk Larson
of Barnegat Light in Ocean County and Mayor Walt Craig
of Lower Township in Cape May County, New Jersey’s
three busiest commercial fishing ports. And we’re sure
that their sentiments would be echoed by their
counterparts in Belford,
Atlantic City,
Bivalve and other
New Jersey ports.
This is a recognition of the one factor that
distinguishes the commercial fishing industry. While a
sizeable industry, generating on the order of half a
billion dollars worth of economic activity, it is
dwarfed by many others that make the Garden State the
economic powerhouse that it is. Yet commercial fishing
has an appeal, a mystique that is shared by very few
others.
Barnegat Light’s Mayor Larson certainly recognizes
this, and Barnegat Light capitalizes on it. Viking
Village, the largest commercial dock in Barnegat
Light, offers dock tours weekly in the summer,
allowing residents and visitors alike an inside look
at what commercial fishing is all about; from how
boats are configured for different fisheries through
how the gear works to how the fish and shellfish are
handled at the dock. With, according to Mayor Larson,
“a liberal helping of information of the political and
technical realities of fisheries management.” And both
Mayor Craig and Mayor Vogel make a point of mentioning
the successful integration of operating commercial
fishing docks with highly popular restaurants in
Cape May
and
Point Pleasant Beach. Ordering “the catch of the day”
from a front row seat watching the boat that just
landed it is a draw that’s unavailable to 99% of
New Jersey’s
restaurants.
But, along with the mystique, what else does
commercial fishing have to offer? It’s year-round
employment in areas where many of the jobs are
seasonal and tourism dependent, and that employment
isn’t just on the boats or at the docks. Mayor Craig
noted the complex of on-shore businesses that are
dependent on the commercial fishing fleet: fishing
gear, marine repairs, trucking, crew provisions, fuel
and insurance all generate significant economic
activity for local businesses, and they do it 12
months a year.
Each of the mayors recognized the pressures that
resource management placed upon commercial - and
recreational – fishermen, and while acknowledging that
it was necessary to a sustainable fishing industry, it
should be done in an even-handed manner, and one which
is compatible with maintaining the viability of the
involved businesses. In Mayor Larson’s words, “it
wouldn’t do anyone any good to have an ocean full of
fish if we didn’t have any fishermen left to catch
them.”
The issue of accountability in fisheries management
has recently been moved to the front burner because of
summer flounder (also called fluke), one of New
Jersey’s most important recreational and commercial
fish species. Because of a very successful management
program by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council
entailing serious sacrifices by all of the
participants in the fishery, the summer flounder
stocks are in better shape than they have been in
anyone’s memory. Yet because of inflexible and
overly-stringent “rebuilding” requirements mandated by
the federal Magnuson Act, the fishermen have been
subjected to a series of drastic cutbacks in fishing
effort, to the detriment of all of the involved
businesses. Fortunately, a number of Congressmen,
including New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone,
realize that it’s possible to have too much
“conservation” and are working to inject some common
sense and good judgment back into the management
system. In Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Vogel’s view,
while still recognizing the need for management, “we
believe that those with the vested interest in the
fish stock should have the most say.” We can’t imagine
anyone in the recreational or commercial fishing
industry disagreeing.
The summer flounder situation does bring up an issue
that Mayors Vogel, Larson and Craig all recognized as
an important and possibly growing problem for their
commercial fishing businesses, and for those in
virtually all of our commercial fishing ports. That is
the struggle for fishing businesses to stay in
business in the face of escalating coastal development
pressures.
Anyone who has spent any time at the
Jersey
shore, or at any other shore in the continental
U.S. for that matter, is aware that if there’s a
waterfront lot anywhere that’s capable of having a
house or a condo built on it, there’s a really good
chance that it’s going to be built. Unfortunately,
houses and condos don’t make good neighbors for
commercial fishing docks. Early departures, loud
vessel exhausts, lots of commercial traffic and
round-the-clock activity, all of which come with the
commercial fishing territory, aren’t compatible with
residences. Our fishing ports have attempted to
accommodate their fishing businesses and minimize
conflicts by adopting supportive zoning plans, but
they aren’t necessarily adequate in 2008. In Mayor
Vogel’s words, in Point Pleasant Beach “we were
starting to see a change from commercial uses to
residential which was not in the best interest of the
fishing industry, or the character of our community.
We made land use changes that protect the fishing
areas from encroachment of residential uses. We took
steps to help eliminate any potential friction by
zoning out new residential uses.”
Mayor Craig took it a step farther, recognizing that
“they’re not making waterfront property anymore” and
suggesting that to insure that commercial fishing is
with us into the future, we need something like New
Jersey’s effective Farmland Preservation and Green
Acres programs, perhaps calling it “Blue Waters.” And
Mayor Larson, who used to be a commercial fisherman
and is now a scallop boat owner with a
multi-generational interest in commercial fishing that
he wants his children and grandchildren to share,
agrees that this, along with other actions that return
more control of the management process back to the
involved businesses, could be key to the future of
commercial fishing.
While it might be easy to adopt an overly pessimistic
attitude about the future of fishing in New Jersey,
the support of Mayor Vogel, Mayor Craig and Mayor
Larson, their insights into the critical issues facing
the commercial fishing industry, their willingness
confront these issues, their commitment to commercial
fishing into the future and their willingness to share
their thoughts with the readers of the Conference of
Mayors Quarterly all argue persuasively that optimism
might be more in order. |
