Phil Bolger - Advanced Gloucester Fisherman Project

Advanced Gloucester Fisherman Project

Beginning in November 2002, Bolger and Altenberger began a re-examination of fisheries economics, as a result of the partial collapse both globally and locally in their hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Their proposal centered on the principle that, especially in an era of high fuel cost and economic pressure for modernization of depressed fishing ports, sustainable fisheries require a balance of business economics and public planning versus the available fishery resources.They argued the key to this is a restructuring of the fishing fleet towards boats with lower complexity, lower initial cost, better fuel economy, and lower operating costs.

Large expensive complex boats demand taking a high number of fish to be economical. Simpler, lower powered, and lower cost boats can still be economical with lower fish catch rates. Bolger and Altenberger expressed concern that existing governmental fishing permits are issued based on length of the fishing boat, which creates an incentive to use inefficient wide and deep fishing boat hulls. If the fishing permits were issued based instead on displacement tonnage of hull, then the incentive would be for the fishing to use long, narrow and shallow hulls which would be more economical to purchase and to operate per ton of fish caught.

The existing fishing fleet, composed of ever larger boats with high construction costs, debt loads and operational costs, in the long run forces fishermen to search for ever increasing catch sizes to remain economic, in a fight against regulatory quotas. Ultimately, fishermen would find it more economically sustainable to do more with less. A consolidated fleet could make it possible for fishermen to survive with lower catch rates, lower debt load, lower fuel burn, lower insurance rates and lower depreciation.

This idea is described in the September 2004 issue of the magazine National Fisherman, and again in 2007 as a series of essays published in the magazine Messing About in Boats. However their argument was somewhat flawed as many fisheries in the world, such as in Antarctic waters are virtually untouched but they are remote from the USA and require very large seagoing vessels. Inshore fisheries need to be managed carefully to ensure overfishing does not occur. Some nations, such as New Zealand, have onshore fish breeding programmes to restock fisheries. This together with many coastal maritime reserves and a carefully managed quota system ensures that fish numbers stay healthy and prime eating species have even increased since the 1980s.