Anti-Privatization Protest Elsewhere in the World
A controversial new study, disputed by crab industry officials, says privatization of the commercial crab fishery in Alaska resulted in the loss of 1,150 jobs and millions of crab wasted. The report from Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer rights group, criticizes the so-called crab rationalization program as a give-away of a public resource to private interests at the expense of taxpayers. “Crab rationalization has left Alaska crabbers and coastal communities out in the cold while warming the wallets of a few individuals and corporations,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch. “Rather than expand a failed fisheries management model as written in the proposed Magnuson-Stevens (Fishery Conservation and Management) Act reauthorization bills, Congress should go back to the drawing board and take an ecosystem-based approach to protecting our ocean resources.” The estimated number of jobs lost by privatizing just one fishery was about 550. It is said the industry was working closely with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to rebuild certain stocks, including the tanner crab fishery, which has seen significant recovery. Thomson also noted that 13 cooperatives that hold 80 percent of the crab quota are committed to greater retention of crab in this season. The 20-page Food and Water Watch report alleges that individual fishing quotas assigned under the rationalization plan have failed to deliver on the promise of protecting marine ecosystems, while succeeding at consolidating the right to fish into the hands of just a few companies with no concern for the health of the fisheries. Authors of the report said they found that some 1,150 people lost their jobs during the first year of the privatization plan and that the remaining jobs pay 50 percent to 70 percent less than they did prior to rationalization. Coastal communities that depend on the number of boats and people fishing are suffering immense financial losses, and a handful of large processing corporations, many of them based in Japan, have guaranteed buying rights to the crab, the report alleges.