RedSnapper_SlipperSkippersandSharecroppers_Stunz_Greg_CorpusChristiTX_30August2022_Reel4126.mp3

Greg Stunz [00:00:01] On the commercial side, ... it's ... federally managed, and that was quite a disaster of a management process maybe 20 years ago. It was kind of like the Wild West.

Greg Stunz [00:00:12] The government said, "You can catch this many fish." The commercial guys, when you ring the bell, they're fishing like crazy. You get a glut in the fishing market because all the fish come in at one time. The weather doesn't matter because if you don't go catch the fish, you're not going to make any money. So there were safety at seas issue.

Greg Stunz [00:00:28] It was just crazy.

Greg Stunz [00:00:29] And so they developed this system called, "individual fishing quota". And that meant if you could prove that you caught so many fish throughout time, catch history, and if you could demonstrate a catch history, you were given essentially an individual quota.

Greg Stunz [00:00:46] And that was kind of like the sheriff coming into the Wild West and restoring order. And it was actually a good thing. It curbed the overfishing that was occurring at the time by the commercial fleets.

Greg Stunz [00:00:56] And it said, "Hey, you got this quota, that we know is a reasonable amount, that's sustainable. You can fish it whenever you want. You can decide. The markets will tell you when to go fish. You don't have to fish in dangerous rough seas anymore. And you can let the market dictate your price at the dock, essentially."

Greg Stunz [00:01:13] So it was a good thing.

Greg Stunz [00:01:15] And so that's how they curbed the fishing on the commercial side...

Greg Stunz [00:01:20] But it turned out the individual fishing quota, ... it could be tradable. And that's where all the controversy came in into that fishery, because what happened, and it's sort of the law of unintended consequences, is that now that fleet is graying and most, many of those guys, aren't even fishing anymore. Many have died, or some aren't capable.

Greg Stunz [00:01:42] And so they have this quota. And now what do you do with the quota, because you got to have somebody to go catch the fish?

Greg Stunz [00:01:48] And so they can trade that quota. So speculators came into the fishery and started buying up the quota that weren't even fishing. Some, in fact, were foreign governments through LLCs that did it, you know, in a legal, but kind of a loophole way, to buy U.S. fish for foreign countries.

Greg Stunz [00:02:06] Some of the captains decided they wanted to lease their quota. And so that means somebody that doesn't own the fish has to go fish for somebody that owns the fish. And we call them, "slipper skippers", which means they don't fish, but they just collect royalties off of their leasing their fish to the guy that actually fishes.

Greg Stunz [00:02:28] And some of us, including myself, have a little bit of a problem with that, because the intent was never to make people rich off a public resource. It was to curb a fishery problem and keep the cultural aspect of the fishery going in a sustainable way.

Greg Stunz [00:02:43] So what happens now? To give you an example of how out of control it's become, one person sent me his invoices a few weeks ago, where he paid $750,000 last year just for the rights to lease the fish, to a group of speculators that don't even fish.

Greg Stunz [00:03:00] And some of us are saying, "Well, time out." Why does this guy get to collect all this money on a natural resource that's owned by all of us? ...

Greg Stunz [00:03:09] So the federal government has termed those guys, "Sea Lords". It's a real word. I'm not making it up. That they control the fishery, because they're the big quota shareholders.

Greg Stunz [00:03:20] But then you have the sharecropper fishermen, which are like this guy that comes in, and has to pay for his ability to go catch the fish, even though he takes all the exposure of the boats and risks and crew and fuel, bait, ice and all that.

Greg Stunz [00:03:32] So it's kind of gotten a little out of control.

Greg Stunz [00:03:35] So there's those of us on the Council ... of course, some on the Council think it's the greatest thing ever, if you have the quota; if you don't have a quota, it's the worst thing ever. And there's probably a solution there in the middle somewhere where we can kind of fix some of these unintended consequences, restructure that program so it can go back to its intended purpose of getting the fish to the fishermen in a sustainable way, that's good for the economy, the resource and the consumer.