This post was originally published to The Fisherman website. More archived The Fisherman blog posts can be found on our Archive Page.
Problem
Young people are not seeing fishing as a career. Retiring fishermen cannot sell licenses/quota at a reasonable income for retirement.
Solutions
- Attract young fishermen by lower costs to get into fishing.
- License banks (like NNFC or NFA) where new fishermen can lease licenses/quota at a reasonable price. Alaska is doing this now.
- Community owned licenses/quota – lease out to fishermen – like PICFI but for everyone.
- Diverse fisheries – not just license banks for salmon but for access to all fisheries
- Owner operator / fleet separation Corporations can’t own licenses/quota
- get rid of license speculation
- keep license/quota prices real
- Fishermen’s Loan Board for seasonal start-up loans and and licence/quota purchase costs.
- Low cost provincial loans – every province except BC and Alberta has a Fishermen’s Loan Board
- Help for all fishermen and for new fishermen to access loans
- Provide a market for licenses/quota so fishermen who want to retire can do so with dignity
- Government buy-back of licenses no longer active
- Shared Federal and Provincial government/community/fishermen buy –up of licenses/quota and put into license banks for future distribution (to new fishers or diversified licenses to established fishers)
- Better fish prices and no /or controled quota costs would attract new fishermen and new markets for licenses