One of the nation's largest environmental groups -- bankrolled with $50 million from the heirs to the Walmart fortune -- has spent millions of dollars pushing a wholesale change in how the U.S. manages its fisheries, an AL.com investigation reveals.

Critics blame the Environmental Defense Fund effort for hurting fishing communities on every coast, from Kake, Alaska, and Gloucester, Mass., to Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

The group has pushed a system that turns the right to catch a pound of fish into a private commodity that can be bought and sold like a share of stock on Wall Street. The government then gives these shares to individual commercial fishermen, granting them the right to catch that fish, or lease or sell the right to catch it to another fisherman.

EDF has been profoundly successful at persuading regulators that commercial fisheries should be managed through these so called "catch share" systems. Now the organization is turning its sights on recreational fishermen, particularly when it comes to red snapper.

The environmental group likes catch shares because they put hard limits on the number of fishermen in a given fishery, and on the number of fish caught. Instead of an open season for commercial harvest, fishermen in a catch share system are allowed to fish anytime they like, for instance when the weather is nice, until they use up their shares. And the system provides a steady supply of red snapper for market year round, instead of just during a finite fishing season.

But catch share systems are also blamed for knocking thousands of fishermen out of the industry, usually because of inequities in how the shares were originally distributed by the government.

In the Gulf of Mexico's red snapper fishery for instance, some fishermen were granted the right to catch six percent of the annual harvest, worth millions of dollars a year, while others were granted as little as 0.006 percent of the harvest, or a few hundred pounds a year, meaning they could no longer earn a living from fishing.

Because all other fishermen are locked out of the fishery unless they buy or lease catch shares, critics say the system has turned those who were granted the largest portion of the harvest into Sea Lords who lease the right to fish to those who received the least. Many of these lords are able to earn millions of dollars a year without ever leaving the dock, simply by bartering the right to fish. The Sea Lord problem has affected fisheries all over the country, creating haves and have-nots when it comes to the basic right to fish, and forcing hundreds of crews out of the industry.

Now, with 15 of the largest commercial fisheries in the United States managed this way, EDF is working to spread catch shares to recreational fishermen. A pilot program supported by EDF in the Gulf of Mexico let about 20 charter boats - known as "head boats" that typically carry 30 to 60 anglers per day -- operate under a catch share system for two years. Those boats were allowed to fish year round, which caused a lot of friction with the rest of the charter fleet of about 1,300 boats. The bulk of the charter fleet was only allowed to fish for 46 days in the year.

But the EDF's most controversial proposal has been for a system that would require private recreational anglers to have a harvest tag for each fish they catch.

EDF documents examined by AL.com make plain that the organization has envisioned spreading catch shares to people fishing for pleasure since at least 2009. That year, internal reports touting EDF's accomplishments state that the organization's work in the Gulf "will form the foundation for a for-hire IFQ and harvest tags for private anglers."

This notion of requiring tags for families headed out in their boats to catch a few fish for the dinner table has proven highly contentious. Especially so when a fleet of just 400 commercial vessels is allowed to catch 5 million pounds of snapper a year while recreational anglers have suffered under annual snapper seasons as short as 10 days in recent years.

While EDF officials tried to distance themselves from the idea of recreational harvest tags in a recent interview, state officials in Alabama say the group actively lobbied for such tags in private meetings with regulators. When pressed, EDF officials said harvest tags are one of several options for the recreational fishery, which they described as "out of control and very poorly known and very poorly managed."

The levers of power

EDF gained unprecedented access to the levers of power in 2008 when President Obama appointed the vice-chair of EDF's board - Jane Lubchenco -- as the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the nation's fish stocks. Once in power, Lubchenco, a respected but little known fisheries professor at Oregon State University, enacted a national catch share policy that mirrored EDF's longtime goals.

As Lubchenco pushed for catch shares from the top, EDF staff members simultaneously organized and funded the creation of several non-profit activist groups made up of small numbers of commercial fishermen on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Critics say the move was intended to create the impression of grass roots support for catch shares that didn't actually exist.

The leadership of these non-profits often consists of the fishermen who control the largest portion of a given fishery, who are also the folks who benefitted most from the switch to catch shares.

Buddy Guindon is one of the true kingpins of the Gulf, with his seafood business responsible for about 30 percent of all red snapper landed annually. He is a strong supporter of the catch share system used to manage the fishery, and says it has been good for most fishermen.

For instance, Buddy Guindon, the founder and executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders' Alliance, controls at least 4.7 percent of the red snapper harvest, one of the largest shares held. In addition, his seafood business, Katie's Seafood, handles about 30 percent of all the snapper, grouper and tilefish brought to market His group, the Shareholders' Alliance, received $623,000 from EDF between 2010 and 2014, the most recent years that records are available, according to the federal 990 tax forms filed by the organizations.

Likewise with another group tied to the EDF called the Charter Fishermen's Alliance, which purports to represent charter boat captains. The charter boat group was funded entirely in its first year from a $48,000 donation from the Shareholders' Alliance, using money that came from EDF.

"They work hard to make the public and politicians believe they are representing the majority of charter for hire boats when in reality they represent maybe 200 of 1,300 federally permitted owners," said Bob Zales, president of the National Association of Charterboat Operators. "Through EDF and their puppet associations such as the Charter Fishermen's Association, there is much political lobbying and at least yearly, sometimes more often, trips to D.C. to garner support for catch shares in all fisheries, commercial, charter, and private recreational with stamps."

The EDF allied groups are regular fixtures at the quarterly meetings of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, and always speak during the public testimony sessions. The groups routinely hold strategy meetings with EDF leaders at the meetings.

Bob Shipp, retired head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, was a longtime member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. He remembers when EDF began exerting an outsized influence on fisheries policy.

"We always hear from them at the Council meetings," said Bob Shipp, a former president and longtime member of the Council, which sets regulations for the commercial and recreational fisheries in the Gulf. "They don't explain how their groups are linked, but EDF and the fishermen with these non-profits are always on the same page."

The intimate connection between EDF and the non-profits they helped start was on display on national television this year on the National Geographic TV show "Big Fish, Texas," which starred Buddy Guindon and his family. On that show, the top EDF official in the Gulf was shown in a private meeting coaching Guindon on what to say moments before he spoke to the Texas Legislature.

"They pay for all of the travel, meals, everything for anyone who goes on one of these trips to Washington or the council meetings. They talk to the fishermen about what to say. And they tell the fishermen to just give them all their receipts and they'd cover everything," said Wayne Warner, who was a founding member of the Shareholder's Alliance but quit the first year because he disapproved of the environmental group's involvement.

Wayne Warner

He rejoined the group just this year. "I still always pay my own way for the trips. I don't want to owe them anything. I just think the fishermen should be looking out for themselves. Our interests and the EDF's many not always match."

Going Rogue

"What you are seeing is a conservation group that has gone rogue... What EDF really wants is to privatize the entire resource," said Daniel Pauly, a professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the world's preeminent fisheries scientists. Pauly is responsible for developing the concept of fishing down aquatic food webs and popularizing the notion that the world's fish stocks are much worse off than most scientists believe. He disputes the EDF position that catch shares improve fisheries. Instead, he said, they cause "economic redistribution."

"Everywhere you have a catch share, a small group of people end up controlling the fishery. We have in British Columbia, one person controls 50 percent of our fishery. This is what is happening in the Gulf," Pauly said. "EDF has no business favoring the concentration of capital and ownership, but that is what it is doing."

Indeed, one of the key benefits of switching to catch shares, according to Lubchenco's national catch share policy, is "consolidation" of the fleet. In other words, when catch shares are put in place, the number of people in a fishery shrinks, often dramatically, as the larger harvesters buy up shares from the smaller fishing boats.

For instance, in the snapper fishery, there were 546 permits before the catch share. Today, there are 350, but just 55 fishermen catch 77 percent of the total harvest. Older catch shares around the country have experienced even more intense consolidation, according to federal statistics. In Alaska, the halibut fleet shrank from 3,450 boats before the catch share to 1,156 today. The Pacific sablefish fleet dropped from 328 boats to 87 boats in eight years under a catch share. And the Atlantic wreckfish fleet dropped from 91 boats in 1990 to fewer than five boats by 2009, according to federal records.

EDF officials describe such concentration as one of several "unintended consequences." Others say it created an age of the sea lords and sharecroppers that began in earnest with Lubchenco's appointment. Lubchenco, who left NOAA in 2013 and resumed her position on the EDF board, did not respond to requests for comment.

Lubchenco met fierce resistance in Massachusetts, when catch shares were enacted for the fisheries in the north Atlantic. John Kerry, then a senator, along with Gov. Deval Patrick and most of the state's congressional delegation, bitterly opposed the introduction of catch shares, saying they would cost hundreds to thousands of jobs and devastate coastal communities.

"A lot of our fishermen have been put out of business or pushed to the brink," because of catch shares, Kerry said at the time.

"Normally environmental groups and NGOs are for the little guy, but here, the EDF people are siding with the big guys, the corporate interests that want to own and privatize our fisheries," Pauly said. "It makes EDF very strange in the world of environmental groups. But then they are being funded by Walmart."

Sam Rawlings Walton, grandson of the founder of Walmart, sits on the EDF board. The Walton Family Foundation, the family's non-profit arm, donated more than $50 million to EDF between 2009 and 2014. The foundation's IRS 990 forms describe that money as dedicated to "catch shares."

Pauly noted that the EDF board includes "so many CEOs. Take a look. All these CEOs and investment bankers, and the major funding from Walmart," Pauly said, suggesting the EDF board, heavy on corporate influence, "has imposed on the organization, or convinced them, to go for this privatization."

To Pauly, the catch share saga and EDF's involvement with one of the world's biggest corporation's has an "element of George Orwell."

"In 1984, you have the Ministry of Peace that wages war and the Ministry of Truth that is in charge of propaganda. And the catch share? The point about catch shares is that you don't share," Pauly said. "People have bought this from EDF hook, line, and sinker. They don't think about what it means. A catch share means you can't get access to the resource because it is not shared anymore."

Catch shares versus catch limits

A trio of EDF officials maintained in a recent interview that the snapper catch share system was responsible for rebuilding the red snapper population in the Gulf of Mexico. They dismissed the notion that strict limits on recreational anglers -- including cutting the federal season from six months with a four fish per person limit to as short as 10 days with a two fish per day limit - played a role in the recovery.

"The snapper fishery was in almost complete collapse before the IFQ (or catch share). Without the IFQ, there really wouldn't be a red snapper fishery, and we wouldn't have fish to argue over without the IFQ," said Robert Jones, director of EDF's Gulf of Mexico operations.

Asked about the ever-shorter federal seasons imposed on recreational anglers, Doug Rader, the senior scientist in EDF's Oceans Program, noted that Texas allows year-round snapper fishing, and the other Gulf states have created state seasons in protest of federal attempts to manage the fishery.

"I think the recreational fishery in the Gulf is out of control and very poorly known and very poorly managed... The recreational fishery always exceeds its quota," Rader said, adding that thanks to the IFQ, "the commercial fishery is well known and managed and the catch is known down to 95 percent." And that, he said, caused the recovery.

In addition, said Jones, the snapper IFQ has benefits that go beyond simply limiting the harvest of that one species.

"I would hope we could have a talk about the positive job of leasing (the right to fish) and the IFQ, and the job it does especially in controlling bycatch and dead discards," Jones said, explaining that the ability to lease the right to catch snapper to fishermen targeting other species, such as grouper, has been crucial to helping stocks recover.

For instance, grouper fishermen off of Florida were given shares of the grouper fishery by federal officials when the grouper IFQ was put in place. But they were not given any shares of the snapper harvest, because they did not have landings records showing a history of catching snapper. With red snapper now widespread off of Florida, the grouper fishermen are able to lease the right to catch snapper from people with a share of the snapper harvest.

Jones said the IFQ program means that the grouper fishermen are able to lease the right to keep the snapper they catch instead of throwing them back, sometimes dead, which he called "double fishing."

"Without the IFQ, there wouldn't be a red snapper fishery to argue over," Jones said.

But many fishery scientists and regulators say that Jones is simply wrong. They argue that the rebounds in fish stocks are the result of much more robust federal management of commercial and recreational anglers that began in 2006. The law that governs U.S. fisheries, the Magnuson-Stevens Act, was beefed up during the Bush administration, requiring an end to "overfishing" for all species, which in scientific terms means catching a species faster than it can reproduce. The new version of the law also required strict catch limits in every fishery by 2011, setting a cap on how many fish could be killed each year.

Those changes were the primary factor behind much lower annual quotas for both recreational and commercial snapper fishermen, which scientists say kickstarted the recovery.

"Better management overall improved fish populations, not the switch to catch shares. The move to catch shares was simply coincidental," said Bob Shipp, the retired chair of marine fisheries at the University of South Alabama, and a longtime member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. "I voted for catch shares, and they have their benefits, but they didn't save red snapper."

Indeed the record for catch shares versus simple catch limits is inconclusive at best. There were 98 fisheries classed as "overfished" in 1999, and five fisheries approaching "an overfishing condition" according to the fishery service's report to congress that year. In the 2015 report to congress, just 38 fisheries are considered overfished. Of the 60 fisheries no longer listed as overfished, 16 were managed under catch shares. The rest recovered due to limits on how many fish could be caught each year, or were removed from the list because scientists were unsure of the status of the stock.

"The catch share definitely did not save the snapper fishery. The fishery had already rebounded thanks to catch limits before they started the catch share program. They were fishing the first ten days of the month and were staying within their quota," said Chris Blankenship, head of the Alabama Division of Marine Resources. "What the IFQ really did was make it safer for the fishermen, and helped them stretch their harvest out all year. It was good for the commercial guys, unless of course you were one of the people the IFQ removed from the fishery!"

Owning a fishery

Pauly said there is a predictable pattern with every catch share program he has studied.

"There is in France a saying, 'even little steps lead to hell.' This is what happens with catch shares. You start with a very reasonable statement, 'You have to have a quota in the fishery.' Nobody would argue with that. Then, there is a series of reasonable steps, one after another, on this slippery slope and at the end of it, you are in hell," Pauly said. "Everything gets concentrated in the hands of a very small group of investors, people like dentists. And the fishermen end up serving as crew on their own boats. To prevent this, the trick is that you must stop somewhere on the slippery slope."

In presentations, Pauly calls catch shares, "a good idea people are turning into a bad idea." The problem, again and again, is the issue of ownership. With the catch shares supported by EDF, the fishermen are granted ownership of shares in the fishery, which they can sell, trade, lease, or pass on to their heirs. Making the catch shares transferable and permanent, that's where most regulators go wrong, Pauly said.

"That's how the fishery gets taken away from the fishermen." He pointed to the experience in New Zealand's rock lobster fishery, where corporations ended up owning 85 percent of the shares in the fishery just a few years after catch shares were introduced.

Pauly said the solution is to require the owner of shares in a fishery to actually captain the boat that is doing the fishing. In most U.S. catch shares, such as the red snapper IFQ, there is no such requirement. In fact, any U.S. citizen is allowed to buy, sell, or trade shares in the fishery, whether he or she has a boat, or has ever been fishing in their life.

Such a requirement is bitterly opposed by the nonprofit groups established by EDF. Guindon said requiring the people who own the shares of the fishery to actually do the fishing would end up destroying the fishery. On the Big Fish, Texas show, Guindon is only shown fishing on a single episode, though he owns multiple boats and personally holds the right to catch 4.7 percent of the overall snapper quota. In addition, Guindon said he leases as many shares of the quota as he can every year from other fishermen. He said that he sends out postcards to all the other fishermen in the catch share program offering to lease their shares for the year, so he can harvest even more fish.

"If you make a requirement that I go fishing, you are going to drive a lot of people out of business and you are going to hurt the fishery. People who are not in the fishery need to let those of us who are fishing, who see the fishery working, they need to let us work," Guindon said. "If they say ok, you have to use at least 30 percent of your fish on your boat, or 50 percent, well, I'm already out there with the liability of the risk of having a boat, of storing a boat, of repairing a boat. I'm going to catch 100 percent of my fish. Then that new entrant guy, the guy who is leasing fish, he's not going to be around because no one will lease him fish. All these things that take place create economic inefficiencies in an economic engine and cause it to choke, sputter, and die. That's where the real rubber meets the road."

An ownership requirement such as Pauly proposes, where the owner of the quota must fish, would mean that Guindon could not harvest more than six percent of the fishery. He would no longer be able to lease extra quota in excess of the six percent cap.

"Catch shares set up for owner/operator boats, this blocks this concentration. It sounds crazy, but actually exists in many countries. One of them is Denmark. Only the owner of the boat can be the captain. The boat may not be run by employees," Pauly said.

The owner/operator requirement "guarantees a stopping point on the slippery slope," because it prevents holding companies from owning the fleet or the right to fish. Guindon's business model, for instance - where he owns or leases shares in the fishery that he provides to fishermen who sell him their fish -- would have to change. Guindon and others argue that such a rule amounts to socialism.

Compromise or Communism

"You're talking like a communist, and it's just because you don't understand," said Chris Niquet. "I am the original Sea Lord. I went out and I invested in the red snapper shares when they started the IFQ. People said to me, 'Chris, you're crazy. You're going to lose everything.' I just said, 'maybe so, do you want to sell me your fish? I'll take them all!'"

Chris Niquet says he is the "original sea lord." He bought shares in the red snapper fishery as an investment and says it doesn't matter who is catching the fish. Here, he addresses the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.

Today, he is one of the largest quota holders in the snapper fishery, though he does not fish. He said that EDF's involvement in pushing for catch shares had made his business possible.

"I bought my shares as an investment, just like a man who bought a hotel, or a shoe store, or an apartment complex, not because I'm a fisherman," Niquet said. "But this is America. We don't tell the man who bought a shoe store that he has to be the one to sell the shoes. He's allowed to have employees, operate a business. We don't tell the man who owns an apartment complex that he has to live there. Saying I have to fish if I own shares is plain Communism."

Pauly disagrees.

"This requirement is not a socialist requirement, because it recognizes ownership. In fact, you cannot fish unless you are an owner. The people on the right cannot argue that you are limiting ownership, because only owners can fish," Pauly said. "You are actually encouraging more ownership, more captains and more boats."

The course chosen in most U.S. catch shares has been to limit the amount of a fishery a single entity is allowed to control. For instance, in the snapper IFQ, no single individual or company is allowed to own more than 6 percent of the harvest. But in effect, that only limits the size of the corporations that control most of the fishery.

It does not prevent non-fishing companies from owning the harvest, and making money off of the people doing the actual fishing. At present, about half of the snapper fishery is owned by non-fishing entities, meaning brokers and investors who earn their livings by renting the right to catch snapper to hardworking fishermen.

Even Lubchenco's national catch share policy notes that ownership by investors should be discouraged. In a section about such investors controlling a fishery, the policy states that the purpose of federal fisheries law "is the conservation and management of the nation's fishery resources, not the development of speculative financial instruments or investment opportunities for individuals or businesses not substantially participating in the fishery."

To Pauly, the policy itself speaks in favor of his suggestion that only fishermen be allowed to own shares of the fishery.

"As I said, even little steps lead to hell on this slippery slope. The regulators, can never see where they should stop, because every step they make seems reasonable, can be justified," Pauly said. "But at the end, you end up at the opposite of where you wanted. The last step is that one person owns the fishery. Or fifty. You end up in hell, with the fishermen working as crew on their own boats. This is happening in your fishery in the Gulf of Mexico."

And, he said, the folks who are protesting mostly loudly against changing the current system are the ones making the most money off the status quo.

Updated at 2:10 p.m., Oct. 19 to correct the number of fish species listed as overfished, the number of species that have recovered, and the number of those species managed under catch shares.

Updated at 3:48 p.m., Oct. 7 to clarify that Buddy Guindon's seafood business, Katie's Seafood, handles about 30 percent of the snapper, deepwater grouper and tilefish caught annually, while Guindon personally holds the right to harvest about 4.7 percent of the annual snapper quota.

You can read the first story in this series, about the Snapper Kingpins making millions without going fishing, here.

You can read the second story in this series, about Texas charter captains using a loophole to fish year round here.

Read the Environmental Defense Fund's view here.

Follow Ben Raines on Facebook, Twitter @BenHRaines, or Instagram at brraines as he explores Alabama's natural wonders. Shoot him an email with questions or story ideas at braines@al.com.