July 2, 2014 — “How many businesses could survive an 80 percent reduction in the amount of things they can produce and sell?” Vitale said of the cuts imposed by NOAA in the annual quotas for the allowable catch for cod and other groundfish. “An 80 percent reduction is obscene. They think they’re saving the fish. Who are they saving them for?”
And with that, the roughly 90-minute session that drew an audience of about 60 came to a close.
DeFazio, a ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources committee that reported out the Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill currently sitting before the full House, was asked afterward if he was surprised by anything he heard in the comments from the more than a dozen citizens, fishermen, industry stakeholders, and state and local elected officials that took to the podium.
“I guess I’m surprised at how much we have in common with our problems with (fisheries) management,” said DeFazio, a Massachusetts native whose congressional district encompasses much of the Oregon coast. “We have the same questions about the stock assessments, people not being able to fish on a plentiful species because of extraordinary restrictions. We need some breakthrough with the way we manage it. It’s obviously a bicoastal problem.”
The House version, according to Tierney, holds out some hope of substantive reform of the act that regulates commercial fishing in U.S. waters.
“A lot has changed, including definitions and language, the flexibility that’s in there and the accountability aspects,” Tierney said. “A lot of the concerns that were expressed today are in that bill.”
The Center for Sustainable Fisheries, which supports the House bill, pointed out that the bill replaces the term “overfished” with “depleted” to more accurately determine whether stocks are depleted and help identify what caused that depletion.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times