November 15, 2014 — "If the council and its members truly want to make a difference, they should indeed hear and heed the concerns if fishermen and fishing advocates and confront Bullard’s new mandates for what they are — unilateral regulations."
Despite the significant sound of its name, the New England Fishery Management may not be able to do much about the drastic new area closures that NOAA Fisheries, through Northeast administrator John K. Bullard, slapped upon the Gloucester’s already-embattled groundfish fleet this week.
That’s because, while the management council — one of eight such regional panels across the country — is supposed to be viewed as a body giving fishermen, the environmental community, and New England’s state governments very real input into setting regulatory policies and catch limits, that’s sadly not the case.
You see, even if all of the regional councilors — none of whom hail from Gloucester — decide at next week’s meetings in Newport, R.I., that Bullard and NOAA are dead wrong to impose strict new guidelines under the cloud of an “unscheduled” and basically secretive new stock assessment, only one voice will really determine Gloucester fishermen’s future.
Read the full opinion from the Gloucester Daily Times