January's regional uprising against severe scalloping restrictions was a preview of coming attractions.
On Wednesday, fishermen from America's coastlines will converge on Capitol Hill to rally and lobby for congressional relief from draconian rules they say are putting them out of business.
They are backed by their local mayors and congressmen, and while three hours will be spent by the protesters on the Capitol steps, the day's agenda also includes visits to congressional offices.
The protest is organized by a group called United We Fish, and it expects up to 3,000 participants from the West, Gulf and East coasts and Great Lakes.
The rally will be followed up locally by a fisheries summit meeting in New Bedford set for March 8.
The fishing industry feels as though it has been backed into a corner. Dr. Brian Rothschild, dean emeritus of the UMass School of Marine Science and Technology, said there is really no one thing that brought this uprising.
"This has been going on for a long time," he said. "It's a case of incrementalism. It's a case of accretion, piecemeal kinds of things. You keep adding them up and then comes the straw that breaks the camel's back."
In the Northeast, that straw was last November's decision by the New England Fishery Management Council to drastically cut back the scallop harvest, far beyond what would be needed to avoid overfishing.
Pressure on regulators is coming from other directions as well. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., met in late 2009 with Lubchenco over a series of fisheries problems. But when he deemed her eventual response as inadequate, Frank wrote a scathing letter demanding more action and fewer words.
More recently, Frank was joined by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, in questioning the rationale for demanding that all fish stocks be fully restored within a 10-year timeline, a goal that many scientists and fishermen call impossible and unnecessary.
They called on NOAA to fund an independent review of the policy, which is the underpinning of the entire regulatory scheme today. They, along with others such as New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, question whether NOAA and its regulatory agencies are meeting their obligation not only to the fish, but to the fishing economy, a duty that is spelled out in the law.
Lang doesn't think that initially happened in the case of the scallops. And most in the fishing industry don't think it is happening now with the implementation of "sectors" along with "catch shares" in the Northeast.
Wednesday's rally is set for noon on the Capitol steps. Lang said he plans to attend.
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