Last week's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel to essentially shoot down challenges to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's implementation of Amendment 16 and catch-share program is disappointing, to say the least.
Indeed, as Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk noted, Zobel's ruling seems to have taken "the government's positions at face value."
Yet, in generally upholding the regulatory scheme that now rules New England fisheries — and will rule all of America's fisheries if NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, carrying the water for her former fellow Environmental Defense Fund lobbyists, gets her way — Judge Zobel has thrown the ball into the courts of our congressional lawmakers. And that may be a good thing.
For while Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown, and Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank, among others, can't be happy about Zobel's decision — and Kerry is already pushing an appeal to overturn it — the judge's ruling simply suggests the Amendment did not cross the lines of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
That can only mean that, as fishermen and their backers have noted in the past, that the Magnuson Act is flawed in and of itself, and are desperately in need of reform. That, of course, must be achieved legislatively — and that process should now begin with all due haste.
Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.