BOSTON — August 04, 2012 — (State House News Service) Members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation called for federal disaster relief for Bay State fishermen on Friday.
“We need a disaster declaration from the administration,” Senator John F. Kerry told reporters gathered outside his Boston office. He said just as droughts in the Midwest are withering corn fields, “off our coastline, mother nature is taking away the fish.”
The report — a preliminary fish stock assessment — showed that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plan to rebuild cod, haddock, flounder, and other groundfish fisheries could drop next year’s fish harvests by around 70 percent.
While using the report to back his call for disaster relief, Kerry also said swings in the projections by the National Marine Fisheries Service make it hard for fishermen to have confidence that the projections are accurate.
Kerry was joined in his appeal for relief by Senator Scott Brown and Congressmen Barney Frank, John Tierney, and William Keating.
Congressman Edward J. Markey, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, called for federal assistance but did not call into question the federal agency’s preliminary assessment.
In February, Brown called for the firing of NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco because of a report that NOAA officials used a $300,000 “undercover vessel” as a “party boat,” including for a trip to Seattle for lunch where the boat stalled out in a shipping lane.
Kerry said he did not yet have a comment on whether he agreed with Brown that Lubchenco should step down.
“If we don’t get a response at this point in time, I’ll have further comment on that,” Kerry said.
In 2010 fishermen in New Bedford brought in $306 million worth of catch, the greatest value in 30 years, which placed it as the top port in the nation in the value of its catch, according to a NOAA press release.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe.
Read the Congressional letter to the Department of Commerce here.